Luke 1 :39-45 20^th December 2009.

I am going to make a prediction - In 2700 AD I know there will be a great miracle in Jerusalem…

Don’t worry I haven’t taken leave of my senses and of course if I did try to convince you it could only be because it would take a mighty big miracle for any of you here to be around to prove me wrong.

But we have just heard Micah do such a prophesy. For in the Old Testament reading we heard that amazingly clear foretelling about the birth of Christ, Micah gave many details about what this baby would be like. The first verse tells us the baby will be born in Bethlehem, he will be descended from the House of Judah; he will become a ruler over Israel, and he would shepherd his flock in the name of the Lord.

Whilst we know the name Bethlehem well, 2,000 years ago it wasn’t a well-known place; it was in fact so insignificant that Micah had to say where Bethlehem was. The one significant thing about Bethlehem it that it was the birthplace of David, Israel’s greatest king, and an ancestor of Christ.

And Jesus chose to be a shepherd, not a literal one, but a shepherd of his people. Indeed he was a shepherd much like his ancestor David who also had very humble beginnings.

And what’s more we know when it was written, no one can say it was all made up after Jesus’ birth. Later in his book Micah calls us to ‘Do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God’. Not only did Micah obviously listen to the word of God, but he trusted God and knew he must pass the message on to the people of Judah.

Many people over the centuries have tried to make prophecies. Where I was brought up we had Mother Shipton - who made numerous predictions but her main, big one, that the world would end in 1890’s was obviously wrong. It is easy to foresee the obvious, impossible for ordinary people to prophesy God’s mysteries. So I wonder if we, the church, make enough of the prophesies of the Old Testament, for they cannot be denied, no one can argue that what Micah prophesied came true. It was these words of Micah that guided the wise men to find the baby Jesus – they knew them. Do we make sure we tell them?

Like Micah Mary also trusted implicitly in God - for

has more ever been asked of any woman, anybody, than God asked of Mary, and she truly did as Micah said, she walked humbly with God, she sought no name for herself, no power, she served God all her life from the day the angels visited her, but she never claimed any power for herself.

And just think what happened to Mary. She was a young teenager who had heard the angel’s monumental message that she is to be the mother of the Messiah, in fact the other parent to the Son of God. She must have been petrified, perhaps at first she felt she was dreaming, but showing great faith she agrees. She agreed, even though this pregnancy must have seemed to spell the end of her engagement to Joseph. And remember where she lived - she was living in the Middle East a part of the world where even today someone who is deemed to have been unfaithful may be stoned to death. She must have been the victim of accusations – she was brave.

She agreed to trust in God enough to go ahead with what she knew would seem so scandalous to the outsider, of course there was nothing scandalous about but how could she explain it?

In Mary’s time pregnant women did not travel; they stayed at home. But as we heard Mary gets up and

goes to visit her cousin Elizabeth. Is it to find refuge with an understanding relative, to avoid all the criticisms being thrown at her because of what seemed to be the scandalous circumstances around her pregnancy? Or was she guided by God to meet Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, who would proclaim the coming of Christ? We can only guess.

But the meeting of these two pregnant women is full of surprises, full of mystery. For it seems as if the babies greeted each other, John in his mother’s womb did much more - he jumped for joy!

And it wasn’t just Mary who had done wrong in the eyes of the people of the time, but for Elizabeth to be pregnant as her age would also be considered scandalous.

So we have this meeting of two vulnerable women, no doubt both looking to each other for support. When they meet Elizabeth immediately sees something in Mary which is special, for she calls Mary ‘the mother of my Lord’. In the Jewish culture of the time, the young deeply respect their elders, but here we have the older women paying tribute to her much younger relative.

And if we had heard the rest of the chapter we would have heard Mary’s response ‘the Song of Mary’ the Magnificat’. The celebration song of the greatness of God, a God who saves, one who looks with love on a humble servant, A God who does great things, whose name is holy.

And these women were not from powerful families, they were two women committed to serving God in carrying out his will, and to do that they were each carrying a very special baby.

These two women were responsible for ushering in the new era, this event which will turn the world upside down.

And if we listen to Mary she surely opens up to us the joy of serving, of trusting in God. She opens up the mystery of faith.

Mary points the way ahead for us, she directs us towards her Son. Her life reminds us that we can be as she was, the faithful disciple, she points the way for us, shows us how we can bring the Good News of the birth of Christ into the world.

But what I think we also learn is that if we truly trust God, he never asks of us more than we can do. That young teenager, Mary was probably, must have been, scared out of her wits, but she did as God asked, she totally trusted in God, that he would guide and strengthen her, she trusted in what the angels told her. And we can see that whatever happened she did cope, we never read of her running away, trying to escape.

Micah showed the way ahead to the Jewish people, he points out the close connection between true religion and the way we lead our lives, and Mary carried that belief on. The Queen of Heaven in her earthly life showed us what to do, how to respond to God, how to have faith and to trust. She showed us we can live in a way that magnifies and rejoices in the Lord, that nothing is impossible, and that we can achieve it by the grace of her Son, our Saviour.