How will this be?

Brothers, I invite you to go to the word of our Lord Jesus Christ in the Gospel according to Saint Luke, let's go to Chapter 1, one of the most famous, most beautiful stories in the entire history of the universe. And let's start, there are two announcements we could call them in Chapter 1, of impossible births. Both announced by an angel of the Lord, both promising life where there was not supposed to be life.

Let's start with verse 11 of Chapter 1 of Saint Luke, it says there:

“…And an angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing to the right of the altar of incense and Zacharias was troubled when he saw him and was seized with fear, but the angel said to him, Zacharias, do not be afraid because your prayer has been heard and your wife , Elizabeth, will bear you a son and you will call his name John. And you will have joy and joy and many will rejoice at his birth because he will be great before God. He will not drink wine or strong drink, he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother's womb, and he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God, and he will go before him with the spirit and power of Elijah. to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and of the rebellious to the prudence of the just to prepare a well-disposed people for the Lord….”

Now, here comes the point of this passage and it is the point around which the sermon has to revolve and there is a similar point in the next story as well. Look how Zacarías reacts to this abundant and beautiful promise of a supernatural being that is going to be born from him and his wife.

"... Zacharias said to the angel, how will I know this because I am old and my wife is old?..."

He thought about the obstacle, see? Do you remember what we were saying last Sunday? This sermon, by the way, ties in closely with many of the principles we elaborated on last Sunday.

“…how will I know this because I am old and my wife is old? Responding the angel said to him, I am Gabriel, who stand before God and I have been sent to speak to you and give you this good news, and now you will be dumb and will not be able to speak until the day this is done, because you did not believe my words , which will be fulfilled in due time. And the people were waiting for Zacharias and they were surprised that he lingered in the sanctuary, but when he came out he could not speak to them and they understood that he had seen a vision in the sanctuary. He spoke to them by signs and remained mute and when the days of his ministry were over he went home…”

First story. A question before an announcement of a miraculous event that would turn a sterile life into a fruitful and abundant life, before the complexity of that promise and that operation there is doubt, there is questioning, there is a question. In what will I know this?

So now we go to the second story in, well, you know the story, the angel, I am going to tell you a part of it, the angel appears to Mary, he tells her, Mary, do not be afraid, she has found grace before God, you are going to give birth to a son, his name will be Jesus, he will be great, son of the Most High, he will reign over the house of Jacob forever. In verse 34 before that second promise, remember Mary is a virgin, she has not yet married, she is betrothed to her fiancé, Joseph, they have not had any kind of physical relationship, it is not possible for her to conceive, biology says a woman conceives when there is a physical encounter with her husband, with a man, but Maria has not had any type of physical encounter. And then Mary said to the angel, verse 34:

“….How will this be?... – another question, the first question, how will I know this? And here Maria asks, how will this be? Due to the magnitude of what is announced to her, it is assumed that she conceives in impossible conditions and then she asks, well, “….how will this be since I don't know a man? Responding the angel said to him, the Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will cover you with his shadow for which the holy being that will be born will also be called the Son of God. And behold, your relative Elizabeth, she has also conceived a son in her old age and this is the sixth month for her, the one they called barren, for nothing is impossible for God..."

I want you to repeat that with me, because nothing, again, because nothing is impossible for God.

“….Then Mary said, behold, the servant of the Lord be done with me according to your word. And the angel departed from her….."

May the Lord bless his holy word. Thank you Lord, help us to believe, Father, in what we express, Lord because you are great, you are powerful and for you there is nothing impossible, Lord. We only ask that you give us the supernatural ability to believe that the impossible with you is possible. Help us believe in fairy tales, Lord. Help us to believe in myths, help us to believe in children's tales, Lord, help us to believe in things that only children can believe. Help us to have an imagination, a sensitivity of children so that we believe this word, Father, so difficult to believe but only you enlightening our spirit, Lord, you can make this possible. Thank you. Amen and amen.

I want to title my sermon this morning. What will this be like? Because that was what the Lord put in my mind this week as I thought of a text to share with you that was related to the Christmas story. And I wanted something different from what one always plays in regards to Christmas time. That thought came to me, Maria's question, how will this be? It's been haunting me for practically my entire life. Many times throughout my ministry, and even before the ministry when God has put in my spirit a promise of something that he wants to do in my life or through my life, many times the magnitude of what God tells me in my spirit It is so big and so different from the circumstances that I am experiencing and my abilities that I always ask how is this going to happen? How is it possible for this to happen?

I remember when I was doing my doctorate at the university and years had passed and I had gotten into the ministry, into the pastorate and I had lost all contact with the university and with my doctoral thesis and I had a lot of things that were still loose and he had not been able to work. And it had been about three years and I had not set foot in a university hall. My thesis professor had gone to another university. I had not touched a literature book in all that time, I had emotionally and mentally disconnected from my doctorate and I wondered how I am going to be able to rescue that investment that I had made again, what will this be like.

