church

INI
Fourth Sunday in Advent
December 19, 2010
Ascension Lutheran Church, Tacoma WA
Paul Naumann, Pastor

ADVENT ANSWERS OUR QUESTIONS
Luke 1:26-38

Grace and Advent peace be multiplied unto you, in the knowledge of God and
of our Lord Jesus, the Child of Bethlehem, Amen. This morning's text is found
in the first chapter of Luke's Gospel, beginning with the 26th verse, as follows:

Now in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a city of Galilee
named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the
house of David. The virgin's name was Mary. And having come in, the angel
said to her, "Rejoice, highly favored one, the Lord is with you; blessed are you
among women!" But when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and
considered what manner of greeting this was. Then the angel said to her, "Do
not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will
conceive in your womb and bring forth a Son, and shall call His name Jesus. He
will be great, and will be called the Son of the Highest; and the Lord God will
give Him the throne of His father David. And He will reign over the house of
Jacob forever, and of His kingdom there will be no end." Here ends our text.

In the Name of the Christ Child, Dear Fellow Redeemed,

Some questions are impossible to answer. The Boston Globe runs a column
each week where readers submit difficult questions and the Globe researchers
try to find the answers. They almost always do. There is a short list, however, of
question s they received over the years to which they could not find an answer.
For instance, one young reader wrote, "I am nine years old. My cat Sparky is
overweight, so the vet put him on a diet. But besides his regular food, Sparky
also likes to eat mice. How many calories are in a mouse?" That's a question
that would be hard to answer!

Some people have a hard time answering questions about Christmas. Because
this season raises a lot of questions, doesn’t it? We look around us, and
everything we see tells us that a very important occasion is coming. The lights
on people's homes, the music on the radio, the advertisements in newspaper
and television. This is a season that is obviously very significant and very
important to almost everybody. But what exactly is the significance of this
season? What’s so important about Christmas? After all, does anything about
this season really change how people relate to one another? And more
important – does it change how people relate to God? Or is it all an elaborate
bluff? Is all the talk about peace, hope and joy nothing more than “whistling
past the graveyard” in a world that, in the harsh light of reality, offers nothing
but conflict, hopelessness and sorrow? It might seem at first glance that
Christmas is a season that raises more questions than it answers. But God has
the answers for us. He gives us the answers in His Word. God can tell us
exactly where the significance of Christmas lies. Join me this morning in
considering the theme:

ADVENT ANSWERS OUR QUESTIONS
I. It answered them for Mary
II. It answers them for us

A couple of Wednesdays ago we stood with Zacharias at the altar of incense in
the great Temple at Jerusalem. This morning the Holy Spirit takes us to a very
different setting, many miles to the north. We find ourselves in the small
Galilean farming community of Nazareth. In one particular house in this town,
a young woman named Mary sits by herself, thinking. Perhaps she's thinking
over the day's activities; she might very well be making plans for her wedding
day, which is coming up soon. All of a sudden these mundane thoughts are
dramatically interrupted, when an angel - of all things! - appears in her room.
"The angel Gabriel, having come in, said to her, 'Rejoice, highly favored one,
the Lord is with you; blessed are you among women!' But when she saw him,
she was troubled at his saying, and considered what manner of greeting this
was."

She was troubled at his saying. The word “troubled” isn’t a very good
translation of the Greek in this passage. If I find a discrepancy in my check
register, I may be “troubled.” But according to the original, Mary was more than
simply troubled – she was “greatly perplexed or agitated.” Mary reacted
predictably to the appearance of the angel: she was extremely frightened. She
was just as afraid as Zacharias had been, when the angel appeared to him in the
temple in Jerusalem. For that matter, what about those shepherds, keeping
watch over their flocks on Christmas Eve? Did they clap their hands with joy
when the angel of the Lord appeared to them? Not right away, they didn't - at
first they were scared out of their wits! "And behold, an angel of the Lord stood
before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were
greatly afraid!" -- Lk 2:9.

Mary's fear is easy to understand. Fear is the natural reaction of the human to
the Divine. You recall that when Peter saw Jesus use His divine power to
perform a miracle, "...he fell down at Jesus' knees saying, 'Depart from me, for I
am a sinful man, O Lord!'" -- Lk 5:8. Have you known that kind of fear? When
you come face to face with Almighty God in His Ten Commandments, does it
make you feel confident? When you look back over your life, are you happy
with the way you've been serving the Lord? Does your conversation with others
testify to your Christian faith? More importantly, does your behavior testify to
your Christian faith? Or does your behavior send a different message to the
people around you?! Examine your stewardship of God's gifts - your time,
talents and money; how much have you given back to the Lord for everything
He's given you? Here's something that's easy to do: get on your calculator and
divide your yearly church contributions by your gross annual income - will that
percentage be impressive? Or will it be pitiful? Does your service to God inspire
confidence, or fear? And if your record of service is not perfect, how do expect
to escape the judgment of the holy God, the one who requires absolute holiness
and righteousness in His subjects?

