YES!

Most of us who celebrate Christmas hopefully recognize its link to the birth of Christ. However, it is so easy to just stop there, and not recognize the ongoing mystery of the Incarnation that the feast really celebrates! We not only recall the event in Bethlehem centuries ago; we also celebrate Christ‘s continuing presence in our world right here and now, today!
This weekend‘s readings tell us something really quite amazing as we prepare for this Christmas season. Did you realize that there would not be any Christmas without ―us‖ – without that wonderful Jewish girl, Mary! The truly amazing thing is that what God wants for us folks will actually manage to get done through those of us who are willing to cooperate and be a real part of the action!
You would think that God would have learned by now that we‘re a rather inept bunch – not the kind of folks you‘d rely on to accomplish really big things. Perhaps it is that one little word uttered by Mary in our Gospel, and by so many others before her and since – that tiny, but powerful ―YES!‖ ―Yes, I‘ll bear the child!‖ Perhaps that ―YES‖ is what keeps God coming back to us again and again, extending the invitation, issuing the call, planting the seed, seeking us to help inch the Kingdom along!
And so, the exciting event we are about to celebrate is not so much about what happened 2000 years ago in Bethlehem. The exciting thing is what is happening right here at St. Mary‘s in Pylesville, among us as a pregnant people called in so many ways to give birth to God made flesh in our lives! Mary had some legitimate concerns in accepting the reality of the message that would forever change her life and the life of our world. She asked questions seeking clarification, then gave her assent with faith.
As we prepare for the great feast of God born among us, let us all dare to speak that most powerful of words, that ―YES‖ that links us to Mary and all the others! Let us shout it if we are courageous enough, or whisper it if we are afraid. However, let us each speak the word that God longs to hear from us. This Christmas as we ponder what God asks of us, let us thunder our resounding ―YES!‖
It is when we seek God‘s will, not our own, that God can really come and make his home in us. Through our lives, his love can then become real – enfleshed – in our world. That is God‘s invitation and challenge to us! As individuals and as a Church, we can have confidence as we face whatever problems life might throw at us, confidence, not in our own abilities and talents, but in God‘s faithfulness and power. Nothing is impossible to God!