And the Lord can tell you that when I decided one morning that I remember well, I was still desperate because I knew that if another year or a few more days went by without me undertaking my doctorate I was going to lose it, and desperately I took a package that I used, I remember well, Saturday morning I put three pencils in it, a note sheet like that one that's right there on my seat and I went to the Harvard library in desperation and I went into the basement where I had a little cubicle, and I said, I'm going to start writing and the first thing I write, even if it's a doodle, I'm going to write. And that was the first sentence of my doctoral thesis that I completed 6 months later. And about 8 months later I was graduating from college with my PhD in hand. And God did miracles at that time.

I remember, I had a Latin requirement at the master's level that I had to meet and I couldn't take the classes so I had to get a Latin book, catch up and take a very difficult test that when I took it I was sure I would do it. it had burned, it had not passed. And there were only two or three doctoral candidates who took it that year, and when I arrived a few weeks later at the professor's office than Dante Della Tersa, I will remember him all my life, for him to give me the news, I was sure that I was going to say, we're sorry, Mr. Miranda has to take it again. And he with a mischievous smile told me, you passed it. And I still believe that God put grace in the heart of that man so that it happened to me because he said, this is not essential and he has worked and since the poor man, we are going to free him from his agony and we are going to get him out. I believe that God gave me grace before that person.

And I remember dreams that I had, those obsessive, compulsive dreams, where I would arrive on graduation day and someone would say, there is a requirement that you didn't do, and I didn't even remember that and I had that dream several times, because one he always wonders what this will be like. I was finishing this doctorate, I didn't even have a thesis adviser, I did my thesis believing that God was going to do something and I presented it to him completely, I didn't follow the process and God glorified himself and gave me my doctorate that I regretted so much that if If I lost him, it was going to be a great loss in my life. And I believe that the fear of simply going to that university and knowing that I had failed, I had lost that opportunity, I would not have endured it. And God in his mercy, every time I pass by Harvard University and I walk through that campus and especially where my college building is, I say to him, thank you Lord because you were faithful and you had mercy on me and you blessed me.

Brothers, when God promises something, sometimes it seems so difficult and sometimes impossible, that if you think about how this will be, you freeze with fear and do not go forward. And this is precisely what I see in these two, an old man with an old wife, they have never given birth, she is sterile and a miraculous being appears to her one day when he is performing his role as priest in the sanctuary and He tells him, your wife is going to have a child and you are going to have a child with your wife. And he, what, he's crazy if she's barren. I am old, so is she and how is that going to be.

Here's one thing, when God tells you something like this is going to happen miraculously in your life, you have to wonder how you're going to react. But let me go back a little bit now. What does this have to do with the Christmas story? Obviously it is a story concerning birth, Christmas, the incarnation and Christmas speaks to us, brothers, of a present God, an active God who descends among men, interacts with them, is interested in their situation and works miracles among them. That is the essence of the Christmas story. An active, present, miraculous God who works wonders in humanity. Christmas, brothers, is synonymous with miracles. Imagine, wise men coming from afar guided by a star, miracle. Shepherds who see and hear angels and who are led to a manger where the Son of God rests in the form of a fragile baby. Miracle. Two women who cannot and should not conceive are miraculously fertilized by the power of God. Christmas reminds us that miracles can happen to us in the person of Mary and Elizabeth and Zacharias and Joseph, they can happen to us, to any of us, because these are ordinary beings to whom something absolutely extraordinary and without precedents. And therefore, by extension, these miracles can happen to any of us like Mary, that humble maiden from a tiny village, in an insignificant country like Israel.

Brothers, when God wants to perform a miracle in our life, there is usually an announcement, there is usually an announcement, as we see here in these two stories, there is a miracle announcement. The announcement is not generally given by means of an angel as in this case, in most cases it is given by means of a little voice, an impulse, a concern, a tickle that is born and almost imperceptibly inside our being and which begins to grow as the baby grew in the womb of Mary and Elizabeth. There is a flash of life, a conception, an impregnation of the Holy Spirit and one knows how the woman knows that something has changed within our being. There is an announcement, there is a harbinger of something magical that has been brewing within us.

And when that announcement comes into our life, because many times God is going to say something to you, he is going to tell you in some way, I want to fertilize your life, I want to make you give birth, I want to impregnate you with something, it can being, the desire to go to university after years of not having studied; It can be a housewife decide I want to learn English or I want to start my profession that I left when I got married and had children; It can be a person who says, you know what? I'm tired of hearing people talking around me and not understanding what they're saying, so I'm going to start learning English and I'm going to go to the academic resource center, I'm going to sign up and I'm going to start taking English classes. English although I don't think I'm good at learning any language and that desire is born within you one day, you can be looking out the window, listening to a radio piece, changing the baby or washing dishes and that impulse is born there. A thought that fleetingly crosses your sensitivity. It is an announcement, it is a declaration of God's intention in your life.

And when there is an announcement in your life you have to ask yourself how you are going to react to that announcement. The announcement comes and we have to recognize it or not recognize it, obey it or not, ignore it or not, let it transform our lives or continue with our normal situation of sterility and normality, comfortable but lifeless. As Mary could have said to the angel, no thank you. Thanks, but I haven't married yet. In this village there are a lot of rowdy people and when I tell them the Holy Spirit, they're going to say, oh, yes of course. And I'll be embarrassed with the whole world and not thank you. Tell the Lord, look, Juanita lives next door and I think she's crazy enough to believe that, so you better go there. But Maria decided to react to that miracle.

