"God himself could not sink this ship."  At least that's what one deck hand said in 1912 right before his ship, the Titanic, had its fateful encounter with the mother of all ice cubes.  In retrospect he might caution us all against being careful to define what God can and cannot do.   But, it certainly is natural enough to put limitations on God.   The way Mary was tempted to do when Gabriel announced to her that her unfertilized womb would produce a child and that Elizabeth, who was by any human standard absolutely incapable of having a child, was only three months from delivery.  How can this be . . .?, Mary asked.

You might think that just having a conversation with a real angel would be all it would take to convince Mary of nearly anything.  I rather suspect if Gabriel appeared to me I might be inclined to believe anything I heard or saw after that.  But, Mary, like most of us, was too quick at first to size up the situation in terms of her own limitations.  To see life's possibilities through the prism of her impossibilities.   Gabriel's announcement was that, with God, there is always another way of seeing and living.

You will call him Jesus, Gabriel told Mary.  A name that means "the Lord is salvation."  The work God started on the first day of creation He would now finish through His son, Jesus, who is the Lord of re-creation.  Simply put, Gabriel was saying that God's nature is more clearly defined by the way He brings life out of death than by any other thing.  Which is something good to remember as we stand peering over into the next millennium with the hindsight of what has been and the foresight, both fearful and hopeful of what might be.

Gabriel's announcement to Mary is nothing less than a summary of what the Bible teaches, from the first word of Genesis to the very last word of Revelation, about the nature of God.  That every situation of crisis and hopelessness is nothing less than the stage upon which God acts out His work of bringing life where there was no hope of it.  Out of the chaos of nothingness, God spoke a word and there was light where there had only been darkness.  Out of the bondage of Egypt He brought His people free.  Out of a virgin He brought a saviour.  Out of a tomb He brought His dead son.  And, in time, out of our own dead bodies He will bring nothing less than life without end.  Whatever else the story of the virgin birth is about, it is the focal point of scripture about the fundamental nature of God to plant a seed of life where, until then, lifelessness had ruled.

That is the universal meaning of this text.  Which is why I have chaffed so at the preaching of those who have nothing but gloom and doom on their lips about what is about to happen when the clock ticks over the next millennium.  I will  have to admit that some of the apocalyptic literature can be frightening on the surface.  The biblical writers who delved into that branch of thinking can paint a picture that is scarier than anything Stephen King ever dreamed of conceiving.  But, only on the surface.  With eyes of faith that read more than the headlines it is possible to see that, even if the worst of the very worst comes to pass as time draws to a close, it will all be nothing less than God's way of setting the stage to do again what He did in creation and at Bethlehem and in the empty tomb.  He will bring life where there is no hope of any.  Even the worst of all conceivable global tragedies would be, in time, nothing less than another opportunity for God to demonstrate what He is capable of doing with barren hopelessness.  From Eden to Egypt, from barren womb to empty tomb, it's been his pattern.  Do we have any reason to believe God will change His way of doing things now?

And, that is the personal meaning of this text, too.  No matter what the crisis, it can be that it is nothing less than the barren womb of hopelessness into which God will plant His seed of life.

I must confess that this is a sermon, as all sermons are, easier preached than lived.  Some time back Nancy cut a cartoon out of the paper and asked me to keep it as a reminder of the way I am by nature and in the hope that it might encourage me to think more about the way God is by nature.  The cartoon pictures a rather pathetic looking character thinking aloud about his way of seeing life with these words, "I think, therefore I worry."  It didn't take Nancy long to see right through me.  Though I preach with deep conviction about hope to others, I am too quick to size things up in my own life in terms of hopelessness.  I live with the truly pathetic tendency to look at life through the prism of my impossibilities first and then to come to faith only after grueling work.  Without fail, when sizing up a situation, liabilities have always carried more weight with me than assets.  Seeing what needs to happen over against what appears possible, I am, like Mary, quick to ask, "how can this be?"  Why are so slow to hear the voice of faith within us whisper, nothing will be impossible with God?

Well, if we truly believe that our Saviour was born of a virgin, shouldn't it be the other way around?  Only with slow time and even slower maturity am I learning that even the worst circumstances are only opportunities for God to prove His nature by making of them something more than they would have naturally been.  Think about it.  If God can bring a saviour from a barren womb is it not true that one of the central tenets of our faith should be, nothing will be impossible with God?  Is there anything God cannot do?  Is there any hopeless situation we will ever face that could ever be less than the place God is likely to plant a seed of new life?

