The Mystery of Faith

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
December 14, 2008: The Third Sunday of Advent

The Mystery of Faith
Psalm 89
Luke 1:26-38

We cannot see it;
it has no fixed form or shape.
It doesn’t come in a box,
doesn’t look like a book or a picture or a coat.
We cannot buy it in a store,
not the big-box stores like Wal-Mart or Costco,
or even the expensive specialty stores along Wisconsin Avenue.
We cannot taste it,
smell it,
touch it,
hear it.

Faith is something we have been trying to understand,
trying to comprehend, since long before the birth of Christ.
We struggle even to define it.
Only one writer in the Bible was bold enough
to try his hand at a definition:
the writer of the letter to the Hebrews in the New Testament.
He called faith,
“the assurance of things hoped for,
the conviction of things not seen.”
(Hebrews 11:1)

If you’ve ever watched the holiday movie,
“Miracle on 34th Street”,
you’ve heard Maureen O’Hara define faith as
“believing in things when common sense
tells you not to.”

Faith is believing, believing in something.
But that begs the question,
what does it mean to believe in something or someone?
Turn to the dictionary and we learn that to believe means,
“to have confidence in something or someone,
to trust in something or someone.”
(Am. Heritage Dictionary, 4th ed)

Every election season politicians ask us to believe in them,
to put our trust in them, our confidence in them.
Business people ask us to believe in them,
believe in their products,
believe in the shares of their company.
Is it any wonder that given the past few months
cynicism overshadows faith?

It is a good time for us to step back,
take a deep breath,
and revisit what it means to have faith.
And the season points us to two models of faith
in Joseph and Mary.

Matthew’s and Luke’s gospels tell us two very different stories
of the birth of Jesus.
We tend to blend them together,
forgetting that Matthew is the one
who tells us of the wise men,
but makes no mention of stable or manger,
or shepherds abiding in the fields,
or angels trumpeting glory to God,
while Luke gives us the manger,
along with shepherds and angels,
but says nothing of a star in the east,
or wise men or
gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.

Matthew focused on Joseph,
telling us that an angel, an unnamed angel,
spoke to Joseph in a dream
and told Joseph of the son who would be born to him.
Luke focused on Mary.
As we heard in our lesson, the angel visited Mary,
the angel Gabriel,
and told Mary of God’s plans for her,
told Mary she would have a child and name him Jesus.

The stories may be different,
but both Joseph and Mary responded to God’s will obediently,
their obedience grounded in faith.

Not to take anything at all away from the example
that Joseph provides us with his faith,
but I think Mary’s story is the more compelling.
Think about it: there she was, an unmarried young woman,
hardly more than a girl, really: 13, 14, maybe 15,
about the same age as the students
in our Confirmation Class,
and an angel visits her to tell her
that she is going to give birth to the Son of God.

For Joseph, the angel came in a dream,
but for Mary, the visit was face-to-face,
right there, an angel standing before her.
How do you suppose you would have reacted
if someone stood in front of you
and said, “I am an angel sent from God”?
Most of us would probably not believe it;
our first thought would probably be,
that someone was trying to play a trick on us;
or perhaps we’re on some reality television show,
with a camera and microphone hidden somewhere.

But Mary’s reaction was so calm,
so poised.
She was not awestruck;
she was “perplexed” by Gabriel’s words,
Perplexed by his words, his greeting;
not by his presence.
After all, Gabriel told her such incredible news:
she would conceive, even before she was married!
She would conceive by the power of the Holy Spirit.
She would give birth to a boy who would be holy,
and even more,
he would be called the Son of God.

Her only response was to raise the question
about how she could possibly conceive
when she was not yet married.
She accepted what was going to happen,
wondering only about the how.
Her faith was so quiet, so simple, and yet so profound,
“Here am I, the servant of the Lord;
let it be with me according to your word.”
“Let it be with me according to your word.”

