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Mhm. Everyone asks about the baby, but how are you? This was the only question I truly wanted to ask when I visited a friend who was a new mother a few months ago. My goal

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was to offer her two gifts a meal and no expectations. My clear sense of purpose originated in my own recent entry into motherhood. I didn't want her to feel that she had to open her door to

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entertain me. Let me hold the baby or tire her. With my unsolicited mommy advice, I am grateful. She invited me to enter into her home , allowed me to put the food in the refrigerator

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and sit down on her couch for a little while while she fed and rocked her precious one. We talked about the things that come first in. Speaking of a newborn, weight and height, birth story

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, and hospitals, stay the wonder and the worry . There was a pause and I said, everyone asks about the baby, but how are you when a baby is born? She said, the baby

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gives birth to a new parent. The truth and the beauty of it bowled me over, and I sat stricken on her couch. She was right for every infant A new person is born through the act

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of parenting. Singer songwriter Brandi Carlile sings of this experience in her song called The Mother. In singing about her own child. She says the first things that she took from me were selfishness and sleep.

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She broke 1000 heirlooms I was never meant to keep . She filled my life with color, canceled plans , and trashed my car, but none of that was ever who we are. One does not necessarily

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need to be apparent to really know this truth. Aunts and uncles lavished their kinfolk with generosity. Mentors give up their pursuits for Mentees. The master pours out their strength for the protege. Greater love has

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no one. Then. The friend who lays down their life for another, giving yourself to the formation of another person, changes you. You must set aside your preferences, your time, your plans,

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and ultimately displace yourself ever so slightly from the center of your universe. So when the Angel Gabriel came to visit Mary, just 18 verses before today's reading , that's when he came to talk about, Gabriel

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came to see if mary could imagine her life given over to the messiah, could marry, envision setting aside her plans and taking up God's plans. She wasn't expected to become a shell of a person,

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abandoning what previously mattered to her for the sake of another. She was invited to become more of a person, established as a giving constant loving presence. For someone else, mary is approached with the suggestion

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that she could relinquish some of the self. She has been to give life to another and ultimately find the self she is called to be. That's a lot to carry. Everyone asks about the baby,

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but how are you carrying that, mary mary sings too anticipating her child, and when she does, she reveals her own birth as a believer, radically changed by carrying the word of God with all of

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her body, her soul and her might in our haste to get to the little lord, jesus asleep on the hay. We shouldn't miss this miracle. We must behold the birth of mary. The magnificat

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reveals the birth of mary. The theologian mary is committed to radical economic, social and political reflection, she exhibits spiritual curiosity, She knows her own tradition well enough to echo Hannah's song, she knows her

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neighbor well enough to speak of the poverty and disempowerment faced under roman occupation. She is engaging with the public life of her time, unafraid to call out the mighty, affluent and well connected mary is reborn

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through her hope in her birth. She sings with new conviction. She dedicates herself to the God who tears tyrants from Thrones and empowers the overlooked. She sings of God reversing who and what is full and

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empty. Each of us is meant to live like mary carrying the word of God within us, daring to hope that God is making all things new in christ here we are on the grounds of Austin Seminary

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where new theologians are born every day. We are a churchy bunch. We serve the ordered ministries and offices of the church. We share our time, treasure and talent with the church. I see a

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lot of God bearers tonight who like mary promise God to grow the word within. We've had with God an encounter that changed our lives a moment when we realized that God was visiting us to find out if

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we could imagine our lives primarily being about the life of jesus christ. For some here tonight, God may even now be preparing you to commit your life to christ in a new way than you ever have

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before. Everyone asks about the word you carry and how it shapes your life and compels your action. Everyone asks about your congregation, your programs, your numbers, your budget. But I am here to

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ask, how are you? Everyone checks in about that meeting, your teaching, schedule, your book proposal, your sermon series. But how are you ? How is it for you carrying God's word these

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days? I ask because the word mary bore and nurtured faithfully. She carried all the way to the cross. It was as Simeon warned mary behold, this child is destined for the fall and rising of

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many in Israel, and will be a sign which will be spoken against a sword, will pierce your own soul also, theologians who carry the word long enough. We'll see it killed, like when everyone

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believed their position was the truth. After months of discernment and prayer and discussion, the vote of that church council broke your heart and formed a rift. You lament, you were an advocate, You fought

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the good fight, you knocked on the door at midnight, you called Time's up and justice was still denied. Let's step out in faith, You urged . You cast an expansive vision for bold generosity,

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but self preservationist thinking won the day. Any God bearer at some point identifies with that pain. Any God bearer at some point, identifies with the passion and anguish of watching the word you carry killed.

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It reminds me of the Pelican which graces this pulpit , wounding her breast to let nourishing blood flow, Jesus taught that a seed must fall into the ground and die. Jesus instructed disciples to take up their

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cross and to lose their lives. But with each fresh, fresh frustration and disappointment on the journey of God bearing, it grows harder for the soul to magnify God. Some days the spirit slows in rejoicing

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in God, our savior, two gifts a meal and no expectations. As I sank farther into my friend's couch, it occurred to me that I offered my friend what I sought to be fed. Mhm

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. And to be released from expectations. You see my visit to her home was just as much a ministry of presence with her as it was an absence from another place on a particularly rough day in congregational

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ministry, I leapt at the chance to exit the office and I could imagine no better company than another human being in the fetal position, whaling. Mhm . But then as my friend beautifully proclaimed that God

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was birthing her, I heard the voice of God remind me that God is always birthing a new servant in each and every one of us and we wept exhausted and overwhelmed. We commiserated on all the work

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that was ahead of us that day. Together, though we were spent and empty and I couldn't imagine what God could possibly ask of either of us. And yet the tears were still flowing. The milk

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was still flowing. God's resurrection power is still flowing for every God bearer and does not forsake us. The strength of God is still flowing from his arm to uplift the lowly and bring down the mighty.

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The mercy of God is still flowing from generation to generation. The life blood of christ is still flowing at this table to fill the hungry with good things that we may be fed without expectation that any of

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this is our doing, but indeed, comes only