Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!

Have you ever noticed how the Bible seems to be a study in contrasts? Have you noticed in your Christian walk that blessings often seem to be paradoxes? A study in contrast..Blessing as paradox. Let's talk about this a bit more.

Think about the story of Abram in Genesis. God tells Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing." God blesses Abram but Abram also has to leave his homeland, his kindred, and his father's house. And he goes, here he is seventy-five years old, and he leaves on a long journey. Abram becomes Abraham and his wife Sarai becomes Sarah. Now think of the contrast here -- Abram leaves and becomes Abraham, told that his descendants will be as numerous as the stars -- he believes and it is credited to him as righteousness by God. Sarah laughs to herself when she hears that she will become a mother when she is nearly as old as Abraham who is a hundred years old at this time.

She laughs, but God keeps his promise and she has a son -- Isaac. Laughter from Sarah, but faith from Abraham.

Now let us fast-forward to what I call the end of the Old Testament times. Again -- a study in contrasts. Zechariah, serving in the temple, getting on in years along with his wife Elizabeth who was barren. Told by the angel Gabriel that Elizabeth would bear a son who was to be named John, Zechariah asks how he will "know that this is so." Doubt rears its head, but Gabriel tells him that God has sent him and it will be so, but because of Zechariah's questioning he will become "unable to speak, until the day these things occur."

Elizabeth conceives and responds with "This is what the Lord has done for me when he looked favorably on me..." Doubt from Zechariah countered by praise and gratitude from Elizabeth.

Six months along, a kinswoman of Elizabeth whose name was Mary receives a visit from Gabriel. She is a teenager, a young teenager at that, possibly not even a teenager, maybe only twelve years old and she is told that she will conceive and bear a son and name him Jesus. Her simple question, totally understandable, "How can this be, since I am a virgin?" Gabriel tells her that the "power of the Most High will overshadow" her, for "nothing will be impossible with God." Mary's response: "Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word." Faith and willingness to go with God.

Mary visits her kinswoman Elizabeth and the baby in Elizabeth's womb "leaped." Elizabeth is filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaims that Mary is blessed and "blessed is the fruit of your womb." She is humble, almost unable to believe that Mary, the mother of the Lord, has come to visit her! And she continues that she who believed there would be a fulfillment of What God had spoken of, is blessed. Belief, awe, gratitude, praising God!

A study in contrasts, blessing as paradox, a thread of hope because of the promised Messiah!

Elizabeth and Zechariah are blessed with a son and he goes before Jesus, preparing the way of the Lord, preaching repentance, baptizing with water, true to his calling to the point of literally losing his head.

Mary and Joseph are blessed with a son, and later Mary's joy will be turn to sorrow as her heart is broken seeing her son, the hope of the world, hanging on a cross. Blessing as paradox. A burden of death for Jesus, the cross is a blessing for us. Paradox in that Jesus' death is the door to life, for us.

Mary's soul magnifies the Lord, rejoicing in God our Savior! How about your soul? Is God magnified, is the Savior manifested and magnified by your soul, by you, in word and deed? We are blessed here in this church of ours, and all generations would acknowledge the blessings we have received, Jesus has done great things for us. But do we allow him to do great things through us? Do we allow him to lift up the lowly through us? Do we allow Jesus to fill the hungry with good things through us? Is the mercy of the Risen Christ magnified through us? Do you realize that we, you and me, have been blessed to be a blessing? Oh, we might smile, even laugh sometimes when we think that we can't do what we have been, are being, called to do, but God will do them anyway. We might even doubt from time to time that God will work through us, but God will do it anyway. So the question is one of are we like Sarah and Zechariah, who ended up praising God, or are we like Abraham, stepping out in faith; like Elizabeth, praising God for his blessings; like Mary, praising and giving glory to God, that his works, his mercy, his love be magnified by our souls, in our lives, in the lives of others?

Brothers and sisters: you have heard this story, how do you fit into it?

AMEN.