It seems that, if we want to give our children the most significant gift that keeps on giving, something that will go with them long after we cannot, we ought to give them that kind of faith by the example of our own.   Especially in the way we handle crisis and most especially in the way we handle our own failures we ought to give them the ability to see the worst of circumstances as nothing less than the barren womb in which God will plant the seed of hope and new beginnings.  This shouldn't be something around which we organize manger scenes once a year but something around which organize our lives year round.

The summer after I graduated from high school I came walking into the house one day and found my mother in the living room crying and unable to speak.  I went to my parents' bedroom and found my dad who told me why my mother was crying.  That morning my father had been called to Midland, one hundred miles away, to his company's corporate office.  We thought he was going to find out about a promotion and everyone started that day full of anticipation.  A raise?  Maybe a transfer?   Instead, he was told that the oil company he had worked for since graduating from college was, as they now say, downsizing.  Fifteen-hundred would be losing their jobs, including my father.  The timing could not have been worse.  My older sister was two years into college and I was just about to start.  Yet, the most significant thing I remember about that conversation with my dad was that, as he was telling me about losing his job, he was calmly changing his socks.  He wasn't fretting.  He wasn't panicking.  And, as he changed his socks he reminded me how he had been praying that God would help him find a new way in his career.  He was absolutely certain that, whatever else his job loss was, it was nothing less than God's backdoor way of answering his prayer for relief from a career impasse.  Sure enough, about a year later, my father found his way into a new job that he would have never found had it not been for the crisis of losing his job in the first place.

But, again, what I remember most is my father's simple and calm faith in the face of crisis and his way of reassuring me that what appears hopeless and tragic to us is nothing less than the stage on which God will play His role of life giver.  In so many words but more in attitude and demeanor my father lived out right in front of me what someone looks like when they really believe nothing will be impossible with God.   Do I need to tell you how valuable that simple sock-changing lesson has been to me in my adult life?  Many times I have found myself revisiting that bedroom in my memory.  There I am, sitting on the edge of my father's bed, watching him change his socks across the room while he calmly spoke of a faith that Hope always outweighs hopelessness.

One thing that has always puzzled me is about those to whom God chooses to give these breaks.  Why is it, for example, that He chose a virgin from Bethlehem?  Why not someone more prominent or powerful or well connected?  Well, one thing I think we would do well to remember is that the real miracle is not that God can make a virgin have a baby.  This is a universe-out-of-nothing-water-parting-dead-man-walking-out-of-tombs God we're dealing with here.  A virgin giving birth is, in a real sense, just one more story among many about how nothing will be impossible with God.  No, the real miracle is not so much in the way Jesus came to us but in the fact that He came at all.  Behind the spectacular details of His birth is the spectacular grace that made it possible.

But, what was it about Mary that made Gabriel say to her, you have found favor with God?  We don't know, for sure.  We don't have enough details about her life before this moment to write even the simplest biography.  But, in the moment it was most needed, her real character shows through.

When you think about it, this is a potential moment of crisis for Mary.   She's just been told she's going to have a baby.  Everyone thinks she's a virgin, especially her fiancé.  This is not going to be easy to explain to all those who think something else of her?  She could have easily sized up this situation more in terms of its liabilities more than in terms of its assets.  Yet, in the way she responds to the crisis we may have the most significant clue as to why she had found favor with God.  Here I am, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word, Mary said.

Simple surrender.  That's it.  I think she had found favor with God because God knew how she had learned to size up crisis and chaos more in terms of hope than in terms of hopelessness.  Since childhood she had read of God's work in creation and almost certainly had rehearsed the history of her people year after year at Passover until she knew the details about how God always delivers His people like our children know Nintendo.  I think she had found favor with God not because she was perfect but simply because she was open.  We'll never know for sure how she came by that openness.  But, I think it's OK to do a little educated guessing at this point.

My guess is that Mary knew that nothing will be impossible with God because one day when she was a little girl came home and found her mother crying and her dad calmly changing his socks.  And, the rest, in the truest sense, is nothing less than holy history.

Amen.