Saying Yes to Your Life

God With US: The Doctrine of the Incarnation Week 2

Luke 1:26-38

Rev. David Collins

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One of the temptations we face this time of year is the temptation to say no to life.

It can sneak up on us in small ways. You see a neighbor put their Christmas lights up “too early” and you grumble. Or someone wishes you Happy Holidays when you’re feeling more like Merry Christmas, or the other way around…and suddenly you feel that little flare of resistance. None of it’s a big deal, but it reveals something in us…that instinct decide ahead of time how things ought to go and then bristle when they don’t.

Keep that idea in mind, or just look directly at whoever you think that was about, as we go to our scripture today. Today we are reading the story of the Annunciation, in which Mary is told that her life is about to be very different than the one she imagined.

And while her story is in a different universe from grumbling about holiday lights, there’s something familiar in the way it touches that same instinct…that part of us that wants to cling to what feels right to us. The passage opens with God interrupting a life that seemed to be on a steady path…and invites Mary into something she never planned.

So let’s hear it now…Luke chapter 1, beginning with verse 26…

Luke 1: 26-38

26 In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, 27 to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary.

If you picture this scene in your mind, chances are you’re picturing something that comes from a painting or a stained-glass window. And in most of those, Mary looks…well…put together. Calm. Regal even. Layers of blue fabric, perfect posture, hair that somehow behaves itself. But that’s not who she was. She wasn’t a grown woman with that kind of confidence. She was a teenager…someone whose whole world had probably been about family chores and community life and figuring out her place in a small town.

Most of the artwork forgets that part. It smooths out the edges. It turns her into someone who looks ready for an angelic visit. But nothing in her life would have prepared her for this moment.

And artists don’t agree on Gabriel either. In some pieces, he’s towering above her, filling the space with this overwhelming, heavenly presence. In others, he’s kneeling…almost pleading… for an answer he, and God, and the whole creation depend.

And as much as I would like for it to be that Gabriel was truly asking for Mary’s blessing as he delivered news of God’s blessing of her, the text in Luke doesn’t really lend itself to that description.

28 And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.”

29 But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be.

30 The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.

31 And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus.

32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David.

33 He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”

34 Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?”

Gabriel’s words were pretty straightforward. There’s no soft lead-in, no gentle invitation to weigh her options. It’s all declaration. You will conceive…you will bear a son…you will name him Jesus…he will be great…his kingdom will have no end.

It’s one bomb after another dropped into the life of someone who didn’t ask for it and didn’t see it coming.

Mary’s response isn’t a question so much as it is bewilderment. “How can this be?” Not “should I do this”…not “let me think about it”…just the honest confusion of someone trying to catch up.

And maybe that tells us something important about God, and about Advent.

God doesn’t always work by asking permission first.

God doesn’t always work by asking permission first. God often acts, and then invites us to discover the grace inside what we didn’t plan. Advent is full of that…God moving toward the world before the world is ready for it.

But that’s where the story touches us too. Because we all know what it’s like to have something announced without warning. Something that arrives in our lives fully formed…as if the decision has already been made and we’re just hearing about it now. Something that shifts the ground under our feet before we’ve had a chance to get our balance.

We may not encounter angels, but we’ve all had moments when the news comes down from somewhere beyond us, and suddenly the life we thought we were living takes a turn we never saw coming.

A diagnosis

A broken relationship

A death

A job we didn’t want…or one we lost

A season of waiting that drags on

An opportunity that feels too big

How our kids turned out

Or just the state of the world

And when those moments come…when news arrives that bends our lives in a direction we never would have chosen…there’s this instinct in us to say no. Not out loud usually. Not in some defiant, heroic way. It’s more like a quiet tightening inside…a decision to resist the life we’ve actually been given.

A lot of people spend years doing that. Saying no to the shape their life has taken. No to the story they’re in. No to the changes they didn’t ask for. And the strange thing is…most of the time that “no” doesn’t change our circumstances at all. It just changes us. It dims us. It makes us less alive.

