Bible Text: Luke 1:26-38 | Preacher: Pastor Dorry Newcomer | “Here I am, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”  Mary’s answer to the angel is one of the most inspirational verses in all of scripture:  “Here I am, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”  Can you imagine, having that much trust?  Remember, Mary was probably very young, just a teenager, at the time the angel appeared to her.  Luke records that Gabriel told Mary, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.”  What did she know about the Holy Spirit?  What did she know about the power of the Most High?  Well, she knew enough. “Here I am, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”

Today is the third Sunday of Advent, when we traditionally focus on joy.  But today what I’d really like to talk about is courage.  According to 1 John chapter 4, the key verses I put on the front of our bulletins, God is love, and God’s perfect love drives out fear.  Have you ever thought about Love being the antidote to fear?  One of the reasons Jesus came to earth is so that God’s love made flesh could cast out the fear that is such a big part of life on earth.

I like this idea, of Jesus coming so we might have “not fear”.  We could say Jesus came down that we might have courage–which is a word that, at its root, means heart.  “Coeur” is the French word for heart.  Big hearted doesn’t just mean being loving and generous and all of that.  It means being courageous.  Seems to me Mary had a ton of courage.  We have all heard about the Grinch, whose heart was two sizes too small.  But Mary’s heart–Mary’s courage?  It was at least two sizes too big, compared to the rest of her.  Frankly, her courage kind of scares me!  She sets the bar really high, you know?  I can’t think about Mary and not think about what it would be like if I had some of her courage, and could say yes to God with as much trust as she had.

So I’ve got to tell you this story.  Back in 2011-2012, I got the chance to go on a mission trip to Mexico with my kids over Christmas break.  They are out of college and on their own now, but at the time, they were in high school, and we were going to Mexico with ten other youth and adults from our church, on a trip organized by Discovery Service Projects, based out of Bucks County.  We were leaving the day after Christmas, so first thing I need to make clear is that we really did go on a mission trip!  Yes, we flew into Cancun.  Yes we spent one day at the beach.  But every other day, we worked in the hot Mexico sun helping to build a hurricane proof community center at a Presbyterian church about ten miles–and worlds away–from the glitz and glamour of Cancun.

We went for our orientation meeting in early December, and for the most part it was exactly what I expected:  information about what to bring, what to wear, what kind of work we would be doing, all of that.  But mid-way through the orientation they asked each of the adults to take home a large trash bag full of medical supplies, and pack it in our luggage when we went to Mexico.  Apparently, if they were to box up and mail these medical supplies, the Mexican government would charge such a high duty, it would be more than the supplies are worth, and there was no guarantee the stuff will get to its intended destination.  But if volunteers like me would just bring it with us, there’s no duty, and the Presbyterian minister at the work site said he would make sure it all got to the right places.  That makes sense, right?  Everyone else was nodding their head in agreement.

But not me.  The way it looked to me, they were asking us to smuggle!  I signed up for the trip because I wanted to discover more about God and God’s people.  But I gotta tell you.  I was not big on the idea of smuggling medical supplies into Mexico.  I don’t like to get in trouble.  Some of you have heard about how in second grade my class took a tour of the Bradford County Court House, and they locked us in the holding cells, and I have had a jail phobia ever since.  If I have a phobia of American jails, you can bet I have an even bigger phobia of jails in a foreign country where I don’t speak the language!

While the trip leaders described how we could just stuff these supplies into our suitcases, no big deal, I decided it is a big deal to me.  Travelling can have plenty of hassles as it is.  I don’t need to be pulled aside and accused of doing something wrong. I decided that other, more experienced volunteers can get the medical supplies into Mexico.  Let me just get through my first trip without any extra issues, and then maybe next year I’ll feel more confident.  Not everyone has to be a smuggler, right?

But when the orientation was over, and almost everyone else had left, there were still several bags of medical supplies that had not been taken.  I felt a nudge to take a bag.  It was not a moment like Mary’s where I said, “Here I am!  I’ll do whatever you need, God!”  I did not take the bag cheerfully, or willingly.  I did not feel a sense of assurance that it would all be okay.  I only felt the nudge to be a smuggler.  After great debate with myself I finally took a bag full of medical supplies and put it in my car.  When I got home, I put the bag in our garage, where I walked past it every day and wondered, “How am I going to smuggle those things into Mexico?”, and not quite knowing what to do about it.

