Commitment

This was originally preached on December 21, 2008. There has been some updating.

You've probably not heard of Katherine Gun. She worked in the Government Communications Headquarters, an intelligence organization in Britain. One day in early 2003, she received an email from the National Security Agency in the U.S. requesting Britain's help in bugging the U.N. offices of 6 nations. These 6 were seen as swing votes on the U.N. Security Council for getting international approval of the invasion of Iraq. The 29 year old translator knew that this was a violation of the Vienna Conventions which govern global diplomacy. So, having a conscience, she leaked the email to a British newspaper. She was fired. Worse, because Britain has no first amendment right to free speech and because as a government employee, she was subject to the Official Secrets Act, Katherine Gun was arrested and faced trial and imprisonment. Though this was front page news throughout the rest of the world, here in the U.S. the story was barely a blip on the screen. You can read the story of this shy but courageous whistleblower in the book The Spy Who Tried to Stop a War. There is also a film called Official Secrets with Keira Knightly playing Katherine Gun.

Today we consider a different young woman making an even more momentous decision. She was probably in her early teens, just past puberty. Her marriage was probably arranged and she had little say in it. She was taught how to keep a home, prepare meals, say some necessary prayers and do the few religious rituals that women were allowed to perform. No one taught her to read. She came from a small town and people were conservative. There is no reason to assume that Mary was anything special. Except, maybe, for her name.

Mary is our version of the name Miriam, which comes from the Hebrew word for “bitter.” But it can also mean “rebellious.” It is a curious choice for parents to saddle their infant daughter with. She was probably named for a deceased female relative as a way of keeping the name alive. And it was a popular name; there are a plethora of Marys in the gospels. Perhaps it was used so often because it was the name of Moses' sister, who watched over her infant brother when he was set afloat in the Nile. She was also a prophetess. Based on the age of the Hebrew language used, the Song of Miriam is the oldest written portion of the Bible. (Exodus 15:20-21) Despite the patriarchal structure of Jewish life, women have always figured prominently in God's plan. Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Leah, Rahab, Deborah and others have pivotal roles in the Old Testament, as do Lydia, Priscilla, Junias, Joanna, and the various Marys in the New.

But it all leads up to and flows from the decision this Mary makes in today's Gospel. (Luke 1:26-38) And it is a difficult decision. Becoming the mother of the Messiah is not like winning a TV game show. The immediate fallout could be fatal. Mary is a virgin and betrothed. Her pregnancy could get her thrown out of her home, divorced by her fiance, and possibly stoned to death as an adulterer. Even if God protects her from the worst, she would be a disgraced woman, an outcast. So her decision is not an impulsive one. On the one hand, God is bestowing on her an immense honor. On the other hand, it will totally change her life, and humanly speaking, not for the better.

Nor will it end when the child is born. She will have to raise him, perhaps alone, probably in extreme poverty. The average poor person in our society is a single mother. And in Jesus' day, there were no food stamps, no welfare programs, and no notion of equality between the sexes. By saying “Yes” to God, Mary is facing, at best, a life full of whispers and at worst, a life of hardship.

And at first, it looks like the consequences will be bad. She goes to stay with her kinswoman Elizabeth for a while. I don't think this is done out of a desire to support the older woman so much as to get Mary out of town before she starts showing.

And Joseph is indeed thinking of divorce. Betrothal was as binding as marriage, even though the couple was not to live together or sleep together until after the wedding ceremony. Joseph is torn between preserving his reputation as a righteous man and keeping Mary from being stoned to death. If he doesn't put her away, no respectable Jew will do business with him. But Joseph is not so self-righteous that he feels Mary should pay the ultimate price for apparently cheating on him. Perhaps he works out Mary's exile with her parents. If and when she returns to Nazareth, the divorce will be history. She'd be shunned but perhaps the village elders and the Pharisees would spare her for the sake of her baby.

But then Joseph has a dream in which he is told to marry his betrothed and raise her son, the Messiah. It's not exactly a happy ending. There will always be rumors about the circumstances of Jesus' birth. Mary and Joseph will also have to flee the country to avoid the paranoid and murderous King Herod. But both parents are committed to following through on their decisions to obey God. And that's what makes them heroic.