It’s understandable. It feels safer to dig in, to clutch the life we thought we were supposed to have.

But at some point, we all face a choice.
Will we say yes to the life God is giving us…or try to resist it, control it, deny it? We don’t get to choose all the circumstances, but we do get to choose our posture toward them. And that posture shapes everything.

No-Sayers

You’ve probably known people who go the other direction…the “no-sayers.” Folks who can’t stop living in the past, replaying what should have happened, what someone else should have done. Their hearts stay tethered to a moment that won’t give them any more life, but they can’t put it down.

Or the people who quietly decide, “I didn’t sign up for this,” and start checking out. Their bodies are here, but their spirits packed their bags years ago. They’re still moving through the motions, but the lights inside are dim.

Some people let bitterness take over…the “this is just who I am now” kind of bitterness. It becomes their whole biography. The thing they talk about. The lens they read the world through. And it shrinks them…it steals their imagination for anything good.

And then there are the ones who simply get stuck. Not because they’re weak, but because embracing what is feels like a kind of surrender they’re not ready for. So they stay exactly where they are…frozen between the life they wanted and the life they have.

But here’s the truth underneath all of that. When we say no, we don’t avoid pain…we just avoid growth. We don’t avoid loss…we just lose purpose. We don’t stop life from happening…we just stop participating in it.

How Can This Be?

And before Gabriel says anything else, we have to remember what Mary actually asked. “How can this be…since I am a virgin?” She’s not pushing back.so much as asking the obvious question…“This doesn’t add up. How is this supposed to work?” It’s not a protest. It’s just a young woman trying to make sense of something that doesn’t.

35 The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God.

Gabriel doesn’t leave Mary standing there with nothing but a wild promise rattling around in her head. He gives her something close to home…something she can picture. He tells her about Elizabeth. The relative everyone had quietly labeled “barren.” The one whose story seemed settled.

36 And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. 37 For nothing will be impossible with God.”

Gabriel is saying, Mary, this isn’t just happening in the clouds. This isn’t only happening to you. Look around. God is already doing impossible things in people you actually know.

Elizabeth becomes a kind of anchor for Mary. A sign that God isn’t playing favorites or dropping miracles at random. God is moving in more than one life…more than one story. And Mary’s story fits into that larger movement, even if she can’t see the whole picture yet.

You know, when God is up to something in us, God is almost always up to something in someone else too. We’re not the only ones being stretched or surprised. Grace doesn’t work in isolated little pockets…it tends to travel in clusters.

Sometimes the thing that helps us say yes to our own life…
is seeing someone else find life in theirs.

Mary doesn’t know everything yet. She doesn’t understand the whole plan. But she has this one concrete, impossible thing happening in Elizabeth…and it’s enough to steady her.

38 Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.

Theotokos

There is a special word for what Mary become here: “Theotokos”…“God-bearer.” It’s one of the earliest and most important titles in the whole church, because it guards something essential…that Jesus wasn’t half-human and half-divine, but fully both. And the only way we could say that with any confidence was to say that Mary truly bore God in her own body. That God didn’t just appear…God was carried, and nourished. The word matters because it protects the mystery of the incarnation itself…that God comes to us not by avoiding humanity, but by entering it all the way in and all the way down to its smallest implication.

God became a single cell. A fertilized egg. The One who spoke galaxies into existence began again in the same fragile way every one of us did. It’s almost too strange to say out loud. The Almighty reduced to something you could only see with a microscope.

If God is willing to enter the world that way…then maybe that tells us something about how God works in us too. God usually starts small. Almost unnoticeably small. And maybe that’s part of why so many of us say no to our own lives. We’re waiting for something big and polished and guaranteed before we trust it. We want the full blueprint, not the tiny beginning. We want certainty, not a speck of possibility.

