February 2, 2003
A sermon by Rev. Dr. John K. Luoma
The date was May 19, 1780. The place was Hartford, Connecticut. That day the skies turned from blue to gray and then a dark silence settled over the town. They were experiencing a full eclipse of the sun. Not knowing what we know, they thought it was a prelude to the end of the world. The Connecticut House of Representatives was in session, and they were thrown into a panic. Some men fell down on their knees in prayer. Others called for an adjournment so that they could return and spend their last moments with their families. Then, one legislator rose to his feet and said, "The day of judgment is either approaching or it is not. If it is not, there is no cause for adjournment. If it is, I choose to be found doing my duty."
That's the kind of spirit we would want in every follower of Jesus, isn't it? Whenever the Lord comes we want to be found doing our duty. But what does the word mean? The dictionary defines it this way: It is doing what we ought to do. Or we could say it means: Doing what God wants us to do. We don't talk much about duty these days, do we? It almost seems like an archaic word in our culture. Instead, we talk about our freedom to do as we please.
Well, one thing that we can say about Mary, the mother of Jesus, is that she did her duty. When the angel of the Lord comes to her she says, "I am the servant of the Lord. Let it be done to me according to your will." (Luke 1:38) She doesn't say, "That's inconvenient for me" or "Let me consult my schedule." She doesn't ask if it would be gratifying to her personally. She does what God wants her to do.
We see this same attitude reflected in our Gospel story for today. It says that Mary was devoted to fulfilling God's will in relation to her son Jesus. Five times in eighteen verses it talks about Mary's desire to fulfill the law of the Lord. Her chief desire was to do her duty, to do what God wanted her to do. Luke pictures Mary as the model disciple. He places her on a level above all the disciples. She is meant to be a pattern for us when we think about what it means to be a follower of Jesus. Luke is not offering us a piece of history here. He is not telling us a nice little story about what happened when Mary brought Jesus to the Temple. He is saying that if we want to be followers of Jesus, we need to look at the behavior of Mary and see how she always did her duty.
So, what do we learn when we look at our story today? We learn that worship is at the center of Mary's life. She obeys the First Commandment. She puts God first. She knows that if God and worship of God are not at the center of life, everything else is out of order. I like the way George Barna talks about this in his book, Seven Habits of the Highly Effective Church.. He says that worship needs to be the core habit of a follower of Jesus. He talks about it as "the number one non-negotiable in the life of a Christian." If this habit is not in place, everything else in our life is going to be out of kilter. We cannot do our duty because we will not know what our duty is.
Barna says there are three insights that are critical to helping us worship as we ought. The first is that worship is the most profoundly counter-cultural thing that we can do. It is counter-cultural because we live in a culture that is "me" centered. We worry about our comfort and our success and our pleasure. But worship is about putting God at the center and asking what God wants. Pastor Rick Warren puts it this way, "God is more concerned with our character than he is with our comfort or our success." That is why worship sets us against the selfishness we see in our culture.
The second insight is that the responsibility of the success of our worship is not on the shoulders of the institution, it is on the shoulders of the individual who worships. Certainly those leading worship must do the best job they can, but the primary burden lies on the worshipper. Unfortunately, we have come to look at worship in the same way we look at television viewing. We have no responsibility. All the responsibility lies with the ones we are watching. The truth is it would be more correct to see God as the one who watches and we as the ones with the responsibility to please God. In order to worship rightly and to be worshippers who are pleasing to God, Barna suggests that we need to do four things:
The other thing we learn is that in Mary's worship she presented what was most precious in her life to God. In this instance we learn that she dedicated her first-born son to God. Through her actions she says that she knows that this child is a gift of God given to her to nurture. I suppose the closest parallel we have to Mary's action today is baptism. As she turns this child over to God, God gives her two special gifts.
First, the destiny of the child is revealed. This is a child who will make a difference. The aged prophet Simeon says, "This child is destined for the falling and rising of many in Israel." This is the Son of God and everyone's fate is contingent on how they respond to him. His family is made up of those who hear the word of God and keep it. And his mother, Mary, is par excellence the one who does that. She does her duty: She hears the word of God and keeps it. And that is not an easy thing to do. She is going to bear a lot of pain as she nurtures such a son.
Second, she learns that God is going to use her son as a source of salvation for others. He is not only going to save his own people, he is going to save all people. Because of him, all will know the love and forgiveness of God.
Following the model of Mary, when parents do their duty and have their children baptized, they receive the same gifts. In baptism parents learn the destiny of their child: Because of Jesus this child is a child of God and a member of God's family. When we present our children to God in baptism we are saying: we realize that this child is a gift of God and we will nurture this child in such a way that he will carry out God's purposes. We will do this even if it means that we are going to experience pain.
And in Baptism parents learn that because their child becomes one with Jesus the child can become a source of God's love and forgiveness for others. In other words, the child who receives the blessing of Jesus becomes a blessing to others.
One family describes how they nurture their child in her baptism, i.e. how they remind her of her destiny as a child of God and how she is called to be a blessing to others. Every year on her birthday they look together through a special photo album that contains all the special moments surrounding her birth and the early months of her life. After they reminisce they tell her how proud they are of her and how much they love her. Then, they take a few moments and dedicate her to God again. Their-dedication takes this form: As Aaron blessed his children, they place their hands on her head and repeat the blessing found in Numbers 6:24-25: "The Lord bless you and keep you, the lord make his face shine upon you, the Lord look upon you with favor and give you peace." In this way they remind themselves and her that she is a gift of God, that she has a special destiny, and that she is intended to bless others. What would happen if all parents blessed their children in this way?
Mary is our role model. She did her duty. God was at the center of her life. She demonstrated it through worship and by dedicating her child to God. For our sake and our children's we need to do the same.
copyright 2001 by Rev. Dr. John K. Luoma