Introduction

Welcome to our Advent series that we’re calling Behold. Remember, Advent is a season of waiting, anticipating, and hoping. It’s a time when we plant our feet firmly in the land between two affirmations: Christ has come, and Christ will come again. We’re going to learn how to live more faithfully in that liminal space.

In early September of 1968, Paul McCartney recognized that The Beatles were having some major difficulties and sensed that the end was imminent. Though McCartney struggled to keep the band alive, he had no choice but to announce the end of history’s most iconic group. In early 1970, with the end in mind and the desire to help their fans cope, the world was consoled with one of The Beatles' most popular songs. We were all told to, simply, just “Let It Be.”

Listen to what McCartney wrote,

When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be
And in my hour of darkness she is standing right in front of me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be

Now, I’d want to tell Paul that someone greater than Mother Mary is coming to him, but you get the point. “Let it be” was Paul McCartney’s way of saying, “I accept the death that’s coming,” and he suggested to us that there was wisdom imbedded in that release. It was a word of surrender and an invitation to the waiting world to let go.

‘Let it Be’

“Let it be” that’s not an easy thing to do, is it? It means we’re not in control, it means we’re not calling the shots, it means we’re along for the ride.

When we lived in Colorado, on occasion we’d go white water rafting. We loved it. When the guides were going through their pre-trip spiel, they’d always give instructions on what to do if you were flung from the raft. The guidance was always the same: don’t try to stand up, don’t try to swim against the current, put your feet down stream, get on your back like an upside-down turtle, and wait until you get to a place of calm.

They might have just sung Paul’s phrase, “let it be”! Don’t fight the river. Don’t try to stand up. Let it have its way with you and then swim to the edge.

I would argue, those aren’t just words for rafting, they are words for living. But there’s tension in “let it be.” There’s disappointment embedded in that phrase. There’s heartbreak lurking beneath the surface of those words. There are dashed dreams and unmet hopes that are present. You’ve felt that too.

• When they came to you and said the marriage was over.
• When you get the diagnosis from the doctor.
• When the job you thought you’d land after graduation fell through.
• When the child you love walks away from the faith.
• When the depression and anxiety just wouldn’t lift.

We’ve all had to whisper those painful words, “Let it be.” This week marked the eight-year anniversary of having to say goodbye to my mom. “Let it be” is painful.

Remember, we’re in the season of Advent, which is to say that we’re in a season where we intentionally discipline our souls to embrace a posture of waiting. Maybe “let it be” is a good phrase to hold in mind as we sit in Advent.

Did you know that “Let it Be” is a Christmas song. It wasn’t originally written by Paul McCartney, it was uttered by Mary.

(Read Luke 1:26-38)

“Behold.” There’s that word again. That word demands we read with inflection, that requires us to take notice, that causes us to stand at attention. This week we read it as stated by Mary.

“Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be.” Mary’s statement, “let it be” wasn’t in response to good news as we’d typically think of it. It might have been uttered through gritted teeth and a broken heart.

The angel’s first statement to Mary is saturated with paradox, “Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!” The word “favored one” means, “one endowed with grace.” The idea is that she’s dripping with and drenched in the grace of God.

But when Mary first heard this announcement, she probably felt like the furthest thing from a “favored one.” It must have felt like a cosmic joke filled with a sense of biting irony.

Mary was a trembling teenage girl whose dream of marrying Joseph is being shattered. Undoubtedly, he’d assume she was unfaithful to him and would divorce her at best or have her stoned at worst. Her family would certainly ostracize her because of the shame she was heaping upon them. Her life was unraveling with each word the angel spoke.

This is really a tale of two different stories. The angel’s announcement and Mary’s reality.

Mary Angel

Fear Favor

Disruption Fulfilment

Confusion Confidence

Surrender Sovereignty

We read this story knowing how everything turned out. We know that she wasn’t stoned by her parents for getting pregnant before she got married. We know she wasn’t shamed for bearing an illegitimate child. We know that an angel appeared to Joseph also and that they got married. But Mary didn’t. For Mary these were not words of holy Scripture, they were words that would define her Wednesday; her every day.

Saying, “let it be” also means admitting, “it may never be.” And isn’t that the hardest part of surrender? Surrender is coming to terms with what will never be.

That phrase is so hard to utter because it means that we are giving up control. Mary is giving up control of her plans for her life, her dreams, her ability to manage her image, and what people think of her. And those things are hard to give up.

I’ve said it before, but I don’t know how much I love control until I lose it. Most of us tend to embrace a low-grade version of control. We have different strategies for making sure things go to our liking and results appear in our favor. Some use their money. Others use manipulation and words of guilt and shame. Others use sexuality. And some use their power. The list of tools we deploy to manage the people and outcomes of our lives is almost endless.

As religious people, sometimes we even use God to try and control. We think we can control God and get him to do what we want if we’re good enough. Author Skye Jethani wrote, “Fear and control are the basis for all human religion.”

