Advent: Relishing Merry Christmas

Well, it's a third Sunday in Advent.

So Advent is the four Sundays leading up to Christmas.

And Advent begs the question: what are you waiting for?

Now it's not a condemning question.

We could hear it that way, right?

Like, what are you waiting for because you really need to be doing something, or what are you waiting for because you really need to get your act together?

No, no, no.

It's a much more welcoming question in the season of expectation and hope.

It's a question of grace to us.

Our house has been under renovation for the past two months.

And so what that means is our three-bathroom house has turned into a one-bathroom house for the last two months.

So I can tell you all about waiting.

Like I know I know about waiting.

We have five people in this house and we have one toilet in the house.

So there's a lot of waiting going on.

Interesting situations definitely arise, uh, which means I have something to say when it comes to waiting.

Uh it's humbling, let's just say that.

Uh when your seven-year-old is in occupation of that bathroom and you need it as the father and 41-year-old owner of this home.

Uh that's humbling that she is in ownership of that for that moment.

It's expectant, right?

Like we are expecting, uh, and we would really like to be there.

It's certainly hopeful to wait.

It's certainly hopeful to finally be there.

And see, I already own that um bathroom.

That one bathroom.

I own it.

And I actually own the other two bathrooms that are not fully functioning, and like the toilet's back in the garage and it's coming later, and all that.

I own all of that while I'm waiting for it to come to fulfillment.

And this is what it means, as crude as that um illustration is.

This is what it means to be a Christian.

We live in what we say, the already, but not yet.

That you are already restored, but not yet as restored as you one day will be.

And you know that and you feel that.

You're already healed.

And yet you're you're you're not as healed as you one day will be.

You're already free.

And not yet as free as God intends for you to be.

And so we live in the already but not yet, and that means we are waiting.

And this is a season where we're waiting for Christmas to celebrate Jesus, but at the same time, it's just a reminder of all of the Christian life that we live and waiting.

Already, but not yet.

Our passage this morning is about Mary, the mother of Jesus.

She's put in an incredibly blessed situation, but very, very difficult situation.

And we can't forget her context here.

It's a familiar Advent passage, but we could, you know, we gotta remember the context.

She's probably about 14 years old.

She's a Jewish girl.

This angel comes to her and says, Don't be afraid, you're favored by God, and you are going to have a baby, the Messiah.

Your people have been waiting for who comes to love and save all sinners.

So, yeah, sure, you're a virgin, you're engaged to be married, you're, I don't know, 13, 14, 15, somewhere around there.

Sure, sure, all of society is going to have a lot of difficulty with you in this situation, but you're favored.

So this would have had a lot of blessing for her, and she understands that, but at the same time, this would have come with a lot of difficulty and a million unknowns for her.

She lived in an ancient patriarchal society, men made the rules, she wasn't a man, you know, so it would have been hard for her.

She would have been discriminated against as being a single pregnant woman.

They often even put to death pregnant single women.

I mean, so you can understand receiving this news, and it would have been, and she responds understanding the blessedness of this.

But it would have had some difficulty.

And yet she sings.

And that's where we get this passage.

It's called the Magnificant.

This is her song.

She's when we we're gonna read, I'm gonna read it.

Thank you very much, right?

Like I'm gonna read it, but she is singing this.

Luke 1, 46 through 49.

And Mary said, My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God, my Savior, for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant.

For behold, from now on, all generations will call me blessed.

For he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name.

Right?

Can you imagine receiving this news?

And there's this part of you that understands you're blessed and favored because you're so steeped in the scriptures that you know a Messiah's coming.

You know this is a miracle inside of your body.

And yet you know there's a million unknowns that are gonna happen because of this.

And yet she sings.

That's point number one.

In difficulty, we can sing, not because we can hold it all together.

Oh, that would be exhausting if that's the reason why we sing.

No, no, no.

But because he is for us and with us.

She doesn't know how things will play out with Joseph.

Not all of that.

She doesn't know her the arc of her storyline.

She doesn't know how her family and her friends and her community and everything's gonna respond to her.

Yet she doesn't escape.

She doesn't cope, she doesn't hide just because it's hard.

