SCRIPTURE: Luke 146b-55
TEXT: 46And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord, THEME: Adding our stories of our experiences with God to the Bible. INTRODUCTION We think of the Bible in its completed form, but it is a library of Books, written of lives recording their experiences with God. One book is not complete in revealing everything there is to know about God, but each story adds on a new facet of God. The Story of Creation wasn’t all there was for us to know about God, so the story of Adam and Eve’s experience with God in the garden was added, likewise the faith stories of Abraham and Sarah. Then the stories Moses and the Israelites, the rise and fall of rulers that lead the people of God to the continuing saga of faith with Jesus in the New Testament. Bishop Desmond Tutu, when talking about his friendship with the Dali Lama, says that his Christianity cannot possibly contain everything there is to know about God. There are stories of human experiences with the Holy, that are revelations of who God is from other cultures, as well as other religions, that can add to our understanding of God. SCRIPTURE This passage concludes with the promises made to Abraham of; descendants, people, a nation, community and communion with God as the ultimate purpose. In seminary, the Kingdom of God was talk about with no relevance to our everyday life. It wasn’t until 1995 when we were involved in strategically planning as a Church, that conversations on the Kingdom of God were expanded to conversations about the Community of God. What does it mean to be God’s people? How do the people of God behave? What are the practices of a community of God’s people that we can put in place? This is when we changed to a consensus model of decision making for our business, when we used the devotional time of our meetings for inspiration and learning, and gave the Council responsibility in discerning the will of God instead of just making business decisions. Mary’s child it a fulfillment of the promise God made to Abraham for the formation of a people and a community as the people of God. The Nation of God, Israel, has an ongoing story of God’s mercy and grace. Mary’s song is a vision of an Alternate Future, a revolution of change. The proud are scattered, the powerful brought down and the lowly brought up. It is describing a democratic form of government where the people are governing by the people, for the people. Any dictator, autocrat, or monarch that has Bibles in their country would certainly feel threatened by these words, as surely the Roman Empire was. Mary is an antecedent of change, participating in bringing in a community focused around a relationship with God. It makes her feel like singing. This is where Mary’s story becomes a platform for our story. For our experiences with God to be added with Mary’s story, crafted, painted, sculpted and written. What does our experience with God make us feel? Mary is happy, flabbergasted, valued, joyful, and grateful in her relationship with God. Her feelings towards God have moved from the reverent fear to the personal relationship, from being religious to being intimately devoted and from wondering to commitment. Her experience of being favored by God is one that informs us of what is possible with God and the changes possible through the birth of her son. Mary sings her story. She sings as Hannah did in the Old Testament, asking God for a child and the prophet Samuel was born. Mary has had an angel’s visit and a pregnancy that points to God. She visits her cousin Elizabeth and together their stories form a two-part harmony proclaiming the miraculous work of God. Mary’s story is one of being valued by God, feeling like ‘a nobody’ in her community but loved by God to participate in God’s great plans. This is a song many of us can sing. This is a story we find hope in, that our lives can also be writing new chapters of change where power shifts and the establishment of something new, just, and fair takes its place. Stories of answered prayer, stories of healing, stories of help that are experiences of our finding favor with God. The Roman occupation during Mary’s time was dire, but with God’s movement, as displayed through Mary’s child, things were going to change. Mary has been given a vision of what this child within her will be about and how his birth would change the world. Our experience of what God is doing in our lives writes stories of equity, justice and change. Living in relationship with God, we become agents for an alternative future. APPLICATION Theologian Marcus Borg makes a very interesting statement about the Bible. He says that the Bible is not about God’s stories, but it is about our stories of “our human response to God”. The Bible is a collection of stories, of Human experiences, like ours; with God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. The Bible is a book of our stories with God that reveal who God is through the interplay of our interactions with God. One story adds to another story, bringing God into focus and drawing a more complete portrait of God. How is the story of our lives adding to the stories of the Bible? What does our experiences with God say about who God is? What story is our experiences with God writing? This year we have experienced God’s help with us as we have lived through a pandemic. The virus spreads so rapidly because we are social animals. First God gave us courage to wear a mask when no one else was. Then God moved seamstresses to sew hundreds of masks to share, distribute and sell. When our interactions with others stopped, it was easy to become isolated and depressed. We have stories of phone calls, video chats, navigating the internet, texting prayers, and Facebook services that God has helped us through. Our feelings of loss rose near the surface and when someone had fallen ill and we couldn’t visit them or had died and the usual community of support was distanced our grief was accelerated. God brought comfort and connection in different ways. We had to lean on God more in these times and God held us up. With life as normal at a standstill, some other things proceeded forward like the development of the Wailuku Mission Housing. Both the County and EAH have been working on this and the grant awarded us by the State is getting ready to be released. This enactment of the parable of the Good Samaritan is becoming a reality. Not being able to worship in person, we have taken to Facebook. God has helped us navigate with these things to be church together, gathered, scattered and connected. We can see the Holy Spirit through the internet. The stories of Black Lives Matter, George Floyd, conversation on our racism, on slavery, on supremacy, Women equality on the football field kicking an extra point conversion, the rush to discover a vaccine, are all part of our stories of 2020 and of our experience with God that build on the stories of the Bible and inform us a little bit more of who God is. CONCLUSION The Bible is not complete and is still being written. Our shared experiences with God, magnifies the Lord and makes God visible in our world. Our experiences illuminate where our lives are better with God in it. Being in a relationship with God is our Salvation to living, to community, to loving, to meaning, to mission, to having faith and to pursuing hope. These stories are still being written to the Bible.
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