Commitment is a quality seriously lacking in today's society. Companies show no commitment to their employees, dropping pensions, downgrading healthcare insurance, and cutting the salaries of those at the bottom rather than those at the top. C.E.O.s show no commitment to the continuing health of their companies, preferring short term profits over long term sustainability. Sexual partners show no commitment to each other, refusing to make public and legal vows of lifelong fidelity. Many parents, and especially fathers, show no commitment to raising their children, leaving them behind so the parents can follow their own desires.

And sadly, a lot of Christians show no commitment to their faith, picking and choosing which beliefs and moral principles to follow. The result is that there is little difference between the lifestyles of self-identified Christians and those of nonbelievers. These “Christians” like the idea of Jesus as their Savior but not as their Lord. They like the idea that God loves them as they are but not the idea that God loves them enough to change them into better people. They want God both to love them and to leave them alone to do as they please.

There are reasons why we shy away from commitment. It means hard work. Make a commitment to Habitat for Humanity and it means hours of physical labor.

Commitment means responsibility. Make a commitment to raise a child and it means being responsible for feeding her, seeing she does her homework, and teaching her to be a moral human being.

Commitment means giving up some of your freedom. Make the commitment to marry someone and you're not free to have other lovers.

Commitment means reordering your priorities. It means sacrifice. It means maintaining your focus on what's essential and what's important. And so we avoid commitments.

But commitment is necessary for anything important to succeed. Nothing worthwhile comes to fruition without committed people behind it. Thomas Edison tested literally hundreds of filaments before he found the one that would work in his lightbulb. It took scientists 21 years to go from the discovery of the connection between insulin and diabetes to figuring out how to produce insulin for medical use in humans. J.K. Rowling's first manuscript was rejected by 12 different publishers before it was accepted. Were it not for the persistence of committed people this world would be a darker, sicker, and less enchanting place.

But those are examples of people committed to a project they themselves conceived. Mary and Joseph were making a commitment to obey God and didn't know exactly what it would entail. They knew the stories of the prophets: how they were persecuted and even martyred. They knew the popular idea of the Messiah, a holy warrior like his ancestor David, who would drive out the Gentiles and establish the kingdom of God militarily. And they knew what happened when people tried to revolt against the Romans—they got crucified. So they knew that the path they were taking was fraught with danger.

Yet they said “Yes.” Far from Jerusalem, farther still from Rome, this teenage girl and this young handiman from a small town said “Yes” to following God's way, though it put them at odds with the powers that be. What they agreed to do couldn't be less likely to succeed. But they trusted in God and reoriented their lives to accommodate their commitment.

Mary and Joseph's commitment paid off. Jesus was indeed the Messiah, albeit not the kind everyone thought he'd be. He dealt with the powers which oppress people, but not in the way everyone expected. He got himself killed, as some feared, but even that didn't turn out the way people would have predicted: he rose again. The kingdom of God did get started, but it isn't a political or military kingdom. It has no borders. And Jesus has commissioned us to spread his kingdom.

It takes commitment to follow Jesus. It means hard work. The kingdom of God isn't going to come about through wishful thinking. It means responsibility. Every person you meet is either a citizen of the kingdom of God or a potential citizen and so they must be treated that way. And it means giving up some freedom. We aren't free to indulge in the sins we'd like to. We need to shed every harmful habit that hinders us on our mission. It means sacrifices and reordering our priorities. It means maintaining focus on Jesus: who he is, what he has done for us and is doing in us, and how we respond.

There are many who honor Jesus with their lips but not in their lives. They love his words that comfort them but not those that command or challenge them. They want eternal life but they won't surrender control of this life for it. The kingdom only manifests itself in the hearts and lives of those committed to its principles and its king. It has to be more than just someone's interest or hobby. The holy self-sacrificial love of God in Christ for everyone, be they neighbor or enemy, has to show itself in every aspect of our life if it is to have a real impact in this world. Jesus needs disciples, not dabblers. Which are you?