They all want to be Mary – but did Mary want to be Mary? For Mary was not a child, with perhaps romantic notions of what it would be like to have her own little infant to cuddle in her arms. Mary knew that having a baby was not something to be taken lightly; unwed as she was at the time she is visited by the angel, she certainly knew that to have a child out of wedlock would make her an outcast, and she had no way of knowing how Joseph would react to what this angel was proposing – that she bear the Son of God.

I wonder if the scales were tipped for Mary because of the angel’s greeting, those first words he utters: “Greetings, favored one!”. And then quickly repeated, as if the angel figures that this will seal the deal: “you have found favor with God.” And yet, what a strange blessing this is.

We tend to think of blessings as being made up of the good things in life, it is why we say to each other, “be thankful for your blessings.” Blessings, we think, are the goodies in life, things like health, wealth, social standing. Those whom God favors, we think, are those who enjoy “the good life.”

And yet here is Mary, God’s favored one, blessed by being a peasant woman living in an occupied land on the edge of the Roman Empire, blessed by having her child born in a stable far from the family home, blessed by having to immediately flee as a refugee to Egypt, blessed by going on to raise a child who will be executed as a common criminal.

Well might we think, this is a blessing?

And yet the gospels affirm that Mary is blessed, and Mary, deep in her soul, knows this as well, and we know it too. We might have our questions – Mary certainly did as well – but we and Mary know that it is a blessing to bear God into this world. We know that it is a blessing that God calls us, that God intends to draw us into a partnership with what God is doing in the world; it is a blessing, albeit a strange one, that God wants humanity to be part of the solution to the problems which have bedeviled us ever since those brief idyllic days in the garden. It seems that the Almighty is not going to wave a magic wand and fix it all just like that, but instead invites us, calls us, to be partners in the holy work of saving us and all God’s people and indeed the entirety of creation.

Alan Culpepper reminds us, as Mary has before, that “Acceptability, prosperity, and comfort have never been the essence of God’s blessing”. (Luke, New Interpreter’s Bible). God’s blessings are not about “Your Best Life Now”, as those slick and immaculately groomed and photogenic purveyors of the Prosperity Gospel would have us believe – God’s blessings are all wrapped up in inviting us to find our way into what God is doing in the world, and most often what God is doing is all tied up in making life better for God’s community, not just individual members of it, for our neighbors out there, not just us in here, for our enemies across the border, not just our buddies right next door.

We know, as did Mary, that this strange blessing is beyond our abilities, it is more than we can handle. Mary asks, “How can this be?”, and is met with the assurance that “nothing will be impossible for God.” When we dread the hard work and the pain of the mighty work that God calls us to as we struggle to birth God into this troubled world, into our troubled souls, we do so in the awareness that we are not fully in charge of our destinies, our lives, or of the success of the task laid before us. “How can this be?” – it can be because it is not all up to us and our limited resources and recalcitrant wills and feeble strength, but because “nothing is impossible with God.” This, Fred Craddock tells us, is “the creed behind all other creeds” – “nothing is impossible with God.” The sick will be healed, the poor will know themselves blessed, the powerless will be vindicated, the addict will be freed, the dead will rise to new life.

That one word makes all the difference. With. Not “for God”, not, “nothing is impossible for God”. No, nothing is impossible with God.

Our challenge, as for Mary, is to make the choice. For angels still come, and they still pose the question to us, asking if we will make the decision to give birth to the promise, to, in the words of Barbara Brown Taylor, “agree to smuggle God into the world inside your body.” Are we willing to say “yes!” to what God is doing in the world, in our communities, in our lives? Given the opportunity to align ourselves with God’s purposes, will we do so? Will we let it be with us according to God’s word?

We always have ample reasons to just say “no”, to dismiss the angel’s invitation with a “thanks, but no thanks.” Busy schedules, doubts about our ability, need to think on it for awhile, what would the neighbors say, you fill in the blank. Or maybe its because of the slippers. You see, this year my Christmas shopping list has “slippers” on it, the kind that are sort of like moccasins, lined with fleece, just the thing to keep your tootsies toasty even as we crank the heat down in these tough economic times. I can’t find them anywhere, on-line, in stores – they are all sold out. I take this as a sign that folk are reacting to the economic turmoil by cocooning, staying close to home, pulling in and hunkering down. A sign that this year we have an additional reason to turn the angel away. It is just not a propitious time to have a baby, to bear new life into this troubled world.

Mary, and Luke, they say otherwise. Mary, unmarried, poor, out in the backwaters of the empire, and we, in a land racked by economic meltdown and wars abroad and scandals at all levels of government and business, hear the good news that with God nothing is impossible.

We can say yes: through our friendship and prayers and giving to a village church and its people in Sri Lanka, a church and a people who have known decades of civil war and poverty, we can be a light of hope that sustains their pastor and congregation through their darkest hours.

We can say yes: through our giving to the Deacons Fund, we can provide and help and hope to families here on Cape Cod facing foreclosure or an inability to keep up with heating costs.

We can say yes: through something as seemingly ordinary as gathering here together once a week, sharing our stories and our concerns, we can build each other up in times which for many are anxiety provoking at least, and maybe even downright scary.

We can say yes: when our best-laid plans get upended, when life’s unexpected surprises arrive unannounced at our door, when it seems that God has something new and exciting and maybe even a little terrifying waiting for you, we can say to the angel, “Yes, let it be me with me according to your word – just let me turn off the T.V. and kick off the slippers.”

Greetings, favored ones. The Lord is with you. Do not be afraid. For nothing will be impossible with God.