SERMON: "Being Favored"

Being Favored
Luke 1:26-38

Two of the notables of the nativity are Mary and Elizabeth. Now, there are two things in these two unusual pregnancy stories that I think it’s important for us to pause and think about. The two ideas include the idea mentioned in both of being favored and then the willingness of the two women to let God’s will be done in and through their lives.

Both women came to understand that they were favored. Elizabeth announced that she considered herself favored and that she understood her pregnancy to be God’s way of reminding her of it. Luke reported that Mary heard the angel tell her that she was.

I spent several years as an apprentice of Deb Campbell learning about and leading Servant Leadership. One of the books we studied was Henri Nouwen’s The Life of the Beloved. He uses the word “beloved” to try and capture the meaning of this idea of being favored. According to Nouwen, we are all God’s beloved – we are all loved by God. He references the account of the baptism of Jesus as the place where the word first came to him as the one that best describes how God wants to define God’s relationship with us. Let me remind us all of the way the gospel writers described that scene: “No sooner had Jesus come up out of the water than he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit, like a dove, descending on him. And a voice came from heaven: ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; my favor rests on you.’” God sees us as God sees Jesus, as beloved. (1)

Nouwen further states in his book that understanding ourselves - accepting ourselves - as the beloved involves/begins with our believing, our understanding, ourselves to be chosen by God, to have found favor with God. Now, this chosenness isn’t the kind we think of when we think of being chosen for a team. It’s not a choseness that means that others have to be rejected or excluded - it’s not that you have to do something better than everyone else in order to be chosen. It’s not that you have more skills – more important gifts – are more talented. Every one of us is chosen the way God chooses. God favors each one of us because we are God’s children. God wants to take up residence in each of our lives just as God did in Mary’s life. God wants to be born again in each one of us and through us into the world around us. God wants every one of us to understand ourselves as chosen – as beloved – as favored. (2)

God has already taken the initiative. We’re already loved. We’re already chosen. The first step on the journey with God is accepting the idea that we are loved by God. God wants to be a baby in the wombs of our souls. God wants us to nurture God’s presence inside us and be nurtured by that presence.

The interview with Gabriel ended when Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” “Do in me - do through me - Lord, what you want and need to do.” Despite the fact that she surely knew there were going to be some rough times ahead, Mary accepted the role God wanted her to assume. She was so overwhelmed – so joyous of the news that she was favored by God in spite of her feelings of unworthiness - that she put aside all her feelings of inferiority and turned her whole being over to being an instrument for God to carry out God’s plan for the world.

In order to come to earth in human form, God had to have the cooperation of a human and her body. Like Mary, we need to make our bodies available for God’s will to be carried out in our day. Good happens to us, in us, and through us when we turn our lives over for God’s service and let God live in and through us – when we let ourselves be a part of the continuing story of the incarnation.

Meister Eckhart, a medieval mystic and theologian once wrote: “We are all meant to be mothers of God. What good is it to me if this eternal birth of the divine Son takes place unceasingly but does not take place within me? And, what good is it to me if Mary is full of grace and if I am not also full of grace? What good is it to me for the creator to give birth to his Son if I do not also give birth to him in my time and my culture? This, then is the fullness of time: When the Son of God is begotten in us.” (3)

God needs the wombs of favored ones to continue God’s Son’s entering the world. Each one of us are favored ones of God – each one of us are God’s chosen ones. Let us ponder today – consider today – what letting God take up residence in us in a new way might mean. Today, let us hear the good news that we are favored – that we are chosen – that we are the beloved. Let us allow Christ the opportunity to grow in us.


Henri J. M. Nouwen, Life of the Beloved, (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1995) pp. 25 – 33.
Ibid., pp. 45 – 47.
Meister Eckhart.