Sunday,
December 19, 1999
Rev. James A. Todhunter
"WHY ME?"
PSALM 89:1-4, 19-29
ROMANS 16:25-2
LUKE 1:26-38
"Why me?" How do you react to those words? I expect that most of us associate that question with times when misfortune befalls us. Why this illness? Why this tragedy? Why this suffering? Why me?
What I would like you to do this morning, however, is turn that question upside down. Have you ever had the experience of being singled out for something wonderful? Think back over your own life. Think of those feelings you had when you were chosen for a special honor. When you made the team. Or when someone said you have a lovely singing voice. Or someone said you have a talent for drawing or math or computers. When that particular gift that is truly yours is discovered. Isn’t there a kind of wonder that goes with that? A sense of amazement, even unreality. I spent my first year of college plodding around on campus, feeling like just another faceless freshman, lining up for bad dorm food, wondering why I was at college, and wearing the same grungy pair of kaki pants and white shirt every day. I saw myself as an under class non-entity. Then, at the urging of a friend, I tried out for the campus musical. It was "The King and I" and I, amazingly, was cast as the King! I played the King! I WAS the King!! The Monday morning after opening night, I sat in my same old seat in government class, and the first thing out of my professor’s mouth was "Mr. Todhunter. I must say that your performance on Saturday amazed me! I didn’t know you had all that in you." Everything had changed! I suppose one might react to something like that with "At last, I have been discovered, my talents finally appreciated." But that is not really how I felt. I was as amazed as my government prof. "Why me?" "Who am I really?" "I am a new person." (In all modesty I must also report that, solely on the basis of this stage triumph, I went on to be elected to the Student Senate that year. Perhaps this foreshadowed a national trend of actors in politics, but let it be said that there, in the Student Senate, I established a record of astounding and unparalleled incompetence.)
But, you know what I am saying? Think about those special moments in your life when you became special. You’ve had them. It may have nothing to do with acclaim. It may simply be discovering something you really love to do, or something you are really interested in - that hobby or passion that lights up your life, and it doesn’t even matter whether other people understand or not. I was chatting recently with a church member who was in the hospital. Turns out what she really, really loves is tramping around through ancient Roman ruins in Great Britain. Archeology. She’s fascinated by this. Positively loves it. What a nice surprise. What a gift it is to have that interest that amazes you and somehow adds meaning to your life.
I think this "Why me?" amazement infuses the story of Mary and the Angel Gabriel in the scripture this morning. There are two things that characterize Mary’s response: amazement and acceptance. First came the amazement. Why me? Church history has so elevated Mary over the centuries - intercessor, mother of God, the feminine aspect of the divine, ascent into heaven, and so on - that we may totally miss the most important point of Luke’s story. And that is, how ordinary Mary was. She was just another young girl. I don’t think ordinary in any bland or disparaging sense of the term, but ordinary like you and I regard ourselves as ordinary. Somewhere in the middle of the bell-shaped curve in terms of most abilities. In fact, Mary had the disadvantages of being a woman and living among a captive people in a backwater land. To a Roman or an elite Jew, she would have been among the great mass of the poor. The closest parallel I can image would be a Central American peasant girl, living her day to day life, perhaps with a drudgery that has become predictable, praying that one day things might get better, but resigned to life as it is. Think about the routines of your life: commuting in the car pool, a job that is okay but may not really draw on all your talents, wishing you had a little more to spend at Christmas, waiting in line like everybody else, not feeling like a particular stand out at anything much. Ordinariness in the sense that Abe Lincoln had in mind when he said that God must have loved ordinary folks, because he made so many of them.
So imagine Mary’s amazement when the angel says that she has found favor in the sight of God. Why me? Now here is something interesting. We have no real indication that God searched high and low looking for that one person with just the right qualities to bear the savior. There is such an absolute freedom that God exercises that it almost appears to be random. God does not pick the people who are already special. God picks people and that makes them special. Or perhaps God sees things that no earthly person can. But it is really the same thing. God chose the Jews, and that made them special. God chose young David and made him special. Jesus called Simon and Andrew, James and John and the rest, and one would be hard put to imagine a more ordinary lot than those disciples.
God’s choice bestows the gift. In other words, God bestows the gift. Why me? you ask. How did I come to have this gift, this aptitude, this talent, this task? Why? Because God chose to give it to you. Sometimes we say sarcastically of someone "He thinks he’s God’s gift to women." Or "She thinks she’s God’s gift to whatever." We suspect such people identify whatever gift they possess with themselves. They lack humility. Humility is based on the understanding that ordinary people can be the recipients of extraordinary gifts. "Why me?" they ask. And the answer is simple. "Because God is gracious."
The sense of humility helps us to move from amazement to acceptance, the second attitude that characterizes Mary in the story. Acceptance of the gift, whatever it is, is always really the acceptance of a task. And that task is always part of a larger mission. Mary’s gift, her task, was to bear and nurture a child and to live through the joys and inevitable sorrows of parenthood. That was Mary’s task. It is nearly universal, is it not? Her response is "Let it be done unto me according to thy will." In accepting the gift, she became the means, the vehicle, for God coming into the world.
At Christmas we celebrate the Incarnation, the teaching that God came to us fully, completely and everlastingly in Jesus, the babe in the manger at Bethlehem. But what does the fact that the angel came and spoke to Mary long ago and that these things came to pass, mean to you and me now? The Incarnation is really an invitation into the mystery of how God can enter each of our lives today, and enter our lives in essentially the same way God came to Mary. Not what is exceptional, but what is ordinary in each of us is our common link with Mary and so many others in the faith story.
What does this mean now? It may mean that you have been going about things all wrong in your life. What would happen if you stopped trying so hard to prove yourself to others; stopped working so feverishly at everything; stopped searching for meaning and happiness, worrying about what you are supposed to do, fretting about doing the right thing, resentful over how ordinary you feel compared to all those people who seem to be so lucky, so important and so together? Why not just stop all that? Stop it all and allow yourself to feel, even cherish, how empty you really are? Even be thankful for how un-together you feel. Thank God for your ordinariness. Trust that feeling. It’s all right. And in your emptiness, listen for a while.
Why? Because it may be that some angel has been trying to get your attention. Hello? Hello? He’s got a message for you, but you haven’t been listening. Just listen to him. What is the message? "Hail, Mary! The Lord is with thee!" "Hail, Fred! The Lord is with thee!" "Hail, Ruth! The Lord is with thee!" "Hail, John! The Lord is with thee!" The Lord has something for you to do. It is both a gift and a mission. Now you might say, "Wait a minute God, before you go any further, let me tell you what I have to offer. Here’s my updated resume." And the angel will say. "No, save your breath. You’ve got it wrong. I am here to tell you what you have to offer. I am here to give you what you have to offer. Here’s your gift. Now go and share it. Go and make responsible use of it. Go and have fun with it. And as you do, you will not only be fulfilling your destiny, you will be doing your part to fulfill God’s mission. You will be building heaven on earth."
Me? Really? Amazing! Why me? Why not you? AMEN
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