Sunday Service 14th December

Mary’s song (communion)

14/12/25

Call to Worship

Hymn 273: O come o come Emmanuel 

Reading: Luke 1:39-56  Gil

Prayer

Hymn 319: Of the Father’s love begotten

Sermon

Hymn 19: Ye Gates, lift up your head on high

Communion

Hymn 294: On Christmas night all Christians sing

Benediction

Welcome to our meditation for 14th of December.

We celebrate the third week in Advent, the time of preparation before Christmas. And this week we hear of the repercussions of the angels visit. It’s one thing hearing of life changing news; it is another thing knowing how to cope with it.

We will find out after the readings and prayers from Gil how Mary coped with the life-changing news that she was pregnant.

Sermon

We live in a world if life changing events.

Every news programme tells us of somewhere in the world where people are being forced into changing the way they live.

It may be a war zone and potential peace talks.

It may be some natural disaster like a flood that wipes out whole villages

or an earthquake that strikes at some out of the way place with terrible transport links.

Locally we have had news that over 1,000 jobs a week are being lost to petrochemical and oil based jobs in Scotland. Each one of those jobs is life changing for those families.

Or the budget and how that affects small businesses.

Or a local church losing their minister, or their organist, and how that affects the uncertainty of those church members.

Or even some wee soul develops dementia and how that affects the dynamics within the family and how each of them copes.

Life is uncertain.

It is now, it was then.

So how do we live with it?

Unfortunately the default mode for most people is that we just drift along.

When things are going reasonably well we just presume that that is the natural state of life and we presume that it will stay like that.

Or worse, we go into denial and pretend to ourselves that things will just stay like that.

Maybe we feel that there is nothing we can do to prepare for the future as it is an unknown country, and better just to take things as they are...until they aren’t.

Roseanna and I had a family member that lived like that, just drifted along. They seemed to be unaware of every disaster that they were walking into. Their life was like a twig in a river, just floating along...and they seemed to be unaware that the thunderous noise they heard was not a thunderstorm, but a waterfall ahead.

They went from one waterfall to the next, seemingly unaware that their lack of decision was a decision

and that each decision not to change their path kept them on the same river that led to more waterfalls.

That was not only a long journey for them, but also for us.

Trust me, that is not a great default position to have.

Here is my concern.

For some reason we feel that such a mess of a life is for those who deserve a messy life because they don’t take responsibility of their lives the way we do.

And that is invariably true in some cases.

In some cases people lives are messy because they live irresponsible, destructive, lives.

But we then presume that we live lives that lead to non-messy lives; that we are smart enough, or good enough, to avoid turmoil hitting us.

Like in the parable of the prodigal son.

If you remember that parable we have a son who wishes his father dead,

gets his inheritance before the father dies and then goes off to a foreign country,

lives the life, wastes the money, then a famine hits and he is struggling.

So he goes back to his father in a bid to make his life a bit better, and the father forgives him.

In the west we look at the problems the prodigal sons faces as his own fault.

If he hadn’t left the farm, if he hadn’t wasted the money, then he would have been fine.

And we are not like that prodigal son, so surely we shouldn’t face problems like that.

Unfortunately within the parable itself...it denies that false hope.

For a start the son that doesn’t leave home and doesn’t waste his father’s money is in the same emotional mess as the prodigal son. The parable is not about the mistakes of the son and what he should have done,

the parable is about the forgiveness of the father to both sons.

The second thing is that the blame for the son’s plight is not put on his wasting the money. The plight of the son is due to a famine that hits the land, and that affects everyone, not just the son, everyone in that land suffers.

So if anything this parable also points to the fact that we can live the best of lives, but at some point we are still going to be in a place where we are struggling.

Being human means that life is not always smooth, often life is hard.

And how should we react when that happens?

Well let’s look at Mary.

Her situation is dire.

An angel has told her that she is going to be pregnant.

The Gospel of Luke says nothing about Joseph walking away from the engagement.

So we can presume that this incident recorded in Luke has happened when Joseph is thinking about walking away.

Now just to give a bit of background to this passage that you may not know.

At the time of the Maccabees between the old and new testaments there was a movement to spread the Jews throughout the territory of the old Davidic Empire.

When the exile returned from Babylon they congregated round Jerusalem.

That was natural as they felt safety in numbers. But later on there was the feeling that if the Jews were to have the same territory as the old Davidic Empire, then they had to recreate colonies of Jews in the northern part of the kingdom to reclaim that as Jewish.

At bit like the settler movement in East Israel today.

And like the settler movement today the ones who moved were the most extreme Jews, the ones who were willing to give up everything for the vision.

It is in this extreme religious traditional environment that Mary finds herself pregnant out of wedlock, with her future husband walking away from the relationship. This will bring shame to her family and there is a good chance that they will stone her to death to remove that shame.

The people then believed in wholeness and completeness. Their use of sacrifice implied that blood spilt was like a disinfectant for wrongs.

The sacrifices in the temple cleansed the people of the wrong they had done.

Although throughout the Old Testament God is telling them that human sacrifice is wrong,

But in local superstition there was the feeling that for extreme wrong then extreme sacrifice had to be made.

And there are recordings of human sacrifice in the Bible, done supposedly to appease God for some wrong, or as a payment for God’s blessing.

For such a shame to the family, for tainting the family with such evil, Mary would have been stoned to death, blood would have to be spilt, to disinfect the contamination of wrong she had created.

