Pastor Pat Edwards 12/3/2006
Grace Baptist Church in Bountiful, Utah

Last week Dave shared the trials of the apostle Paul to illustrate that Paul knew what he was talking about when he encouraged people to give thanks in all things. Paul had lots of experience with good times and bad times so he had plenty of opportunities to practice giving thanks in every kind of situation. This week I want us to remember those whippings and stonings and shipwrecks and all the other trials but let’s view them from a different perspective.

I can’t imagine Paul’s first reaction to these trials was an automatic, "Thank you, Lord." I think his first thought was, "Why? Why am I suffering like this? Why am I being delayed in the task I want to accomplish? Since I’m preaching the gospel why isn’t the Lord going before me to smooth the way? Why all these delays and interruptions to the important work I’m doing?"

Like Paul, God’s work in my life has disrupted plans I’ve made and I assume the same is true for you. I’ll give just one example. In 1973 Chris and I had been married three years. In the summer of that year we bought our first home and I was in my second year of teaching and coaching at Cherry Creek High School. We had become active at Galilee Baptist Church and Chris had been hired as the church secretary. Life was good and we spent that year fixing up our new, old home, trying to calm a wild Irish Setter and enjoying an active social life. But as things grew comfortable and predictable God inconveniently interrupted. Christian mentors began challenging us to consider seminary training and full-time Christian ministry. We agonized for a year over how this would affect the life we’d planned but finally acknowledged life would not be full if it was not obedient so off to seminary I went and Chris kept working to pay the bills. And that’s pretty much been our history - every time we start to get comfortable God interrupts to ask us to do something inconvenient in our life with him. So here I am, a Baptist pastor living in Utah, something I never would have planned or predicted in the first twenty-five years of my life.

How many of you have gone through a similar experience with the Lord? Just as you think you’ve got things figured out and running smoothly the Lord interrupts with an inconvenient request to join him and put your own plans on hold, temporarily if not permanently. And it probably has run the gamut from a change in your Saturday plans to a whole new career. Something very similar happened to the young woman in today’s passage. 26 In the sixth month, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, 27to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin's name was Mary. Luke 1

One of the important truths found in these verses is that God uses people we call ordinary to accomplish his work in our world. Mary is a normal person living the normal life experienced by most normal people of her time and she’s undoubtedly anticipating the kind of life everyone around her has - marriage, family, some trials and some blessings, and hopefully a peaceful death in old age surrounded by loving family members. So much for anticipation. Do you sense an inconvenient interruption coming on. 28The angel went to her and said, "Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you." 29Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be.

She must have wondered why an angel would appear to her and why she’s highly favored and what it meant that the Lord was with her. Remember she’s just a young woman from a small town in a male-dominated society and far from the centers of power and influence. I’m sure the same thoughts went through her mind that go through many of our’s when we consider God’s work in our lives. "I’m nothing special. In fact a lot of the time I get really upset with myself, with my thoughts, my attitudes, my behavior. Why would God even notice me let alone choose me for special attention?"

30But the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. 31You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. 32He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, 33and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end." 34"How will this be," Mary asked the angel, "since I am a virgin?"

It’s a startling message but most of it is not new. The Messiah was expected just not in this way, not by her and not by those who should understand the prophecies. No one would have thought she would have a part in the fulfillment of the Israel’s highest hope. And then there’s that problem of pregnancy - she’s a virgin. In the few moments before Gabriel answered her question she was probably thinking a husband would need to be provided to move the plan forward.

The trouble, for her at least, is that God is going to work in a way that will create real problems for her, that will be a very inconvenient interruption. Some prince of Israel is not going to ride up on a white stallion and sweep her off her feet. There are no glass slippers or golden coaches or royal weddings at the castle. She will not become a princess and the eventual queen of Israel who gives birth to the next King of Israel. No fairy-tale story or fairy-tale ending here. Instead she will become pregnant in a way few will understand and almost no one will believe. During the rest of her life there will always be people who will remember her as the single girl who got pregnant, the one who didn’t control her passions or didn’t say no to her fiancé’. Despite her virtuous behavior the Lord’s plan would make her look anything but virtuous.

That’s the downside but the upside deserves much more attention. God is going to do a miracle in her body that will occur only once in all of eternity. 35"...The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God." In human terminology Mary will become the mother of God, the promised messiah, the savior of not just Israel but of the entire world. Let’s create some additional dialog for this scene between Mary and Gabriel.

"Mary, The Lord God Almighty has chosen you for a unique and special task. He is showering his favor upon you. For you it may appear to be an inconvenient interruption of the life you’ve planned but the Lord wants you to realize that it is an opportunity to serve him and all people everywhere in a way that has never happened before and will never happen again. The sacrifice you make is infinitesimally small compared to the blessing you will bring. You may feel like you’re alone but you’re not. Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be barren is in her sixth month. For nothing is impossible with God. What do you say?"

I picture a long pause as Mary carefully weighs the words of Gabriel. It is not a pause caused by doubt or fear but by serious contemplation of all she has heard. She is looking within herself to see if she has the faith to follow through once she has committed herself to this path. Finally after that extended period of silence she firmly but humbly responds, 38"I am the Lord's servant, may it be to me as you have said." Obviously none of us have been asked to serve as the human parent of the incarnate God. But in his inconvenient interruptions our Lord has asked us to help him accomplish his work in this world. I wonder if we pause as often as we should and reflect on the Lord’s various requests of us and the blessings our faith and obedience will bring. Have you ever thought that if the Lord of the Universe takes time to make a request of you it must be pretty important regardless of how it may appear to you? Dr. Vernon Grounds, the 93 year-old Chancellor of Denver Seminary understands that. I read his biography last year and the author pointed out that Dr. Grounds never wrote several books he intended to because his writing time was filled with inconvenient interruptions. Dr. Grounds chooses to call them divine appointments. When we moved Brandon and Elizabeth to attend Denver Seminary, Brandon and I stopped by Dr. Grounds’ office to say hi. He immediately invited us in and spent the next hour getting to know Brandon and encouraging him in his future studies. Even though he had been scheduled to go home several hours earlier he did not because he believed our presence at his office door was led of God. Dave Rowe told me that in one of his conversations with Dr. Grounds he mentioned those unwritten books. Dr. Grounds responded by sharing 2 Corinthians 3, 2You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everybody. 3You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. When we are obedient to the Lord that verse applies to each of us; our greatest work is found in the lives of others.

Earlier I shared how God’s inconvenient interruptions ended my career as a school teacher and coach and moved us away from our families in Colorado to Utah. Today I bless the Lord for those interruptions to my plans and for the fact that the Lord is with me and that I have found favor with him just as Mary did. But I have to continually remind myself that he is still doing the same thing only more often in little ways. Those inconvenient interruptions may be a knock on the office door while I’m preparing a sermon or it may be a phone call from someone in need just as I’m getting ready to go home for the day. I don’t and shouldn’t always say yes but I need to remember that the Lord works through me and he’s the one who controls my schedule. If I want the Lord to use me I must always be ready to respond to his request.

This week when the phone rings or there’s a knock at the door or someone says, "Have you got a minute?" take a moment before responding to ask the Lord if this is one of his inconvenient interruptions that is going to turn into a divine appointment? Is this an invitation to join him in something special he’s doing in our world and in my life?