Field of Dreams
Luke 1:26 – 38
Gettysburg Presbyterian Church
Daniel T. Hans
December 9, 2007

If you build it, he will come.  The voice haunts him like the tune of a song that holds the mind hostage. If you build it, he will come.  The voice speaks to a young farmer named Ray Kinsella as he stands in his cornfield in the 1980s.  “Build what?” he wants to know. A baseball park, he soon learns. “Who will come?” he wonders. Long-deceased baseball great Shoeless Joe Jackson and Ray’s own deceased father will come.  Both the voice and the message seem absurd, impossible.  Yet, like Noah heeding the call to build an ark, this husband and father plows under his corn, takes out a second mortgage on the farm, and build a baseball park – in the middle of Iowa!

And then he waits.  Nothing happens. No one comes. Just as he is about to give up on his dream, out of the adjoining cornfield steps Shoeless Joe Jackson.  Joining him are several other baseball legends from the early 1900s, all of whom begin to play ball on Ray’s ball field.  A mysterious message initiates a great encounter.  However, the hearer of message must be open to receive it and to act upon it, impossible and risky though it seems.

While this story sounds crazy to us unless we have seen the movie, Field of Dreams, it is a tale that can lift our soul and open the door to the question upon which human hope depends. I refer to the question: “What if…”
“What if we prepare ourselves for his coming?”

I

Whether the message comes to a young farmer in his Iowa field or to a teenage girl awake in her bed in Nazareth, the promise is the same: If you build it, he will come. In Luke’s Advent account, the angel Gabriel tells Mary: “If you are receptive, God will come to you in a way that exceeds your wildest dreams.”  The impossibility of Shoeless Joe Jackson appearing in Ray Kinsella’s ball field in Iowa can be excused as Hollywood fantasy. But what are we to do with the impossibility of the Son of God being born to a teenager in Palestine? Luke’s presentation of the message of God’s coming contains two problems for our 21st century minds: the angel and the virgin birth.

We relegate angels to a place atop the Christmas tree or to a child’s role in the Nativity Pageant. But the presence of angels in Luke’s story of Jesus’ birth is a stark reminder that people see only what they expect to see and
hear only that for which they are listening. People encounter God only to the degree they open themselves to such encounters – unlikely though they may seem. That you and I don’t see bushes burning without being consumed as did Moses or hear angelic messengers calling to greater tasks as did Mary does not discredit God or the biblical witness. Such encounters require an openness to be surprised by the mystery of God who is present in our world.

If we insist upon subjecting Jesus’ birth to analytical investigation, we will once again find ourselves well into the labors of the New Year having missed the grace of Advent.  Critical of modern demands to explain everything logically at the expense of experiencing anything spiritually, Swiss psychiatrist and professing Christian, Paul Tournier, writes in his book, The Whole Person in a Broken World:
Modern people reject myths and symbols, because they see in them a naïve and outworn explanation of the world.  Mythology, however, did not by any means claim to be an explanation of the world. This is a modern preoccupation (trying to explain everything).  Mythology evokes realities which logical thought will never be able to express, realities which bring to the spirit nourishment which is singularly richer than the demonstration of science… Children are no longer told the legends that are filled with eternal truths; they are given “factual instruction” on how oil is extracted from the earth… And yet our need for the mysterious is so great that we now are seeing the trashy symbols replacing the ancient symbols.  We no longer speak of the Christmas angels singing to the wondering shepherds; we talk about Christmas trees and Santa Claus. And this humanity which believes it has outgrown the age of naïve credulity swallows journals of astrology and acclaims the heroes of sport or the dictators. (p. 29-30)

In our world of matter and spirit, if we live only for matter, which most of us believe is all that matters, then the realm of spirit remains closed to us. Consequently, we hear the words of the sermon but miss the Word of God; we sing the rhythmic carols but fail to be touched by their images of resounding hope; and we see Santa Claus but are blind to the presence of God in its various forms. Unapologetically, Luke, the physician and scientist of his day, says that God spoke to Mary through an angel (a messenger).
But it is the messenger’s message that is far more important than the messenger’s identity or even existence.

II

The message told of the birth of a child – a timely birth. People then lived at the intersection of expectation and fulfillment. For centuries the people of Israel awaited the coming of a Messiah, a Deliverer like their great King David.  Relegated to second-rate nation status under Rome’s oppression, the Jews longed for the time when God would act decisively to send one who would establish a universal kingdom of peace and faithfulness to God.
Their prophets had long been speaking of this day. Their Scriptures were a field of dreams longing for God’s Savior.

