Doing the Impossible
Do you remember the classic 1985 movie Back to the Future starring Michael J. Fox? It is one of my favorite movies of all time…one of the staples of my childhood years. I wanted to be Marty McFly so badly. He was the epitome of cool to me…the jean jacket with the puffy vest over it, riding his skateboard while holding on the the back of cars, and of course driving the DeLorean. A car that I thought was the coolest thing ever as a kid…they are still cool, but they are notoriously poorly built…which can happen when the owner of the company is more preoccupied with drug trafficking than with building great cars. Still, they are iconic, and I wanted one. Anyhow, there is theme throughout the movie that is said by three main characters, Doc, Marty, an George McFly, at different points, and it’s this: “If you put your mind to it you can accomplish anything.” It’s a very optimistic movie. You can do it! If you just put your mind to it, you can do it. You can create a time machine. You can save your family from annihilation, which is what Marty spends the movie doing. You control your destiny.
Another way I have heard it said today is “Nothing is off limits unless we make it so.” It’s the power of positive thinking. The only thing holding you back is yourself…the limitations you put on yourself. Go out there an achieve it, whatever it is. "If you can dream it, then it can happen.” I know you’ve heard these kind of things before. Just stroll through the self-help section at Barnes and Noble…it’s all there. Cliche after cliche telling us that “If we put our mind to it we can accomplish anything.”
We like the sound of it, they’re great lines for a pep talk, but I wonder if you have a story where this just wasn’t true. My guess is that you do. Have you ever been faced with something that was just impossible? You didn’t know how you would get through…? This is why I love the Gospel passage from yesterday in the Anglican Lectionary. In the church calendar it is a feast day when day we remember the Annunciation of the birth of Jesus…in preparation for Holy Week. The church calendar takes us “back in time” like Marty McFly to when Gabriel showed up and started turning a couple ladies’ lives upside down. It takes us back to before Jesus was even born! The reason for this is twofold: 1. March 25 is exactly nine months before Christmas in an attempt to get close to when Gabriel would have actually announced the Incarnation to Mary. 2. It connects the miracle of Christmas to the miracle of Easter…to remind us this was why Jesus came in the first place: to save the world.
Gabriel interrupts two women on opposite ends of life. First, was Elizabeth. Elizabeth was barren, and she and her husband Zechariah were too old to have a baby. She was post-menopausal…it just wasn’t going to happen, but then Gabriel showed up with a message, and their story changed forever. They became the parents of John the Baptist. Who would also make an announcement that Jesus was the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
Elizabeth’s story and Mary’s story are connected. Luke puts the Annunciation in the context of Elizabeth giving birth…he opens it saying, “In the sixth month…” referring to Elizabeth’s pregnancy. Luke wants us to get a very clear message as he opens up his Gospel…that all of this is miraculous. All of this is impossible…for us. God was bringing about his plans….plans that we could never make happen…that we could never accomplish no matter how much we put our mind to it. Everything surrounding Christmas was impossible for us. And that is just what we needed…we needed the impossible to happen because we humans were stuck in an impossible situation…one that we could not change no matter how much we put our mind to it…no matter what we did.
Before we get into that let’s look at Mary. God ups the ante here. As we said, John the Baptist’s birth was quite miraculous. The angel Gabriel makes it very clear that John was very important for God’s plans…he was going to prepare the way for the Lord. He was the break in the 400 year silence between the Old Testament and the New Testament. God was at work. But with Mary it gets even more impossible if you could ever really measure such things. Where Elizabeth was too old, Mary was too young. She was just a teenager, and more than that she was not even married yet. She was betrothed, or engaged in our parlance today. Betrothal back then was more serious than our engagements are today. It was essentially as good as married. The only way to break a betrothal was to divorce the person. So Mary was committed to Joseph, but she was not yet married, which meant that she was still a virgin. God is upping the ante on the impossibility for us.
The two accounts have a lot of parallels, Gabriel comes as God’s messenger. He surprises Mary just as he did with Zechariah, but the way he handles Mary is different. Her situation was very different from her cousins’. Gabriel tells Zechariah that his prayer had been heard indicating that having a child was something that he and Elizabeth had hoped for for quite some time…having a child even in their old age was going to be easily seen as a blessing to them…an undeniably good thing. But Mary’s situation was totally different. Getting pregnant when you’re not yet married was going to be seen as scandalous. There was great potential for disgrace for her…her family and friends, and most importantly Joseph, her fiancé, were not going to be pleased with her being pregnant. You can hear Gabriel being more sensitive to this from start to finish. He addresses her, “O favored one…” He wants her to hear that what he is about to tell her is a blessing…not a scandal. God has favored her. He makes it very clear that this is all a gift. Mary was receiving the ultimate gift from God…one that would become a gift for the whole world. She did nothing to earn it or deserve it or to make it happen. It was God’ good pleasure…his favor that she was receiving.