And in this way, she's like an incredible gospel example to us, not like not necessarily like a moral example, and we've got to get ourselves better and be like Mary.

Just a gospel example of when you're so in awe of the faithfulness of God to you, what you can do even when something's difficult.

Now it's easy, right?

It's easy to just to cope.

That's what I do very often.

Something's really hard.

I'm afraid of the pain.

I'm afraid of the difficulty.

We're afraid of what that pain of that thing could do to us or might do to us because it might take us over, we might not be able to withstand it, so it's better to kind of shove it down or ignore the difficulty, cope or escape our way through.

But when you're already loved and you know that, and you're already right with God, and you know that, and you're embracing that, and he is faithful, and he is strong, and he is mighty, these are the things that change everything.

Mary's living in her blessedness.

She says, I'm blessed.

Everybody's gonna know I'm blessed.

She's living in her blessedness of his regard to her.

And I wonder, it's a question of grace to you.

Are you living out of the blessing of your blessedness?

Not that you have to hold it all together in order to get to seeing your way through something hard, but to live in the blessing of your blessedness has been given to you.

That we are the beloved.

That's the core truth of your existence, that you are the beloved, not by what you do, but by what you can receive.

So our name is favored, our name is blessed, our name is beloved.

And this is what we receive.

This is what we have in the cross.

That our sin has cast upon him, his righteousness is given to us.

Luke 1, 50 through 55.

And his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.

He has shown strength with his arm, he has scattered the proud and the thoughts of their hearts, he has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate.

He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty.

He has helped his servant Israel in remembrance of his mercy as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham, and to his offspring forever.

Now there's a lot in there.

But point number two is this to pull just something out of that to summarize.

We can enter our lowliness because we are always loved by the God of strength and mercy.

That's why we can face our pain, enter our lowliness, confess our sin, become humble.

As a little boy, I can remember waking up on Christmas morning.

Now, our Christmas morning in our house when I was a little boy was my mom and my dad and my granny and my grand's, and that's who would be there.

My sister's three years older.

And I can distinctly remember waking up.

We were not allowed to go down the stairs.

We had two sets of stairs.

It was a split level.

So from the upstairs bedrooms down to the kitchen, the living room, and then you turned a corner and you came down the next step set of stairs down to the den.

I have a picture here of uh my sister and I.

We are coming down that second set of stairs.

We got that picture.

There it is.

That's there I am.

Uh I got my footies on.

And that's me and Sherry.

And you can see, I just this today, I mean this week, I just looked at this picture for a while, and I can see, see my grand, she's up there, and he's just looking down, and he's hanging on my grandma's shoulder, just kind of peeking out.

It's so sweet.

Um, I still sometimes wear footy pajamas like that to seduce Christie at night.

It um it doesn't work, but I try it sometimes.

Coming down, rushing down.

But what I remember is I remember sitting upstairs in that hallway.

Oh, it seemed like forever.

And I was like, what are they doing?

They're fixing their coffee, you know, butter in the biscuit, you know, you know, I mean, they are arranging their heavy, they're talking.

I mean, my sister and I would be sitting up there just dying to go down, right?

Like we were captive to waiting.

We just waited.

We were waiting for the one who held the power to grant us the gift of freedom to let us loose, to go and receive these gifts.

We were lowly, and we knew it.

That's what happens when you're waiting.

We are we are waiting.

Because of already, but not yet.

So we have something in its fullness, and yet we have not experienced in fullness the realization of the gifts that we have.

You're already restored, you're already healed, you're already forgiven, you're already righteous, you're already beloved, you're already favored, you're already free.

That is already.

But we're not yet in the full realization of that.

We still live in these days of the in-between.

There will be a day coming in the next world where we get to have these things in the fullness.

I love to read Martin Luther's thoughts on this passage every year, this Luke 1, this magnificent, because here's what he says, and he points us.

The stress should not be on the low estate, but on the word regarded.

Mary's low estate is not to be praised, but God's regard.

As when a prince gives his hand to a beggar, the meanness of the beggar is not to be praised, but the graciousness and the goodness of the prince.

So we're holding our low estate.

We hold on to that.

We're not scared of that, we can face that.

It's not shame, it's not religious shame.

