Troubled
Read Luke 1:26-38.
How we think we might react is often much different from the way we actually react. Consider Mary, traditionally at a well, listening to the words of an angel. Don't read that sentence too casually. The words...of an ANGEL. At this point, there has been something like 400 years of silence on God's part. Prophets have stopped speaking, priests only repeated what was already written in Scripture, and there was no new word from the Lord. There was expectation of a savior to come, but there were no clues being given as to when that might happen. Angels hadn't been seen in this vicinity for centuries.
Yet when one shows up, he doesn't go to Jerusalem and appear to the king or the high priest. He shows up in Podunkville (also known as Nazareth), and speaks to a young girl who is barely old enough to know much about anything. Add to that the actual words he says. This is what he opens with: "Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you" (1:28).
How would you react to such a greeting? I think I might swell up inside, fill up with a bit of pride. "Well, how nice of God to notice me. I knew I was doing something right!" Or perhaps I might say, "Okay, who's pranking me? What's going on? Where's the camera?" Or maybe somewhere in between those two reactions. My point is this: I doubt I would have reacted as Mary did.
Luke says she was "greatly troubled" (1:29). The English translation is an understatement, to say the least. The word Luke uses (and remember, Luke was likely a doctor, so he was careful in his word choice here) means to have mental stress, deep anxiety. It's a word that indicates a person was headed in one direction in life and knows, suddenly, that they are headed in another direction. And notice: this is BEFORE Mary knows what the angel is going to tell her. This is before the announcement of the baby. Mary is "greatly troubled" just at the prospect of what an angel might say to her.
Mary is just like you and me. We set her up as a model of faith (and she certainly is by the end of this passage, as she acquiesces to the angel's, or really God's, request of her), but in this moment she is an ordinary girl who knows her life is about to change. And she's not all that excited about it, any more than we would be.
Any time I sense God leading us as a church in a new direction, I begin to get anxious, "greatly troubled," and sometimes spend a few sleepless hours praying about it, or obsessing about it (probably more the latter than the former, though it should be the other way around). Adam Hamilton calls this "discernment by nausea." Anytime God leads us into new territory, it's likely to cause upset in our spirits and maybe even in our bodies...because it's new territory! We like the comfortable, the "tried and true," while God is doing a new thing (cf. Isaiah 43:19). Hamilton says he knows he is likely headed in God's direction when he feels most uneasy. What was true for Mary is true for us as well. When the angel shows up, Mary is greatly troubled.
And yet there is hope here. Ultimately, the hope is not found in Mary's response, faith-filled as that is. The hope here is found in the other thing the angel says: "The Lord is with you." As Paul will say later, "If God is for us, who can be against us?" (Romans 8:31). Mary knows that, which is why she's able to give her faith-filled response. God going with us, into whatever lies ahead, is the only hope worth having.
Eventually, that hope will even quiet troubled pastors in the middle of the night, when we let it take over our thoughts and direct our lives.
Take courage, troubled one! The Lord is with you!
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| Mary's Well, Nazareth |
Yet when one shows up, he doesn't go to Jerusalem and appear to the king or the high priest. He shows up in Podunkville (also known as Nazareth), and speaks to a young girl who is barely old enough to know much about anything. Add to that the actual words he says. This is what he opens with: "Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you" (1:28).
How would you react to such a greeting? I think I might swell up inside, fill up with a bit of pride. "Well, how nice of God to notice me. I knew I was doing something right!" Or perhaps I might say, "Okay, who's pranking me? What's going on? Where's the camera?" Or maybe somewhere in between those two reactions. My point is this: I doubt I would have reacted as Mary did.
Luke says she was "greatly troubled" (1:29). The English translation is an understatement, to say the least. The word Luke uses (and remember, Luke was likely a doctor, so he was careful in his word choice here) means to have mental stress, deep anxiety. It's a word that indicates a person was headed in one direction in life and knows, suddenly, that they are headed in another direction. And notice: this is BEFORE Mary knows what the angel is going to tell her. This is before the announcement of the baby. Mary is "greatly troubled" just at the prospect of what an angel might say to her.
Mary is just like you and me. We set her up as a model of faith (and she certainly is by the end of this passage, as she acquiesces to the angel's, or really God's, request of her), but in this moment she is an ordinary girl who knows her life is about to change. And she's not all that excited about it, any more than we would be.
Any time I sense God leading us as a church in a new direction, I begin to get anxious, "greatly troubled," and sometimes spend a few sleepless hours praying about it, or obsessing about it (probably more the latter than the former, though it should be the other way around). Adam Hamilton calls this "discernment by nausea." Anytime God leads us into new territory, it's likely to cause upset in our spirits and maybe even in our bodies...because it's new territory! We like the comfortable, the "tried and true," while God is doing a new thing (cf. Isaiah 43:19). Hamilton says he knows he is likely headed in God's direction when he feels most uneasy. What was true for Mary is true for us as well. When the angel shows up, Mary is greatly troubled.
And yet there is hope here. Ultimately, the hope is not found in Mary's response, faith-filled as that is. The hope here is found in the other thing the angel says: "The Lord is with you." As Paul will say later, "If God is for us, who can be against us?" (Romans 8:31). Mary knows that, which is why she's able to give her faith-filled response. God going with us, into whatever lies ahead, is the only hope worth having.
Eventually, that hope will even quiet troubled pastors in the middle of the night, when we let it take over our thoughts and direct our lives.
Take courage, troubled one! The Lord is with you!
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