Gabriel tells Mary that she would have a son and she would name him Jesus. He would be the Son of the Most High…the ruler over David’s kingdom and the house of Jacob forever. By putting these two birth accounts right next to each other, Luke shows us their similarities, the parallels, in their miraculous nature, but his main goal is actually to show us the differences. Jesus would surpass John in every way. John represents the Old and Jesus the New. The old was good and had a purpose to get us to the new. The new fulfilled and surpassed the old. Jesus is really the one we have been waiting for. God’s work is mighty indeed through the conception of John and his later ministry, but it is even greater in Jesus. Just like the Old Testament, everything about John would be to point us to Jesus, to bring Him glory. Jesus’ conception in the virgin Mary and then his greater ministry of being the Savior of the world…all testifies that he is the chosen one of God.
Mary rightly wonders how this would happen in light of her virginity, and Gabriel does not handle her the same way he did Zechariah. If you remember Zechariah doubted Gabriel’s news because of their old age and Gabriel reprimanded Zechariah for not believing. He should have known better because he was a priest and knew the prophecies and miracles of God. But with Mary Gabriel is compassionate. He explains how God is going to do it. He tells her that the Holy Spirit would come upon her and the power of the Most High would overshadow her. Again, what God is doing here is even greater. The language used here by Gabriel continues to reveal the good news about Jesus. The word overshadow was the same word used to describe God’s presence in the tabernacle in the book of Exodus. Gabriel is telling Mary and us that through this miraculous pregnancy God’s presence would be among his people in an even more wonderful way. He was coming to live with us as one of us…and he was going to be unique. He would be both human and God. He was going to be called holy, without sin—the Son of God because he would be born of the Spirit and humanity through Mary. This is miracle of the incarnation….and it is impossible for us.
Gabriel does not stop there. He continues to reassure Mary, who he once again addresses as favored. This is happening to you because God favors you. This is a gift to you…this is good news. And then to drive it home he tells her about her cousin Elizabeth, who up to this point had not publicized her pregnancy. She was barren, but she is six months pregnant right now. Gabriel proves to Mary that God can keep these promises to her. He gives her hope. And as he does so he gives us the theme for all of our lives. Very different from Back to the Future and “If you put your mind to it you can accomplish anything.” It sounds good, but it is just frankly not true. I would really love to be able to fly. No, I’m not talking about flying in an airplane…I mean fly like a bird…just take off from the ground and fly around. That would be awesome, but no matter how hard I think about it and study flight I have not been able to accomplish it. It has not happened. The same thing goes for having a diet solely comprised of donuts and ice cream…and it not killing me. IF you can dream it, it can happen? Well, I’ve dreamed that donut and ice cream dream, and it can’t happen. I could try it, but it will in fact have dire consequences for my health.
These are trivial examples, but we have others, all of us do…real ones that we really wish we could make happen. Just like The Cure sang in 1992, “To Wish Impossible Things, to wish impossible things.” I remember walking with one of my dear friends, Martha, through cancer years ago. She was one of the most positive people I knew. She was also one of the most faithful people I knew. She worked hard to find the right treatments, took great care of herself - she had a bumper sticker on her car that said “eat more kale” for crying out loud, and she prayed constantly. We all did…for her. We believed in miracles and we all were praying for one. We were putting our mind and our hearts to it as much as anyone could, but we still couldn’t stop the cancer. She died after a year of fighting it. There are many times in life when we are faced with the impossible. And it can be daunting.
But Gabriel proclaims to Mary and to us the most heartening truth…the theme for our lives…that nothing is impossible with God. Nothing is impossible with God. He comes into the world in a way that we could never make happen…truly impossible…truly miraculous…through a virgin birth by the power of the Holy Spirit. And he does it so that he can again do the impossible for us 33 years later…he deals with our impossible situation. He comes to be with us, to live as one of us, to take our sin for us…to defeat our greatest enemy. The amazing miraculous nature of Jesus’ birth sets the stage for his even greater death and resurrection. He came to save us from the power of sin and death. To make the impossible possible for us…that though we die we may live again for eternity…we might be restored to life and full relationship with our creator God. I know my dear friend, Martha, and other loved ones who fought the same fight are enjoying this awesome fellowship right now with the Lord. Because of Jesus cancer was not the end of the story…death was not the final word. He is the Son of the Most High, and he rules over an eternal kingdom, one in which death is no more, one that he welcomes us into. Just as it was for Mary, it is all a gift for us. It is the same message for you today…God has had favor on you…the Son that was born to Mary…born of the Spirit came for you, so that you might be free. He came for you to save you. That is where we are headed this next week…to hear and remember his great works on our behalf in Holy Week. We all wish impossible things, and Gabriel tells us that nothing is impossible with God. He came to set all things right…Jesus is a gift for you today. Amen.
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