This
morning we see God’s great choice of Our Lady to be mother of Our Lord. When we
look closely at Mary’s story, especially in Luke’s account, we see how she
struggled before saying Yes to God’s choice of her to be the mother of his Son.
In
our own lives we also struggle many a time to conform our lives to what God would have us do.
This
morning in Mary the church invites us to ponder the choices of God and to think
about how much our lives are faithful to God’s
choice of us.
Over
the years Anne and I have both made important choices one of which brought us
to Horsted Keynes 8 years ago. Over that period we’ve been involved with many
of you in your own decision making.
I
was totting up some of the pastoral involvements from the baptism, marriage and
burial registers looking back over the 39 baptisms and 40 marriages I’ve helped
celebrate with double that number so far as funerals go. That doubling is
significant. Birth and marriage today are seen much less in terms of faith than
funerals as these reflect Christian formation three generations back.
Nowadays
the choice to baptise your child is less about fitting in with the norm in a
Christian country but a decided act
to own the Christian church with its particular vision and values as an extension
of your family.
Similarly
to commit to your partner before God with the understanding of life-long
heterosexual irrevocable union is counter cultural. Aspiring to a gift of self that
will not be called back, mirroring God’s love given on Calvary in blood, sweat
and tears, goes against the grain today.
I love you so often means I love me and want you rather than I love you and want to give to you now and
for ever.
Life
choices make or break us - as I was writing this sermon I broke off to pray
with a divorced parent over a custody battle. So much moral decision making is
about choosing the least bad option. This is where the Holy Spirit, prayer
ministry and the sacrament of confession are so precious to us as church
members seeking what God most wants of us in the different crises of life.
Some
of us have been thinking about a change of job. Others have been making the
most of a redundancy. One or two have felt they have done a task in the village
or the church for long enough and have been seeking new possibilities which
have connected with my own agenda as parish priest for ever seeking volunteers!
Just
a few more thoughts, returning to Our Lady, on the process of guidance. You might have spotted the connection between
the Isaiah 7 passage and the Gospel from Matthew 1:18-25 with the prophecy of
the virginal conception: the young woman
– the Virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him ‘Emmanuel’,
which means ‘God is with us’. For Mary and Joseph their choice of one
another was set within a bigger choice of God that they deferred to facing
indignity. As we shall say in a moment: I
believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy
Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary
Christianity
is a faith that holds disparate truths together – God is one and three, Jesus
is God and man – and one of these mysteries is that God has chosen you and I
and yet we have to decide how to live our lives.
It
seems to me that Christians are at two ends when it comes to divine guidance.
Some see God‘s choice as starting us off and then leaving us with common sense
– sanctified common sense – to get going on our own.
Others,
if you ask them to do something, will say they need to pray about it, and they
talk of God’s guidance as very immediate and direct.
I
am not coming down on one side or the other. What matters is to recognise the
hand of God in our lives, as Mary and Joseph did, and to cast aside the things
that draw us away from his leadings.
The
sanctified common sense sort of guidance needs supplementing by openness to
God’s surprises in the form of obvious divine intervention. Those who sense
something of a hotline to God need to work harder to check their leadings by
arguing the case at times with other experienced believers. Both reason and
faith are God’s gift and they shouldn’t contradict each other.
If
we want our lives, including our decision making, to go where they’re meant to
go, it means developing what Paul in our second reading from the opening verses
of the letter to the Romans calls the obedience
of faith.
This
obedience is more than avoiding deadly sins. It is the best directing of our
energies. It’s about knowing we’re in the right employment or state of life, be
that married or single. It’s readiness to ask ourselves whether where we’re at
is truly in God’s will or whether it’s actually at variance with it, if only
we’d take courage to open our ears to him.
If
you are on the rails God gives us,
living close to Jesus, you move more peaceably than if your life is off the
rails. A lack of inner peace can be a helpful warning from God to take stock of
your life.
Christmas
and New Year bring us such an opportunity to reflect. Some of us will use the
sacrament of reconciliation or take opportunity to talk to the priest or
another experienced Christian. Others may appreciate being put in touch with a
spiritual director. All of us can ask God directly:
‘Show
me the needs that are deeper than my wants. Place my energies more and more to
your service and less and less to aimless self interest’.
God’s hand on our lives,
God’s choice of us, is a wonderful and a costly thing. We have a lifespan to exercise our
faith in that choice. The penitent thief who turned to Jesus as he died shows
us it’s never too late to seek God’s leading.
God
has chosen you and I and yet we have to decide how to live our lives.
In
making this decision the clue is WWJW – maybe you have seen the Christian
bracelet – WWJW – What would Jesus want?
The
eucharist is all about WWJW. We offer our souls and bodies with Christ to the
Father so that our lives are put back on the rails Sunday by Sunday.
With
Mary we say: I am God’s servant. Let it
be to me as God wills!
Take
my energies and use them for good since there is work for those God has chosen.
There
is a harvest to gather and labourers are few.
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