Just Like Mary, You Have Already Found Favor with God

Just Like Mary, You Have Already Found Favor with God

One of the things that I like about my denomination, the United Church of Christ, is that the pastor has very little power and authority. 

Here are some examples why: First, in the UCC we proclaim that Christ, not the pastor, is the head of the church.

Second, many of the important decisions that are made at the local church come from our church Council, which acts as our board. The pastor can provide input, but in most UCC congregations, the pastor doesn’t even have a vote on church boards.

Third, as the pastor, I’m mostly in charge of worship, educational programs, and church staffing – but I also work with committees on these matters.

Part of what this means is that I’m in charge of very little. 

I’m certainly not in charge of any member of the congregation.

I’m telling you this because there are some churches where the members like to have a pastor with great authority and who tells them what to do and what to believe. 

I try not to do that. I don’t want you to check your brain at the door. 

One of my mentors once told me that the pastor is not supposed to tell people what to believe. The pastor can be a guide for faith and belief. In other words, I am not here to work out anyone’s salvation. Rather, each of us is to work out our own salvation, whatever that might mean to any of us. 

So pastors in the UCC are supposed to be humble.

But just for a moment, I’m going to throw all humility out the window.

Because I’ve been to seminary! I have a master’s degree! I’ve read all the books on theology and spirituality. Everyone one of them! And I know things! (Ha!)

So I’ve got some well-earned arrogance. Here is what I know for sure with an arrogant amount of confidence. 

You Have Found Favor with God

Here it is – You have found favor with God.

The same thing that the angel Gabriel says to Mary is the same thing that the angel Gabriel says to you: You have found favor with God.

Some of you hear this and respond by taking a deep breath as you say to yourself, “Favor with God! What a relief.”

Others of you may respond by saying, “Adam, I appreciate your arrogance here, but you don’t really know me. You don’t know all the bad things I’ve done in my life.”

Oh, so you have secrets about things in your life that you are ashamed of? Well, I just have one thing to say to you: 

Welcome to being human.

But some of you might be just as arrogant as I am right now and you’re thinking, “Yeah, Adam. I already know that I have found favor with God. Duh. God has favored me all my life. I’m special!” 

Okay. Here is the thing. Throughout most of human history, people have thought that they needed to do a lot of big things to earn favor with God. Our ancient ancestors thought that you had to sacrifice something really important to you, like your first-born child. Fortunately, that idea eventually fell out of favor and moved to sacrificing an animal. Then it moved to sacrificing grain. 

Those were all lies. Because the truth is that you don’t have to sacrifice anything to find favor with God.

Many of us today have been told other lies, like you have to pray more or read the Bible more or go to church more or tithe more in order to earn God’s favor.

All of those can be good things. But none of those things earn you favor with God.

That’s because you have already found favor with God.

Here is my evidence from two scripture passages: Isaiah 41:17-20 and Luke 1:26-38.

Isaiah – Finding Favor with God

The first reading from Isaiah says that God will not forsake the people, but instead that God will provide for the people.

Now, here is the thing: Isaiah’s people had been behaving badly. For generations, they forgot about caring for those in need – the widows, the orphans, the immigrants, and the poor. The Hebrew scriptures claim that if a nation refuses to care for the most vulnerable in its midst, the nation will crumble and fall.

That’s the warning of the prophets.

The nations of Israel and Judah failed to listen to the prophets, so those nations were destroyed. First, the Assyrian Empire conquered the nation of Israel, and then the Babylonian Empire conquered the nation of Judah. All because, according to the prophets, the political, economic, and religious leaders neglected the poor. Those leaders also fostered a spirit of neglecting the poor among the nation as a whole. And so Israel and Judah were conquered and destroyed. 

Most of the citizens of Israel and Judah were kidnapped and then taken into slavery throughout those empires. This is known as the Assyrian and Babylonian exile. It was only the very poor who were left in the land.

But Isaiah says that God will not forsake the people in exile. Instead, Isaiah promises that God will provide for them in their time of great need. 

Isaiah’s people found themselves out in the desert. They had no shade, no food, and no water. They were desperate.

And God provided for them a way to survive in the desert.

Notice that Isaiah doesn’t say, “Okay, everyone! You’ve sacrificed enough of your animals. You’ve prayed hard enough. You’ve gone to church a sufficient number of times. You’ve donated enough to your church. You have now earned favor with God.”

No. Isaiah says nothing like that. All that Isaiah says is that if you find yourself out in the desert of life, I’m speaking about a metaphorical desert here, when you are spiritually starving or thirsty or you find yourself spiritually alone out in the dry spiritual desert, Isaiah’s message is that God has *not* forsaken you. 