But that’s not how the incarnation works. God begins with something so small…and yet it carries the whole promise of salvation inside it. If Mary had been waiting for something obvious or impressive…she would have missed the miracle growing in her.

A single cell is not much to build a future on…but God chose it anyway.

And that’s the invitation for us. 
Not to wait until everything is perfect or foolproof.
 Not to say yes only when we feel 100% confident. 
But to trust that God often begins with something so small we can barely name it…

Mary’s yes didn’t come because she saw the whole story. It came because she sensed that something tiny and alive had already begun…and that her part wasn’t to control it, but to make room for it.

So what does all this mean for us? If God begins small…if God meets us inside the imperfect, unfinished parts of our lives…then maybe the invitation is simply this:

Say yes to the life God is giving you…even when it’s not the life you expected.

Say yes to the life God is giving you…even when it’s not the life you expected.

And as nice as that would look on a pillow, it also begs some important questions:

Where are you saying no to your life right now?
Where are you digging in your heels and resisting the reality in front of you?

Because it might be that the very thing you’re resisting…
is the place God is trying to meet you.

What if the job you’re in, the family you’re in, the limitations you carry…aren’t problems…but your actual life?


Not obstacles to God’s work… but the exact place where God is already starting something small and holy and alive?

And we know what saying no looks like.


Saying no looks like complaining endlessly…because complaining feels safer than owning it.
Saying no looks like blaming everyone else…so we never have to face our own stuff.
Saying no looks like refusing to accept our family members for who they are…because you can’t get past how you think they should be.

These are all ways that we shut the door on the life God is trying to hand us. Little ways…quiet ways…but they add up.

So maybe the real question is this:
What would it look like to say yes instead?
Not a perfect or a fearless yes…just the kind of yes Mary offers. A yes that leaves the door cracked open for God to move.

One of the finest preachers of the last century, Barbara Brown Taylor, puts this better than I ever could, so I want to read her words in full.

She says,

“You can decide to say yes. You can decide to be a daredevil, a test pilot, a gambler. You can set your book down and listen to a strange creature’s strange idea. You can decide to take part in a plan you did not choose, doing things you do not know how to do for reasons you do not entirely understand. You can take part in a thrilling and dangerous scheme with no script and no guarantees. You can agree to smuggle God into the world inside your own body.

Deciding to say yes does not mean that you are not afraid, by the way. It just means that you are not willing to let your fear stop you, that you are not willing to let your fear keep you locked in your room. So you say yes to the angel, you say, “Here I am; let it be with me according to your word,” and so saying you become one of Mary’s people, one more Theotokos who is willing to bear God into the world.”

And when we look around, we can see that we’re not the first to try this. We have people in our own lives, in this very room, who have said yes in their own ways…

People who said yes to God’s purpose in unexpected places…
who found themselves serving, or listening, or showing up in moments they never would have chosen, and somehow discovering that God was already there ahead of them.

People who said yes to forgiveness instead of resentment…
not because it was easy, and not because they forgot the hurt, but because they were tired of carrying the weight of it…and wanted their hearts back.

People who said yes to presence instead of perfection…
who stopped trying to manage every detail of their lives or their families, and chose instead to be fully in the moment, even if the moment wasn’t tidy or impressive.

People who said yes to courage instead of control…
who loosened their grip just enough to let God do something new…even if that new thing came with uncertainty or risk.

And maybe that’s what brings us to this table today. Because the same God who once became a single cell…who grew in Mary’s body…who took on all the limits and vulnerabilities of human life…is the God who meets us now in something almost as small. A piece of bread. A sip from the cup.

It doesn’t look like much. It never has. But that’s the point, isn’t it? God keeps choosing ordinary things…ordinary people…ordinary moments…and filling them with a presence far bigger than we can see. God meets us here, at this simple table, with all that we are carrying and all that we are resisting.

Communion is God’s way of saying, “I am still with you. I am still entering your life. I am still equipping people to bear my grace.”

And all we really bring to this table…is our own small yes.