But it's in proper relationship to the one who holds the power.

God's rich character of love and loving regard to us, a gentle and lowly heart toward us.

Point number three is this our way forward over and again is God's astonishing goodness to us.

That is our way forward.

That's what the scriptures is unfolding to us over and over again.

We just see it again today in Luke 1.

I keep saying the preaching the same points to y'all every week if you haven't picked up on that.

This is our way forward.

This is always the way forward.

It's God's astonishing goodness to us.

Mary is the one telling it to us this week as she sings this.

She's so steeped in scriptures, she's sort of referencing back to the song in the Old Testament sung by Hannah.

It's not word for word, it's kind of like phrase by phrase.

Very clever.

And she knows she's blessed, she bolts out in a song.

And it listen, and if you listen to what she's singing.

Verse 47, God my Savior, 48, he has looked on me.

49, for he is mighty, holy is his name.

50, his mercy.

51, he has shown strength.

52, he humbled the proud.

53, he filled the hungry.

54, he helped his people.

55, he spoke to us.

There's not a lot of like, look what I did, and look what I earned, and look what I maintained, and look how I'm able to handle all this.

No, there's a lot more of like, I'm lowly and in need and in touch with that.

And I can hold it in open-handedness, not in shame, but just in truth and in confession.

And to receive this incredible, good, and faithful God.

So, what does this mean for us?

I think it means this, at least for me.

Maybe you can track with this a little bit.

Merry Christmas is not something we simply say, but something we relish.

Not just something we say, but something we relish.

We've been ordering takeout from this restaurant on the square named Wei, W-E-I.

Anybody eating there?

Anybody order there?

Eating there?

We love it.

We've been killing this place, right?

I mean, it is so good.

And I didn't even think I liked Chinese food, to be honest.

And Christy ordered it the first time, and I'm like, that's amazing.

And we kept going back.

We go back weekly on Mondays.

We get takeout from there, and I go and I pick it up and I bring it home, and I just let Christy order.

Just work your way around the menu because everything has been good.

It's a Monday I went and I picked up the order.

I come back, I lay it out on the kitchen counter, and I'm breaking it down.

There's one box, I open it up, and it's these fat dumpling things.

There they are.

Pan-fried pork bow.

I had never heard of it.

I didn't know what it was.

It was a fat dumpling thing to me.

I'm just, you know, I'm just a kid from the you know, sticks.

I mean, that's that's what it was to me.

And I bit into that thing.

And I'm it was a worship experience.

I am not, it was unbelievable.

Everything else in my life became okay.

Like that's what it felt like.

It was like the stress of the day, you know, financial pressures, one toilet in my house, like everything else, everything's okay.

All of a sudden I was okay with one toilet in my house.

Like everything became okay in light of how good this was.

And then Christy and I, we just sat at the kitchen island across from each other, and there were six of these things, and we each ate three of them.

I don't think we shared any with any of our children because they were too good, you know, like I ain't sharing any of this.

They were so good, and we just analyzed them.

We're talking about everything about pan-fried bale.

We don't know anything about it, we're looking at it, turning it, biting it, you know, relishing this because it was so good.

We didn't just see it, we didn't just like partake of it, we took it in, we relished it.

Because, and you know this.

When something is incredibly, supremely good and glorious, you pause and you relish.

And it takes you captive in such a good way.

That even like for Mary, like in such a good way, even for Mary, something that she knows is blessing and is gonna have difficulty, but it comes from this faithful, loving God that she can sing.

See, in Jesus, God is supremely good to you and has the power much more than a pan-fried pork bale, to reorient everything about your life and your heart.

My brothers and sisters, may you have a Merry Christmas as you rest and you relish.

Not in just saying Merry Christmas, but in relishing it.

For he is that good.

Let's pray together.

God, thank you for your grace and your mercy to us.

That it is a Merry Christmas because you have done the work and we are already what you deem us to be.

We are not all we should be.

We don't maintain it really well.

Our hearts are all over the place.

They're so easily in a prideful state, a busy state, a moody state, anxious.

You love us.

God, would you help us to see even more how great this Jesus is that dies for all of our sin?

Would you help us in greater and deeper ways to settle in and to rest, to relish how good you are this season.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.