We believe we can avoid life’s perils if we follow the formulas we’re given for faith. If we give enough God will be indebted to us and bless us financially. If we live lives of purity, then God will surely use them with a spouse. We turn God into a genie in a bottle that we approach to get what we want.

We often do this because the world is a terrifying place, and we want to sequester our fragile life from the menacing fear that often nips at our heels. But hear me on this today: you cannot surrender to God if you are trying to control him. You can either control or surrender, but you can’t do both.

We grasp for and cling to control because we assume that without it, our lives will spin into disrepair. But what if there is more freedom in surrender than there is in control? What if in surrender we find strength available that we’ll never grasp when we seek to be in charge? What if the unexpected and unwanted could be God’s blessing in disguise?

A Posture of Surrender Allows Us to Experience God’s Sufficiency

“Let it be” is the path of discipleship that Jesus is inviting us all to walk. Mary shows us that while “let it be” is initially filled with pain and confusion, it ends with a position of strength—able to face the realities of life with vitality and fortitude. When we stop fighting for what might have been and devote our energy to what is, we see the blessing that God is showering down even if it isn’t what we were praying for or hoping for.

Mary teaches us that a posture of surrender allows us to experience God’s sufficiency. When I don’t have to be enough, I get to experience the reality that Jesus is. That’s the paradox of surrender; we find more strength than when we try to control.

However, Mary doesn’t get to a place of surrender immediately. There are some steps that she needs to go through to arrive at that posture. Let me help draw those out in hopes that they might serve as a guide for us as we seek to follow in her wake.

Name Your Fear

I love the way Mary’s initial response to the angel is described, “But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be” (Luke 1:29). Mary isn’t cold or stoic. She’s human, caught off guard, and experiencing the death of dreams. That word “troubled” literally means, “agitate greatly.”

The angel unpacks more of what Mary is feeling when they say, “And the angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God’” (Luke 1:30). Mary was afraid! If we are ever going to get to the place of surrender like Mary got to, we have to be honest with our feelings, frustrations, and doubts. Name your fear.

There are two things Mary’s response teaches us.

First, surrender doesn’t mean stoicism. It doesn’t mean that we must detach and passively accept everything that comes into our lives with a plastic painted-on smile. No, Mary experiences pain, and she responds with emotion.

Secondly, surrender doesn’t mean fatalism. I’ve heard a lot of followers of Jesus utter the phrase, “Well, everything happens for a reason.” Do you know where you cannot find that phrase? The Bible! No, the scriptures tell us that Mary is troubled; meaning that this is not initially good news to her, and she expresses that reality. Will you do the same? It’s okay to respond to life’s circumstances with emotion.

Engage Your Doubt

As a pastor, I have the honor of walking with people who are on the brink of faith. I get to hear about people’s hang-ups and hurdles to faith. The pushback some offer to Christianity is, “I can’t just accept something blindly.” Good news, neither did Mary.

Luke 1:29 says, “But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be.” The word “discern” means “to make an audit.” It’s an accounting term that means to add things up, weighing and pondering, to be intensely rational.

She’s continuing to push into this question with her response to the angel, “And Mary said to the angel, ‘How will this be, since I am a virgin?’” (Luke 1:34). She’s probably thinking: Am I really seeing an angel? Did I eat bad hummus? Is God really talking to me directly?

We often read ancient texts with a sense of subtly superiority, assuming that we’d do something different. But all of those are good questions to ask if you think an angel is talking to you. She doubts. She questions. She uses her reason.

Mary’s faith happened in stages, as opposed to the way we often view faith as a one-time decision. Mary is showing us that coming to faith is a process it’s often not instantaneous. That makes sense because biblically speaking, faith has more to do with moment-by-moment surrender than it does a one-time prayer. Mary shows us that surrender isn’t just blind faith. Engage your doubt.

However, this isn’t doubt for doubt’s sake. Doubt is en vogue right now. Do you know what I mean? There is a conviction amongst some “elite” that to doubt is more intellectually honest than to believe. I’m not encouraging you to doubt so much as I’m calling on you to honestly engage your questions.

We get a good picture of the difference earlier in Luke 1. It’s interesting that Mary is praised for her questions while Zechariah seems to be chastised because of his doubts.

Zechariah was a priest in the temple burning incense and praying when an angel came to him and announced that his wife Elizabeth, though she was quite old, was going to get pregnant with a child. Luke 1:18 says, “And Zechariah said to the angel, ‘How shall I know this? For I am an old man, and my wife is advanced in years.’”

Zechariah’s response is “prove it.” Mary simply wonders about the mechanics of a virgin birth. Zechariah was not only skeptical, but he was a bit antagonistic. I love the way Tim Keller unpacked the difference between the two responses. He wrote, “There is a kind of doubt that is a sign of a closed mind, and there is a kind of doubt that is the sign of an open mind. Some doubt seeks answers, and some doubt is a defense against the possibility of answers.”

Mary was open to the truth, even if it meant letting go of control of her life. She was willing to accept the truth, whatever it was and wherever it led her. What kind of doubt do you carry?