The prophet Micah said:  (4:1-4)
In the days to come, the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains… Peoples shall stream to it, and many nations shall come and say: “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord…that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.” He shall judge between many peoples and nations…; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more, but they shall sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees and no one shall make them afraid.
The prophet Isaiah said: (9:6-7)
For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.  His authority shall grow continually and there shall be endless peace for the throne of David and his kingdom.  He will establish and uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time onward and forevermore.
Again the prophet Micah said (5:2-5)
O Bethlehem of Ephrathah, who is one of the little clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to rule in Israel, whose origin is of old, from ancient days… And he shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of the Lord…And they shall live secure, for now he shall be great to the ends of the earth; and he shall be the one of peace.
Echoing and fulfilling the voice of the prophets, the angel’s message to Mary rang of promise for Israel and for the world.  The celestial herald declared: If you build it, he will come.

III

Mary’s initial reaction to the message of a promised child was our reaction: How can this be?  Mary asked a modern question: How can I conceive when I have never had sexual relations with a man? Greater minds than mine have attempted to prove and disprove the notion of a virgin birth. While some church members want their pastor to take a clear stand on Jesus’ virgin birth, I choose not to step into that quicksand. How can one prove or disprove a faith conviction?

Luke and Matthew are clear that Jesus’ birth was beyond normal human reproductive intercourse. Yet neither Mark nor John in their gospels nor Paul in his letters even hint at knowledge of any virgin birth of Jesus. More important than the biology of Jesus’ birth is the theology of his coming.
Luke was a physician who understood human reproduction and he was a believer who respected the mystery of God.
Luke was less concerned about the how of Jesus’ birth as he was about the who and why of Jesus’ coming. The who and why Luke addresses in the angel’s message: Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus.  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.  He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end…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.

Two writers, much later than Luke, reflect upon this wonder as follows:
W.H Auden, who was not a professing Christian, wrote:
We who must die demand a miracle. How could the Eternal do a temporal act, the Infinite become a finite fact?  Nothing can save us that is possible: We who must die demand a miracle.  (For The Time Being)
Presbyterian minister and author Fred Buechner wrote of Jesus:
This extraordinary life could have had a beginning no less extraordinary. History creates heroes.  Heredity [contributes to] human greatness.  Evil also evolves.  Only holiness happens.  (Listening to Your Life, p. 77)

Whether the virgin birth of Jesus was a physiological phenomenon or a spiritual metaphor, the story is told for one reason: to create a response within those who hear the story. Mary’s response to what God had begun is the model for our faith. She opened her mind and her being to the impossible. All God needs to work in our world is an opening into our lives.  With a door slightly ajar to faith, God can to great things. When the Holy Spirit came upon Mary, the Spirit did what the Spirit of God does in the lives of people who are open to God: The Holy Spirit enables them to do and to be more than they could by themselves. (Tom Wright, Luke for Everyone, p. 10)

Certainly there must have been countless other “Marys”, potential mothers of the Christ, available at the time. When the voice spoke to them, did they roll over in bed, bury their heads under the covers, and fall back to sleep?
Maybe a few listened at first, but upon hearing of the risk involved, they excused themselves from the competition. It is far easier to close our ears to the voice of God than to be open to being used by God; far easier to reply “Impossible!” than to ask “What if?” The “what if” for Mary was anything but a favorable prospect. When Mary is called “favored one”, we assume that God’s favor translates into success and happiness, health and wealth. God’s favor for Mary meant: having a child out of wedlock, watching her son be rejected by his own people, and witnessing his execution as a criminal. Maybe that’s why other potential “Marys”, who might have been called, closed their lives to God. It was just too demanding, too scandalous. Sometimes, divine favor arises from human scandal, depending on how open we are to God in the midst of and beyond it all.

IV

To me, the real marvel of Advent and mystery of the Incarnation and miracle of Eternal Spirit becoming human flesh lies not in a statement about a virgin conceiving and giving birth; rather it lies in the realization that the future of God’s plan for the whole creation hung on the response of a teenage girl. What if Mary had said, “It’s too soon for me to give myself to you, Lord.  I need more time for me.” What if she had said, “Lord, I won’t decide until I have some guarantees or at the very least until you spell out all the details.”
What if Mary had said, “What’s in it for me?”

A voice from beyond, a scandalous message, a virgin birth – they all trouble us. But they are nothing compared to the frightening prospect of human destiny hinging upon the whims of a 15-year-old! The God of love takes incredible risks with his creation! Still not understanding how it could be so or why it should be so, still puzzling over the message, If you build it, he will come, Mary is receptive to God’s will. She is open to a voice she cannot explain yet cannot escape. And so she says the only thing that faith can say: “Let it be with me according to your word.” And with that response, God steps into our field of dreams, confirming for all people of all times that

with God all things are possible.

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