One day seeing that bag of medical supplies made me think of God asking Mary to carry his son into the world.  I’m not sure we could say, technically, that Mary was smuggling God into the world.  But it’s an intriguing idea, isn’t it?  Smuggling God.  Carrying something hidden into a place where it’s not supposed to be.  Even for us who have heard the story hundreds of times, our guts tell us, God is supposed to be in heaven, not born in a stable in Bethlehem!  If you think about it that way, Mary was smuggling God into the world, wasn’t she?  Like me taking the medical supplies to Mexico, she did it for good reasons.  But think how risky it was for her!  In Mary’s day, you could be stoned to death for committing adultery, and since she and Joseph were not married yet, Mary was literally putting her life on the line by consenting to the angel’s decree. But she does not complain, she does not question, she simply believes.  The angel tells her, nothing is impossible with God, and Mary says, bring it on.  Give me that bag.  Give me that assignment.  Let me smuggle God into the world, just as you have said.

The Virgin Mary.  God Smuggler.  What do you think?  Do you like that image?  Carrying God’s son inside of her, precious, secret cargo.  Not sure how she was going to answer any questions that might arise.  Not sure how to handle things with the authorities.  Not sure others would approve.  Not sure if it was going to be safe.  But sure of the sacred opportunity she had been presented with to bring some light into a dark world, some tenderness into a harsh world, some order into a fallen world.  Mary trusted God enough to become a God smuggler.

And so in the end, I decided to take a page out of Mary’s book and consented to being a smuggler.  I used some coupons I’d been accumulating from LL Bean and ordered myself a bigger suitcase, one that will hold what I need for the trip to Mexico, plus the bag of the medical supplies.  I was relatively calm as I checked my luggage in Philadelphia.  But wouldn’t you know, when we got to Mexico, my suitcase did not arrive with the others!  My daughter’s guitar, my suitcase, and the suitcase of one of the other moms on the trip did not arrive in Cancun with us.  The plane was completely full, and apparently not everyone’s luggage would fit into the cargo hold.  They put the excess, including our stuff, on a later plane.

We had to wait ten hours for our luggage to be delivered to us, and I was a nervous wreck.  Every car that pulled into the driveway of our little motel had me wondering, is this a police car, or a regular car?  Finally, a man the airline contracted with to deliver lost luggage arrived in a little red sedan.  No police were involved.  But let me tell you what a close call it was.  My suitcase arrived completely intact.  But the suitcase of the other mom on the trip?  They went through her suitcase with a fine-toothed comb.  The Mexican authorities had opened up her boxes of Rice Krispie treats, and kept a few for themselves.  Her clothing and toiletries had been searched completely.  Thankfully she did not have any medical equipment in that bag.  But my bag, that was full of all kinds of weird medical devices?  Not a single item in my bag had been disturbed.

Lately I’ve been thinking about the relationship between courage and joy.  It’s hard to feel joy when you feel afraid.  It’s wonderful when we everything is going good and we can feel joy in the moment.  But many times, joy is something we can only experience in retrospect. I cannot say I felt much joy as I waited for my suitcase to arrive.  Boy did we all do some rejoicing that night during our devotional time!  In the years since then, remembering that experience has helped me return to joy when I’ve been afraid. Joy it too precious a gift to only experience on rare occasions!  It is something that grows steadier and steadier in us as our faith matures.

As I mentioned earlier, my kids are all grown up now, so Santa doesn’t stop at our house anymore.  Now it’s up to me to fill their stockings.  Yesterday I realized I needed one more gift for our son, so I stopped in at Chipotle to get him a gift card.  He loves to go there for lunch.  I did not expect that errand to be the source of joy, but it was.  Look how cute this is!  First of all, the gift card has a hologram, as you move it you see a burrito gradually get eaten and then the wrapper even gets crumpled up!  But look how perfectly the card fits into this little miniature shopping bag.

When I got home I decided, as cute as this is, if I don’t put it in something bigger, it’s likely to get lost in the shuffle.  So I rummaged around and found this little Joy stocking.  I’m going to put the little joy stocking into his big stocking.  And I thought, wow!  That’s how joy works.  Joy is tender, it can easily get lost.  We need to protect our joy!  Joy comes when we realize God is with us.  Joy comes when we realize our souls have been designed to perfectly hold God’s Spirit.  Joy comes when place God’s love deep inside ourselves, and carry it with us, and allow ourselves to be smugglers of light in the darkness of our world.

I’m sure Mary was well aware of the risk involved by saying yes to God.  But she said, “I am the Lord’s servant.  May it be to me as you have said” because she was also aware of the sacred opportunity she had been presented with to bring some light into a dark world, some tenderness into a harsh world, some order into a fallen world.  Mary trusted God enough to become a God smuggler.  I hope we will be God smugglers, too. Amen.