Rather, God is with you and making a way for you in the desert of your life. 

Not because you are good enough or faithful enough, but because no matter what you have done or what you have left undone, you have already found favor with God because God has already found favor with you.

Mary Found Favor with God. So Have You.

In our reading from Luke, the angel Gabriel tells Mary, “Do not be afraid, for you have found favor with God.”

Mary found favor with God, but what did Mary do to find favor with God?

Some have thought that there was something particularly important and special about Mary. She must have been particularly good or faithful in order to earn this special favor with God.

But do you know what the Gospels say that Mary did to earn God’s favor?

They say nothing about that.

It wasn’t because Mary was good enough. It wasn’t because she was faithful enough. It wasn’t because she was submissive enough. It wasn’t because she avoided teenage gossip or she never talked back to her parents or she always kept her room clean or she happily went to church every Sunday. 

None of the Gospels say that Mary did anything like those things. None of them say that Mary did anything particularly special to earn God’s favor.

I like Mary a lot. She is one of the most important figures in the Christian story. But there are many myths surrounding Mary. 

Many religious people, mostly religious men, falsely see Mary as the model woman who is perfectly faithful and perfectly submissive. They claim that all women should be perfectly faithful and perfectly submissive just like Mary.

But there’s a major problem with that. Mary wasn’t like that.

The Gospels portray Mary as someone who doubts. For example, the angel Gabriel told Mary, “And now you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. 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. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”

And Mary replied, “Hey! That sounds awesome! I have great faith and I know God can do anything. So let’s do that!”

No. Mary doesn’t believe Gabriel. So she says to Gabriel, “I’ve been to 6th grade sex ed class. I know that’s not how it works.” 

Well, she doesn’t quite say it like that. She actually asks, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?”

Mary didn’t respond with submissive faith. 

She responded with incredulous doubt.

If Mary were perfectly submissive, as some say she was, she wouldn’t have any doubts. She wouldn’t be asking questions. Instead, she had doubts. She thought that the angel Gabriel wasn’t making any sense. 

Maybe the story of the virgin birth makes sense to you. Maybe you don’t have any problem believing in the virgin birth because you think God can do anything. 

But maybe this story doesn’t make sense to you. Maybe you just can’t force yourself to believe in a virgin birth. 

Guess what. Mary didn’t believe it either. Mary had doubts. In fact, all of the important people in the Gospels and in the Bible had doubts. 

So, if you have doubts, it’s not a sign that you are faith wrong. It’s a sign that you are doing faith right.

And whether you believe the virgin birth or not isn’t really the point. 

The point is that Mary found favor with God. 

But interestingly, if you read the story, Mary wasn’t even looking for favor with God. No, I suspect that Mary found favor with God because God first found favor with Mary.

Before We Find Favor with God, God Has Already Found Favor with Us.

And this is the point of Christian spirituality. Long before we even look to find favor with God, God has already found favor with us.

A letter in the New Testament called First John puts it like this: “In this is love: not that we loved God but that God loved us.” That letter also says, “We love because God first loved us.”

So to repeat, it’s not that we do something to find favor with God. It’s that God has already found favor with us.

This is the good news. God has found favor with you.

But it doesn’t end there. 

God Has Found Favor with You. Now What?

Because just as God found favor with Mary and God finds favor with each of us, God sent Mary on a mission. And God sends us on a mission, too.

God called Mary to take a big risk by giving birth in a strange and miraculous way. God needed Mary to say “yes” to this mission to birth something new into the world.

And God needs us to say, “yes” too.

God calls us on a mission. God has found favor with us, but our mission is not to keep that favor for ourselves. Our mission is to receive the favor God has for us and, like Mary, take a risk. Take a risk in our personal lives to share that favor with others. Take a risk as a community and share that favor with others. 

How do we take that risk? Like Mary, you say “yes” to the miraculous. For some of us, the miraculous might be to take a deep breath and not get so angry. The miraculous might be to rewrite that email so it doesn’t cut as much. The miraculous might be to stop the cycle of needing to be right all the time. 

Or taking a miraculous risk might look like risking acts of kindness. Kindness toward certain people can be a big risk. For example, I have someone in my life that I don’t like being kind to. I think it would be a miracle for her to be kind to me, so I resist being kind to her. 

Maybe you have someone like that in your life. I’m not saying you have to be kind to that person. Creating boundaries with toxic people is very important. 

And so I don’t know what the miraculous might mean in your life. But what I am saying is this: 

Like Mary, you have found favor with God. And because of that, just like Mary, you can do the miraculous.

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Adam Ericksen

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