“Is anything impossible with God?”

This is the sermon manuscript from the fourth week of Advent, December 17^th/18^th. The Gospel text is Luke 1:26-38.

Are you familiar with the song, “Father Abraham?” It’s a song that I was taught in Sunday school when I was a kid. It’s a song we sang at the camp where I spent my summers. I am not quite sure where it came from originally. That’s the funny thing about children’s songs; you never know where they came from or who’s heard them.

And even though it is a children’s song, it won’t hurt any of us to be reminded of it this morning. “Father Abraham” goes like this… “Father Abraham had many sons, and many sons had father Abraham, I am one of them, and so are you, so let’s all praise the LORD…” This is the main chorus of the song and in between each time you sing it, you add movement. We would start off with our right arm and slowly work our way around our various limbs until we’re all doing a rather silly dance. It’s kind of a silly song on the surface, but it serves as a reminder of where we have come from and of God’s promise to make Abraham a great nation, a blessing to the whole world. Father Abraham did indeed have many sons and daughters, but it wasn’t always that way.

Our story begins with Abraham in the desert, sitting in the entrance to his tent, finding shelter from the heat of the day. Three strangers approach out of the desert and Abraham is immediately on his feet making ready for their arrival. He doesn’t know them, but he is extending a hand of hospitality, some water and a bite to eat in the harsh arms of the desert. One of the strangers tells Abraham that he will return in due season because Abraham’s wife Sarah will bear a son.

Now this is all well and good until we remember that Abraham and Sarah are old. And not just old; they are old as dirt. Genesis 17 tell us that Abraham is 99 years old when God reminds him of the covenant that God has made with him, where God promises Abraham that his ancestors will be exceedingly numerous. Like the stars in the sky or the grains of sand on the beach. That the world will be blessed through Abraham. By now Sarah is far beyond the years of child bearing. They have no kids of their own and their hope of kids has passed away. Sarah actually laughs when she hears the words of the stranger, who is actually God in disguise. The thought of her having kids at her age is indeed laughable, impossible by our standards. The stranger, who is God, turns to Abraham and says, “Why did she laugh; Is anything impossible with God?”

Sarah did indeed have a son and she named him Isaac, which means laughter in Hebrew, and the whole story of the Old Testament unfolds from that moment. God’s promise to Abraham was fulfilled. Abraham was made into a great nation. The world was indeed blessed through Abraham even after he was old as dirt and had long lost the dream of having a son. The world was changed because of God’s promise. Is anything impossible with God?

We hear those words again this morning; Is anything impossible with God? The words are almost the same, and yet different. Luke tells us that an angel comes to Mary in Nazareth and tells her that she has found favor with God. That she will bear a son and name him Jesus. That this son named Jesus will be great and will be called Son of the Most High, that the Lord God will give him the throne of David. That the kingdom of Jesus will never end. That the world will change because of Jesus.

But Mary is only a young woman, perhaps even a teenager, who has been promised in marriage to a carpenter named Joseph. Mary is no one special by any means. Mary is a no body by the world’s standards. Mary is supposed to have an ordinary marriage and live an ordinary life as a Jew under the harsh rule of Rome. But now she is in a pickle. She is at this point unmarried and to be pregnant while unmarried would be quite the dilemma indeed. The only words she can find in response to the angel are, “How can this be?” The angel looks down on her and says, “Nothing will be impossible with God.”

Mary did indeed have a son and she named him Jesus and the whole story of our lives unfolds from that moment. For Jesus is the Son of God and his kingdom will have no end. The world is changed because of Jesus; our lives are changed because of Jesus. In these words we have God’s promise that our lives will be different with Jesus, a promise that is fulfilled with the empty tomb on Easter morning. Because if God can roll away the stone, if the resurrected Jesus can bring a word of peace to weary disciples, then indeed nothing is impossible for our God.

I believe these are the truest words we hear in Advent, our season of hope; For nothing is impossible with God. They are words of hope for the world to hear. These words are a promise from God and they come to us in Advent because they point to the hope we have in Jesus Christ. These words have a purpose in our lives. They can bring us from the edge of doubt, to the hope that God is at work in our world. For nothing is impossible with God.

I heard these words one time when I was on the phone with my grandmother who is home in Texas. A drought has crippled most of the state, most of the southwest of the country really, and times are getting hard. Families who have spent generations raising and selling cattle have sold out of the business. Lakes that have held water for years are now empty. Wells that reach to the heart of the earth have gone dry. The weather folk say that it’s going to get worse before it gets better. My grandmother, we call her Nana, who is in her eighties, tells me of the droughts that she has lived through, the times when the rain wouldn’t fall, the times when the world seemed to turning against them. But the last word of the story is always, “The rain always came eventually, God always sent the rain in due time.” For nothing is impossible with God.

I heard these words in the halls of the hospital this week. A woman who recently had knee surgery is starting her rehab and is going through all of the pain that comes from knee surgery and rehab. The pain starts in the morning and only goes away with a bit of medicine from the nurse. The pain comes back in the afternoon after the work of rehab is done. Perhaps it even comes back before rehab is over, causing one to think why they even had the surgery in the first place. While she was waiting for her rehab to start one morning she bumped into another woman who had knee surgery in November, who told her that the pain would get easier to manage. This woman told her not to give up, that the rehab gets better, that the pain does indeed go away, that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. For nothing is impossible with God.

But sometimes these words are hard to hear. Sometimes they don’t seem to get through the stack of bills on the table, the news from the doctor at the hospital bedside, the emptiness we feel at the grave. But even in the darkest moments of life they are there, waiting to breathe hope back into life. For nothing is impossible with God. That’s the promise of God that we hear today. These words speak of the truth that we are never alone, that God is always with us no matter the distance we may feel from God. For nothing is impossible with God.

We get to hear these words of hope in Advent because they lay the foundation for what Christmas means in our lives. If God can give a son to a couple who is old as dirt and change the course of history, if God can give a baby to a young girl who is a nobody in society and change the world, then God can come into our lives and give us hope for a new tomorrow. For nothing is impossible with God. This is the promise that brings us to the manger on Christmas Eve. This is the promise that brings us to the empty tomb on Easter, to witness the new life we have in Jesus Christ. This is the promise we have from God. Write these words in your Christmas cards; share them with all that you meet. These are the words that have the power to change the world. For nothing is impossible with God.