How does Mary cope with this?

For maybe Mary’s response can be guidance for us when we are struggling.

The first thing she does is find a place of safety.

She goes to her cousin Elizabeth.

This is such a smart move.

In Elizabeth she has a place of sanctuary where she can just think things through.

In Elizabeth she has someone going through the same thing, someone who can give her practical advice because she is facing pregnancy as well.

Remember, that Mary was probably a young teenager, and as a young teenager she has never gone through something like this before...she will be terrified.

We see in Elizabeth’s response that although she is a family member and so any shame that Mary may bring to the family will affect her, she still comes out with a welcome that is non judgemental.

More than that Elizabeth is supportive and encouraging and hopeful.

OK, important point number 1. There is no way that is accidental.

There is no way that Mary randomly picked one of her extended family and was just lucky to pick the one person who would help her.

When Mary realised the mess she was in, realised how out her depth she was, she thought quickly of who could help her, and the one person she thought of was Elizabeth. And she travelled half the length of the country, on her own, to be near her.

So here is the important piece of advice number 1. Who do you have in your life that is like that?

It is scary how many people don’t have that kind of person in their life.

A couple of weeks ago this guy phones up from Falkirk, he has an English accent and supposedly he had left the family home and is now homeless. He says he has a place to stay that night but needs someone to pay for a Air-B&B until Tuesday when a cousin in Alva who is away on holiday returns and he can stay with them.

In that situation I am meant to be his Elizabeth, because he has no one else.

A guy he randomly phoned from the church website because he had no one else.

It was not a good conversation.

I didn’t know how much of it was true.

I was struggling to support him emotionally because it was difficult to understand what exactly had happened to him and how he had got himself in that mess in the first place.

He didn’t know me and didn’t know my capabilities.

He seemed to think that I had access to all the church money and could allocate it as I wanted. When I said that wasn’t the case and that I didn’t have internet banking so I couldn’t just put my own money into an Air B&B account the line went funny and died.

I don’t know if he thought I was lying and so cut me off.

Of if he ran out of money for the phone and he got cut off.

Personally I don’t know if he was really in trouble, or if it was all just an attempted scam.

It leaves a bad feeling that there may have been someone I could have helped, and that chance was taken away from me.

It was just messy.

And part of that was because he didn’t know WHO his ‘Elizabeth’ was.

He had never created a relationship with someone who could be his Elizabeth, or allowed a relationship with someone to be created that could have been his Elizabeth.

(This is a communion service. The whole point of this service is to remember that life is about a relationship with God, with others)

If we haven’t created an Elizabeth relationship yet, it is important that we do so. We don’t wait until we are in crisis before we prepare for a crisis.

And it doesn’t matter what crisis we face, we face it better when we face it with someone else.

For in that moment when we are so panicked that we forget God is with us, we need to have people in our lives that can bring God’s care and love back into our life.

And equally it is important that we become people that have a spirit like that of Elizabeth, a spirit that others can see and that others can come to when they are struggling.

Ok, important point number 2.

We need to grow a presumption in our heart.

We need to grow a presumption that no matter what we face, God can work good into it.

That is the point of the Song of Mary. Mary is articulating a belief that no matter how messy her life is at that point, no matter how uncertain and unpredictable her life is at that point, that God is still with her and God will create good out of it.

Whatever happens things will work out,

she will have experiences that she can learn from,

she will be able to guide others who are facing similar problems,

this will strengthen friendships as she learns to trust those who support her through this, she will have a greater compassion for vulnerable people who are out their depth due to no fault of their own, she may even have a greater compassion who are out of their depth when it has been their fault.

Her trust in God will be stronger; her humanity towards others will be greater.

I honestly don’t know which is more important;

that we have in our friendships those with the spirit of Elizabeth in their heart to help us,

or that we grow a presumption that no matter what we face, God will still be with us and create good out of whatever we face?

I suggest it would do no harm if we worked on both.

Let us pray

Heavenly Father,

Today, inspired by the song of Mary,

help us to know what song you would have us sing.

It is tempting to sing songs of sorrow, or regret; a wish list of what we want to happen rather than face what has happened.

It is tempting not to sing a song at all, to give in to the fear that things will never get better, that we are along and have no song worth singing.

It is tempting to sing a pretend song, one we think you want to hear, or that others expect us to sing, but we know from experience that pretence brings no comfort.

Help us to sing an honest song.

A song routed in the past experiences that have brought us here.

A song of past struggles and how we have survived them with the care of others and the guidance you have given us.

A song of the lessons we have learnt and grown from.

Help us to sing an hopeful song.

A song remembering what you have done to bring our relationship with you closer. Sending your son to talk to us and teach us of your deep love and care for us.

Sending your Spirit to remind us always of your love for us; like a light in the darkness, like a harbour in the storm.

Help us to sing a song of faith.

A song with belief that, as you have helped us in the past, so you will help us today, and in the future.

A song that tells of your faithfulness throughout history, throughout our life. That even when we felt distant, or abandoned, you were still there reaching out a hand of love.

Help us sing a song of commitment.

A song where we promise, and work towards, being a people that brings your hope and love to others.

A song were we as individuals, and as a community of faith, be Your light to those living in darkness, be a shelter to those facing a storm.

Today, inspired by the song of Mary,

let us go into the world ready to sing our songs

in the love we carry into the darker places of life, as we do our small part in bringing joy to the world.

Amen.