Last October our Wednesday morning Bible Study class
went to the National Gallery of Art
to take a tour of paintings from the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries
that captured stories from the Bible.
At the end of our tour, our guide asked us which paintings we liked best,
and it seemed that everyone had a different favorite.
Mine was a painting done in the 15th century,
almost 600 years ago,
by the Flemish artist Jan Van Eyck,
a painting for an altarpiece
called simply “The Annunciation”.
There are dozens, probably hundreds,
of paintings with that title,
that have tried to capture the verses we heard from Luke’s gospel
as Mary learned from Gabriel
that she was to become the mother of God.

Van Eyck’s painting is extraordinarily detailed:
The setting is not first century Judea,
but clearly 15th century Europe:
Mary is sitting alone in a cloistered setting,
a church-like room, reading a book,
the Bible.
The Holy Spirit descends on Mary in the form of a dove,
reminiscent of what happened to Jesus
as he was baptized by John in the Jordan.
Mary is regal in a royal blue robe,
painted so exquisitely you can almost feel the softness
of the velvet and silk in the folds.
Gabriel stand before her in an extraordinary embroidered robe,
his angel’s wings reflecting every color of the rainbow.
Look carefully at Gabriel’s face and it could just as easily
be a female face as a male.
Mary is calm, composed,
accepting.
The painting captures Mary’s deep, unquestioning faith.
Look at the painting and you can almost hear her say,
“Let it be with me according to your word.”

Every time we celebrate the Lord’s Supper,
you hear me say the words,
“Great is the mystery of faith”.
The words are part of the Great Prayer of Thanksgiving,
the Eucharistic prayer I offer
as we prepare to come to the Lord’s Table.
When I say those words,
do you remember what words come next?
You all respond,
“Christ has died,…Christ is risen,
…Christ will come again.”
This is the mystery of faith,
the mystery that is Advent,
that the Christ who was born
is the Christ who will come again,
come again in glory and come again in joy.

When we say these words,
we may not fully understand them,
but we take them on faith,
trusting God, trusting Christ.

Mary understood the mystery of faith.
She understood it as she looked at Gabriel
and listened to his words.
She understood it nine months later
on that first Christmas night
as she sang a lullaby to her newborn son,
the son conceived by the Holy Spirit,
the Son of God.
And she understood it as she stood at the foot of the cross
a little more than thirty years later
and looked into her son’s eyes
as he hung like a common criminal,
the life draining from him.
“Let it be with me according to your word.”

Many of the Psalms speak to the mystery of faith.
Psalm 89 starts out so confidently
speaking of the psalmist’s trust in the Lord:
“I will sing of your steadfast love,
I will proclaim your faithfulness
which is as firm as the heavens”.
But then it turns 180 degrees,
the psalmist feeling alone and abandoned by God:
“you have exalted the right hand of [my] foes
you have turned your back on me.
How long will you hide yourself from me?”
And yet the psalmist ends on a positive note,
a note of confidence,
a note of faith:
“Blessed be the Lord forever. Amen and Amen”
Great, indeed, is the mystery of faith.

It was by faith that Mary delivered Christ to the world.
Who among us would have had such faith?
And yet you and I are called to do the same thing:
deliver Christ to the world.
Half of you, the male half, may be wondering,
wait a minute, how can we deliver Christ to the world
as Mary did?
Well don’t forget Gabriel’s response to Mary,
“Nothing will be impossible with God”!

But don’t you see: we are all called to deliver the
living Christ to the world
through our lives, through our words, our actions,
as we live our faith,
as we live in the love given us by God through Christ,
as we share the grace we have been given by God through Christ.

We are called to deliver Christ in good times,
and even more so in difficult times like these,
times of turmoil, of uncertainty
of people losing jobs and hope.
We are called to deliver Christ’s love and mercy,
called to deliver Christ’s teachings to reach out
and work for peace,
to feed the hungry,
and look after those who are struggling.
We are all called to deliver Christ to the world,
not just in December, but all year round.

If our morning prayer each day begins with
“let it be with me according to your word”,
then our daily song can be “Joy to the World”.
This is the mystery of faith.
This is the promise of faith.
The promise given us in Jesus Christ.
AMEN