Geneva Presbyterian Church

Weekly Sermon

December 17, 2000 - "Get Ready for Joy "

Reverend Anne Benefield
Geneva Presbyterian Church, December 17, 2000

Genesis 18:1-15; Luke 1:39-45

Luke 1:39-45 In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry, "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord." Prayer: Dear Lord, as we pause to meditate on these holy words, we ask that your Holy Spirit would startle us with revelation. May there be a word that calls us by name and uniquely speaks to each of us. We pray in the glorious name of Jesus. Amen. When he was five years old, my nephew Noah went to Disney World with his family. For weeks before the trip he talked about getting Mickey Mouse ears. When they arrived in the park, the first thing his Dad did was to go into a store and buy a hat with the Mickey Mouse ears. As he handed the ears to Noah, he said, "Now, what do we say?" Noah looked at the ears and looked at his Dad, paused and said, "We say: Yippee!" I think that the word "yippee" pretty much describes the way that Elizabeth had to feel when she found she was with child. She had waited a lifetime for a child and now she was going to have one. I don’t know what the Hebrew equivalent for "yippee" is, but I am sure Elizabeth was saying it. I wonder why God chose Elizabeth to be the mother for John the Baptist, the one sent to prepare the way of the Lord. We don’t really know much about her, except for this short story, but the story does tell us a few things. It tells us that Elizabeth was: 1. Ready for action 2. Ready for the Holy Spirit 3. Ready for Joy! Elizabeth was clearly ready for action. When Zechariah came home from the Temple unable to speak, Elizabeth wasn’t silenced. That must mean that Elizabeth didn’t doubt, unlike her husband Zechariah, who questioned Gabriel about how it could be possible for an old woman like Elizabeth to bear a child. She was ready for action. (It should be noted also that Mary was ready for action. Immediately after hearing that her kinswoman was carrying a child, Mary picked up and made the four day walking trip to visit her.) I was thinking about people who are ready for action. When we are young being ready for action comes naturally enough. That is why it isn’t so surprising that Mary went to visit Elizabeth. As you get a little older, action doesn’t come so easily. In their book, Everything to Gain, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter quote Jimmy Townsend saying, "Anybody who can still do at sixty what he was doing at twenty wasn’t doing much at twenty." Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter are a wonderful example of being ready for action. Their book is a powerful testimony to the need to be ready for action in order to find meaning when our plans don’t work out. They were stunned when he lost his bid for reelection to the presidency. They found themselves facing an empty life. It took them some time to recover, but what they eventually found was that as they reviewed their lives there were projects and interests which they could now pursue. Later this spring, as we begin to put in place the revisioning we are working on, I plan to teach a class on how to find your spiritual gifts. We will be looking for our God-given passions, talents, and styles. In learning about our spiritual gifts and passions, we will find more fulfillment in our lives. As we devote more time to the things God is calling us to do, we will find ourselves ready for action. We will be energized like Elizabeth was. And we will be blessed like she was. When we search to find our spiritual gifts and get ready for action, we will also be readying ourselves for the Holy Spirit. Opening ourselves to the Spirit is harder than readying ourselves for action because we have to trust to be opened to the Spirit. In Our Greatest Gift, Henry Nouwen talks about trust. He tells about being fascinated with a group of trapeze artists who performed in a German circus. He was so drawn to them that when they extended an invitation to him to travel with them, he went. He writes: "One day, I was sitting with Rodleigh, the leader of the troupe, in his caravan, talking about flying. He said, ‘As a flyer, I must have complete trust in my catcher. The public might think that I am the great star of the trapeze, but the real star is Joe, my catcher. He was to be there for me with split-second precision and grab me out of the air as I come to him in the long jump.’ ‘How does it work?’ I asked. ‘The secret,’ Rodleigh said, ‘is that the flyer does nothing and the catcher does everything. When I fly to Joe, I have simply to stretch out my arms and hands and wait for him to catch me and pull me safely over the apron behind the catcher.’ "’You do nothing!’ I said, surprised. ‘Nothing,’ Rodleigh repeated. ‘The worst thing the flyer can do is try to catch the catcher. I am not supposed to catch Joe. It’s Joe’s task to catch me. If I grabbed Joe’s wrists, I might break them, or he might break mine, and that would be the end for both of us. A flyer must fly, and a catcher must catch, and the flyer must trust, with outstretched arms, that his catcher will be there for him.’" [Henry Nouwen, Our Greatest Gift: A Meditation on Dying and Caring, (Harper: San Francisco, 1994), p. 66-67] Being opened to the Holy Spirit is difficult. When I was first a minister, one of the things that greatly worried me was people’s expectations that I would have the answers. A friend of mine talks about how when he was growing up he thought, "When I graduate from high school, I will have all the answers." When that didn’t happen, he thought that he would have the answers when he graduated from college. When it didn’t happen, he thought that he would find all the answers in seminary. Then he thought he would be given the answers on the day he was ordained in the ministry. He has finally come to realize that he will never have all the answers. He and I must simply rely on the Holy Spirit, which Jesus promised would speak through us. It is hard to sit and listen to problems and have no idea what to say, but if I wait on the Lord I am given the answers at the time when I need them. Being ready for the Holy Spirit is never easy, but it can lead to joy. Elizabeth and Mary were ready for the Holy Spirit and it led to joy. It is funny how the Holy Spirit can lead us to joy. The day I was installed here as the pastor, I was preparing in my office. I sat down to pray and for no obvious reason, I felt such joy that I began laughing. The interesting thing is that I am sure I was not laughing alone. I had this lovely sense that I was laughing with God. I felt God say to me, "You and I have sure been through some rough times, but it is always an adventure. It is never dull and we are sure to enjoy it in the long run." And a deep refreshing belly laugh bubbled up and came joyously forth. The Holy Spirit can make us do some funny things, joyful things. "A small boy was bitterly disappointed at not being given the role of ‘Joseph’ in their upcoming Nativity play. Instead he was given the minor role of playing the innkeeper. All during the weeks of preparation and rehearsal, he brooded and planned how he could get some kind of revenge on his more successful rival. Finally, the day of the performance came. The play was moving on quite nicely. "Then it was time for the Joseph and the Mary to make their entrance. They moved across the stage setting and knocked on the door of the inn. The innkeeper opened it a fraction, as he had been told to do, and eyed them coldly, for it was now his big scene. "’Can you give us board and lodging for the night?’ pleaded Joseph. He then stepped back for the awaited rebuff and rejection. "But the innkeeper had not planned for all those weeks and practices for nothing. He flung the door wide open, beamed genially and in a loud, happy voice said, ‘Come on in…come right in! You shall have the very best meal and the best room in this hotel! It’s yours! I am pleased and delighted to welcome you to our inn. It’s my privilege! Please step in and be my guests!’ "There was a pause…the audience caught their collective breath. This was certainly a change in plot and definitely not in the script! "Then with great presence of mind, the youthful Joseph turned and said to Mary, loud enough so all could hear, ‘Hold on. I’ll take a look inside first.’ He walked in past the innkeeper, who still stood with door flung open, looked all around at the inn, and came back out. He shook his head firmly at the innkeeper who was grinning broadly and announced: ‘No. I’m not taking my wife into a lousy place like that. Come on, Mary, tonight we’ll be sleeping in the stable our back!" [Robert Strand, Moments for Christmas, (New Leaf Press: Green Forest, AR, 1994), Day 25] I think everyone at that play was touched by joy in the way the play worked out. The Spirit brings joy, but not always in the ways we expect it. We don’t live in a world where everything flows smoothly along. It is very helpful to anticipate problems, but it is just as important to be ready for joy—to expect miracles. Over the years and again recently, I have been blessed to pastor friends in the church who are facing grave illnesses. It is inspiring to be with them as they make their journeys through surgery, treatment and sometimes physical healing and sometimes the healing of eternal life. There is one thing about Christians facing death that never fails to fill me with awe. While they have their moments of being sad and frightened, there is something else that I see: They are appreciative. They seem to find a wellspring of joy. They are thankful for the people they love and who love them. They are thankful for the blessings they have received. They are thankful for the chances they have had to serve. And all this thankfulness fills them with joy. Elizabeth and Mary were chosen to be a part of God salvation history. They were blessed, but they would suffer, too. I believe they had a sense of what it would mean to bring into the world a prophet and the savior. I also believe that they were ready for action, filled with the Holy Spirit, and blessed with joy for they loved the Lord, their God. Amen.