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“You Are A Blessing”
December 1, 2024 Cobleskill United Methodist Church, Pastor Anna Blinn Cole
Luke 1:26-38 | Isaiah 43:1-7
First Sunday of Advent
Luke 1:26-38
26 In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, 27 to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. 28 And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.”[a] 29 But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. 30 The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. 31 And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. 33 He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” 34 Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?”[b] 35 The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born[c] will be holy; he will be called Son of God. 36 And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. 37 For nothing will be impossible with God.” 38 Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.
Isaiah 43:1-7
43 But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel:Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name; you are mine.2 When you pass through the waters, I will be with you, and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.3 For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.I give Egypt as your ransom, Cush and Seba in exchange for you.4 Because you are precious in my sight and honored and I love you,I give people in return for you, nations in exchange for your life.5 Do not fear, for I am with you; I will bring your offspring from the east, and from the west I will gather you;6 I will say to the north, “Give them up,” and to the south, “Do not withhold;bring my sons from far away and my daughters from the end of the earth—7 everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.”
Greetings, favored ones! The Lord is with you.
It’s a pretty nice way of saying hello, don’t you think? In fact, I think it’s a perfect way of saying hello today, especially on the first Sunday of Advent. The first day of a new month. The first day of a new church year. The first day of the rest of your life.
This is the “hello” Mary was given by God’s messenger and it was the beginning of an unfathomably big and new season of her life. We shall hear about that in just a moment. First let’s talk about Advent.
Advent is a season of beginnings. Literally the word means “coming,” as in the coming of Christ. Advent is four weeks represented by four candles adding growing light as we lead up to Christmas Eve. The waiting and the growing light are all ways of preparing ourselves for what it will mean to welcome God into our own flesh and blood. Advent is a reminder that it’s both God who greets us and also our own humanity that makes a home for the divine. Advent is about locating hope even when you’re still living in the dark. Even when you can’t see anything else at all.
Advent has always been a special season to me. In my home growing up, it felt like the most special time of the year when we got to set an Advent wreath on our dining room table and each night we would spend time together as a family lighting candles that sat upon a handmade circle of strung together greenery. It was a time of year when tradition found us hanging hand-made ornaments, sometimes barely holding together by threads, telling stories about the different years gone by and the people who made each one. It was a time of year that pulled together simple pieces of tradition, nothing fancy, and stitched them together into something collectively beautiful.
After all these years Advent is still a treasured time for me. Now as an adult I see how countercultural it is to value simplicity and sacred moments around candle light at the table. I see how the traditions and rituals that made Advent special for me were not at all expensive or shiny. They were hand-me-downs and well-worn.
That’s part of the reason why I love what Kayla Craig says about Advent in our devotional booklet. She says, "The Advent journey unfolds like a well-worn quilt, each patchwork piece lovingly threaded across time and space. In each thread, we find blessed assurance that with every sacred stitch, God has been moving toward us all along. This season reminds us that, what some may see as discarded scraps, the Maker of heaven and earth calls beautiful and blessed.”
Beautiful, right? This year in Advent we will be wrapping ourselves in the sacred words of wisdom that a family might hand down to its children. Words for beginning a life. Words that sustain life. Words that, like an old quilt, wrap a new beginning in love and care.
Each week will bring forward one piece of wisdom from the Advent scriptures that every new beginning needs. Wisdom that might seem deceptively simple, yet when put into practice it’s wisdom that becomes a lifelong venture. And just as words of wisdom can cradle a new beginning, each piece of wisdom is represented in a quilt square that you’ll see highlighted throughout each week’s service.
Today’s piece of wisdom comes from both the annunciation story in Luke when the angel greets Mary with that fabulous hello and from the Prophet Isaiah, who 800 years before the birth of Christ foretold not only his coming, but pronounced a blessing on all who are made in God’s image. Today’s words for the beginning are,
You are a blessing.
Greetings, favored ones! The Lord is with you.
We begin with the wisdom that Mary was blessed and so are we. You might think this is stating the obvious, but let me tell you why it wasn’t obvious for Mary and then we’ll get to all of us in a minute.
The annunciation of Mary by Gabriel is a famous story in the Advent scriptures. We hear the lines and they are immediately familiar sounding from every Christmas pageant we’ve ever seen, the best ones and the worst ones. This scene is always included. It’s iconic and foundational to the story. The angel visits Mary and she learns that she is pregnant not just with any baby, but the Son of the Most High, the inheritor of the throne of his ancestor David. Yet here is a detail that is often not fully realized: the Gospel of Luke tells us that God’s angel goes to Galilee. In her book, The First Advent in Palestine, Kelley Nikondeha explains that the northern region where Galilee was located was in the first century known for uprisings and protests, and that the Jews there were considered “lesser Jews” because many were uncircumcised, or did not worship in the temple, or married non-Jewish people. Why did the angel Gabriel go to Galilee instead of Judea? Why did God choose an unwed teenage woman instead of someone more established from a more respectable place?
So when the angel greeted Mary with the hello of “Greetings, favored one” she was confused. She didn’t occupy space in a world that considered her to be especially blessed or favored. And yet, God is weaving a surprising story.
Some of the most beautiful quilts are made from fabrics that other people would call scraps. As Kayla Craig’s devotional reflection continues: “Mary, an ordinary girl from the obscure corners of Nazareth, was not cloaked in power or prestige—but was blanketed in belovedness. And that was enough."
To call Mary a blessing was a radical statement made through a messenger from God who continues to call each of us a blessing, too, even when we have trouble believing it ourselves. For the truth is, far too many even today are told—implicitly and explicitly—that they are a burden instead of a blessing. It’s a message that can easily be muted, trivialized, or redacted. Hustle culture, scarcity thinking, capitalism, racism, and patriarchy are all forces that make us believe we are not a blessing. When we stop believing that we are a blessing to God, then we may stop believing this about others, too. Conversely, when we’re rooted in our blessedness, we can treat every created being as a blessing as well.
When you were a child, did you receive the message that you were a blessing? If you were raised in a faith tradition, did your faith teach you this message? If so, how did that shape your self-image and perceptions of others? If not, what messages did you internalize and receive? How did those messages shape you?
We may not be children any more, but we all still find ourselves beginning again from time to time. And it seems like the transitions into change only get harder as we get older. We worry about what is to come when we can’t see where the road goes. We wonder if we’re even strong enough to start over again. When we feel like we’ve been here before, we wonder if we can even survive what is to come.
Writing some 800 years before Christ would be born, Isaiah sent his words out like a life-raft for anyone who worried that they were not going to make it through a hard new beginning:
Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name; you are mine.2 When you pass through the waters, I will be with you, and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.
The first step into a dark and uncertain future begins by locating something that is solid. And for us, God sends us a message like an echo bouncing around, locating us in a dark space: you are a blessing. Whatever it is you are beginning, begin with this assurance. No matter how much less than you think you are or how uncertain you feel about your own potential, God sees you as a blessing. And that is enough.
Grace and Peace,
Pastor Anna
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