Ultimately, surrender is built on faith, which means it’s built on trust. But trust in God doesn’t typically happen overnight. Trust builds as experience that God is trustworthy. I don’t know about you, but I want us to create an atmosphere where people can doubt, explore, and come to know God more deeply.

• If you’re doubting, struggling, and wrestling with God, you’re welcome here.
• If you’re wondering why God allowed what he did, you’re welcome here.
• If you’re sad, frustrated, and angry at the way Christians have treated you, you’re welcome here.
• Last week after one of our services someone came up to me with a whole list of questions … I LOVE THAT!

Let’s have grace for people who are at different phases in the journey of faith, the journey of surrender. Let’s let God do the heavy lifting and rely on his grace. We cannot control this in our own lives or the lives of anyone else. But let’s be faithful in telling our stories of God’s faithfulness, because that will stir people to surrender.

Acknowledge God’s Sovereignty

After naming her fear and processing her questions, Mary responds with a conviction about God’s power. She says in Luke 1:37, “For nothing will be impossible with God.”

What is Mary doing? She’s acknowledging God’s power. She echoes Psalm 115:3, “Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases.” That perspective of heaven leads to a posture of surrender. God is powerful and able; he can do whatever he wants. She’ll become a pregnant virgin, after all.

Surrender that leads to sufficiency has to acknowledge God’s sovereignty. We are not surrendering to the Universe, to an unnamed force, to fate. No, we are surrendering to the living triune God who is able.

However, that acknowledgment of sovereignty cuts both ways, doesn’t it? It means that we can pray to a God who can act and change our circumstances with his divine hand, but it also means that we must trust that whatever comes into our life passes through those same powerful hands. The hurts you carry, the disappointments that haunt you, the pain that seems overwhelming, those things passed through his hands too. It doesn’t mean we don’t ask God for what we genuinely want, but it does mean that we continue to trust even if he says “no.”

Faith is engaging the tension of asking and trusting. If we resolve that tension, we’ve probably lost sight of sovereignty.

Accept Your Role

Finally, notice that before Mary utters the anthem of surrender, she makes one final drastic statement about her identity. Mary says in Luke 1:38, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.”

“I am the servant of the Lord.” Mary locates her place in God’s story. I believe that’s the bedrock of obedience, the fuel of surrender. Mary used the Greek word doulé which means “female slave.” She’s essentially saying, “My life is not my own. It’s not about me, it’s about God and his glory and I’m going to leverage all that I have to serve HIM!”

Can you say the same thing? Surrender requires that you accept your role. I love the way Jon Tyson describes surrender, “Surrender is that beautiful posture of the heart in which we humbly climb off the throne of our own lives and invite the One who rightfully belongs there to take our place.”

This is what Jesus was talking about when he said, “For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it” (Luke 9:24). Jesus is saying that when you try to make your life all about yourself, you actually lose yourself. The human life isn’t designed to support that kind of pressure. Playing God and attempting to control your life is a very heavy burden.

However, when we say, “My life is not my own, everything I have belongs to Jesus” we start to truly live. This means we are willing to obey the teachings of Jesus, whether you like them or not. It means that when you and Jesus disagree, he wins. When you disagree about sexuality, he wins. When you disagree about finances, he wins. When you disagree about control, he wins.

Can you accept your role, not as the star, but as a servant? Ah, but that’s where you start to find sufficiency.

You might notice that Mary’s statement about carrying Jesus in utero is strikingly close to the same thing Jesus said as he carried her sin and mine in the garden. He was in Gethsemane praying when he said, “And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed, saying, ‘My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will’” (Matt. 26:39).

This is Jesus’ “Let it be” song. He tells his Father what he wants, but then he surrenders to God’s will. It’s a great model for us: honesty and surrender. It was that surrender that led directly to the Cross and it’s the Cross that frees us to surrender.

Conclusion

Here’s the great reminder that we get at Christmas: we can surrender all to Jesus because he has given his all for us. The hands that we surrender our lives into still bear the scars of the price that was paid for us.

Mary points out to us that we don’t need to control God, ultimately because we are loved by him. It’s because of that we can find deep joy in letting go. Surrender is the portal to abundance.

Let me encourage you to sing your own “Let it be” anthem this week. I think there are two things that each of us can do as we seek to live this out.

First, embrace the unexpected. My guess is, there will be things that come up this week that are surprises to you. Try to embrace them.

Second, accept the unwanted. I love the way this idea is stated in the famous Serenity Prayer, “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Are you willing to trust God with anything he allows into your life, whether you understand it or not? When we say yes to that, we are really saying, “I am the Lord’s servant. Let it be.”

My favorite picture of Mary in this moment of her life is the painting called The Annunciation by Henry Ossawa Tanner. You’ll notice that Mary is an adolescent girl, a peasant. On her face is a combination of fear, anxiety, and submission. It seems to me to capture well what the scene might have been like.

Take a moment to consider how you might embrace the unexpected and accept the unwanted. Surrender is a posture that ushers us into the kingdom. As you surrender to Jesus, may you be escorted into the new world of God’s sufficiency.