That question needs an answer. Is there an answer? If any of you are fans of a
Prairie Home Companion, you’ll recognize the intro to one of their skits: “It’s a
dark night in a city that knows how to keep its secrets. But on the twelfth floor
of the Acme building, one man is still searching for the answers to life’s
persistent questions – Guy Noir, Private Eye!” That always gets a laugh from
the audience. The reason it’s funny is that the writers of the skit take it for
granted that there ARE no answers to “life’s persistent questions.” That the
most important questions of life are, in their very nature, unanswerable. It
brings to mind the conversation Jesus once had with the Roman governor,
Pontius Pilate. “Pilate therefore said to Him, ‘Are you a king then?’ Jesus
answered, ‘You say rightly that I am a king. For this cause I was born, and for
this cause I have come into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth.
Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice.’” Then cynical Pilate said to Him,
“What is truth?” –Jn 18:37-38.

The world cynically assumes that there are no answers to the most important
questions in life. Where did I come from? Why am I here? Where am I going? Is
there a great God of the universe to whom I’m responsible, to whom I must one
day answer for my life and behavior?

These are urgent questions. They are questions that need to be answered, and
their answers won’t wait. You know, like Mary, you and I will one Day find
ourselves suddenly confronted with the divine...and it won't be just God's
angel, either! We're waiting for our Lord Jesus Himself to arrive back on earth in
Judgment. Are there no answers that will help us meet Him? Must we tremble
with fear at the prospect of that meeting? God's Holy Law shows us our own
unworthiness only too clearly, as Paul says, "The Scripture has confined all
under sin..."

-But thank God the Apostle doesn't stop there! "The Scripture has confined all
under sin, that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who
believe." -- Gal 3:22. The God who comes to us this Christmas comes not with
questions designed to condemn and terrify us. We've already got plenty of
questions of our own! In this season of Advent, God comes to us with answers.
In fact, He brings us the eternal Answer to all our questions.

Humble Mary was frightened by the appearance of the angel. No doubt it
inspired a jumble of questions in her mind: what kind of greeting was this? Why
was an angel visiting her? Had he come to pronounce judgment because of her
sins? She was afraid. But Gabriel soon calmed her. He had an answer for her
fears! "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold,
you will conceive in your womb and bring forth a Son, and shall call His name
Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Highest; and the Lord
God will give Him the throne of His father David. And He will reign over the
house of Jacob forever, and of His kingdom there will be no end."

Can sinners like us find favor with God? Mary did! Mary, too, was a sinner.
And yet, the angel told her that she had found favor with God. He comforted
her with the assurance that the Savior of the world would soon arrive, and that
He would be the Child of her womb! This was the event that pious Jews like
Mary and Joseph and Zecharias had been waiting for for centuries: the coming
of the promised Messiah, the Son of David so long foretold. For centuries, the
agonized question had been asked: when will Messiah come? Now comes
Gabriel with the answer. Now the days were fulfilled for the Redeemer of the
world to appear. The Holy Spirit would be His divine father, and - thrilling
news! - Mary would be His human mother. His name would be Jesus, or "The
Lord Saves", because He would save His people from their sins. But most
comforting of all to Mary was the fact that the Child she would bear would be
her own personal Savior. Through the Son she would bear, Mary herself would
find eternal freedom from her sins!

The time had arrived, and the difficult waiting was over. Frightening questions
were being replaced with confident answers. Sin and fear and guilt was being
replaced with comfort and joy and hope. My Christian friends, the comforting
Good News of the angel is for us, too. There’s a reason we sing, at this season,
"Good Christian men, rejoice! Now raise to heaven your voice!" Unlike the
unbelieving world around us, we've got something real to rejoice about! That
Baby born in Bethlehem is God's brilliant answer to the problem of our sins -
yours and mine. Yes, we've failed to serve the Lord as we should; we've
disobeyed Him time and again, leaving every commandment broken in our
wake. But what we couldn't accomplish for ourselves, Jesus accomplished for
us. As we read in Romans, "What the law could not do in that it was weak
through the flesh. God did by sending His own Son." -- Rom 8:3. Jesus kept the
Law perfectly, in our place. This righteousness He gives to us. Our sins He
takes from us, and covers them with the blood He shed on Calvary's cross. In
the manger of Bethlehem we see a wonderful Gift from God. And the comfort
of that Gift, I think you'll agree, was well worth the wait!

Do you remember waiting for Christmas as a child? I sure do. Like other
children, I looked forward to the gift-giving and festivities of that day so much
that it seemed like it would never get here! I had many questions: Would there
be snow? Would I forget my part in the Christmas Eve program? What presents
would I get? Which relatives would visit? Once again this year, we're waiting,
joyfully, for Christmas to arrive. There may still be questions, but for us
believers, the main question – the question of our sin – has been answered. And
the best Gift of all has already been opened - the gift of God's Son. He is our
justification, and our eternal life. So let us wait, with equal joy, for the second
coming of our Savior to earth. Let us quiet our fears and answer all our
questions with the unerring Word of God. One Day all our tears will be dried
and every question will be answered when we join our Savior in heaven's
courts. God speed that day, for Jesus' sake. AMEN.