God wants to come into our lives, brothers, God wants to come into your life, mine, and turns our sterility into abundance, our lack into fruit. Brothers, that is the essence of the Christmas message: a humanity plunged into sin, oppressed by the boot of the devil, with no relationship with God because he has no intermediary, condemned to the same thing they have suffered for millennia, without hope, turning around out of nowhere, with no way out, doomed to failure, and a light bursts forth and an announcement that this frustrated humanity can give birth, can change its destiny, can stop being sterile and begin to bear fruit for God. That is the essence of Christmas: Sterility turned into fruit. Two barren women giving birth.

God, brothers, wants to redeem our limited condition and make us bear fruit. God wants us to live rich and abundant lives. When the Holy Spirit comes into your life, perhaps you are full of sin, bondage, poverty, failure, your family has never given birth, there is no hope to suggest that anything can happen in your life, and God comes and tells you, did you know? I want to change your sterility into fruit. I want you to rejoice because from now on with Christ you are now going to be something completely different. Before I was an anonymous, depressed being, with no possibilities and now when my Son enters you, he will impregnate you and the Holy Spirit will fertilize you and your sterility will be turned into fruit. That is the essential dynamic of Christmas.

I see that continually in the lives of our people. During the years that we have been here in this congregation I have seen people like Wilson and his ……, excuse me for embarrassing you here, these two young people are here, we have known them for many years and you know these young people, they could be there lives destroyed right now, lives like so many young Latinos unfortunately living in a dead end, without bearing fruit. Their destiny was probably a destiny of failure and yet God has blessed them. When I see our brothers here married with their little daughter, and another to come along the way, and each one with their studies and working as counselors and blessing lives and blessing their church, with the children, with the deacons. Wow, I say, those two represent lives that God has impregnated, miracles that God has done. God has turned the desert into a flowery garden and I can point to many.

I think of Ana Andujar who may not be listening to me, she was up here. Ana arrives at our church years ago, sad, bitter, frustrated, a sad childhood past, and tragic to a certain extent, and Christ enters her life and her temperament changes, her outlook on life changes, God sweetens her relationship with her family that was a tortuous and conflicted and difficult relationship. She is studying, she has her good job, she has learned English, she is beautiful and God is blessing her life. And every time I see her, I see a miracle, God fertilizing the barren.

Margarita Brito who is not here. Margarita, possessed, literally when we meet her. A dark past with many problems. God frees her on Halloween from her demonic bonds, the first part because after the second part was given in the church basement back in Cambridge, I still remember it. And this young woman who hasn't studied, she cut her studies, then she goes back to university and with poor English she finishes her first degree and gets her master's degree too and she's working for the department of schools and for a social resource center here in Boston. And I see her, and I see her married, her children moving forward, with her house, her husband who loves her, and I say, behold a Mary that God impregnated. When Christ enters he made an announcement, I do not want you to live a life of occultism and failure like so many Dominicans, I want you to be happy, that you bear fruit, that you be blessed, I want to erase your past, I want to fertilize you, I want give life through you, my spirit is going to settle on you and what is born of you is going to be something holy, something wonderful.

And I want to tell you, and you, and you, that God can do the same in your life, that God wants to fertilize you. God has given an announcement in your life that he does not want you to live a life of anonymity and normality and mediocrity. I don't care who you are, the more difficult and less promising your life is, the more I dare to tell you that God wants to change that situation and that God has already made an announcement, an angel has come to you without your knowing. You will identify yourself as such and he has told you, I want to fertilize you, and I do not want you to live an anonymous life, I want to remove you from anonymity and I want to infuse my power within you.

These people that I have just pointed out have believed God and God has set them to bear fruit and the best is yet to come. The Christmas message is the message of the incarnation that Christ has come so that we may have life and life in abundance. He has set us, as John 15:16 says, so that we may bear fruit and so that our fruit may remain.

In the life of each believer, in the womb of each believer, the womb of each believer, and you have a womb and you are a child of God, fruitful, there is an announcement of life there, there is a life of God that is about to come out , wants to go out and it all depends on how we react to that announcement. Every believer in Christ Jesus exists to live a rich, productive, growing, creative, blessed life. That is the destiny that God has for you. For this you have been called, for this you have been created, as Mary and Elizabeth were created for only one thing: to give birth to the life of God and to enrich the world for the rest of history because they walked the earth.

When Christ comes into our life he tells us, you are going to bear fruit, you are going to give birth to the life of God. And brothers, our life is supposed to be a life of miracles and as in the Christmas story everything depends on how we react to that promise that miracles will happen in relation to us.

I want you to start cultivating a perspective of abundance in your mind, as I was saying last Sunday, a perspective that God has called me to something beautiful, something different, something creative, something immense. Difficulties are going to come, as in the case of Joshua and Caleb. Of course, there are giants that you have to fight with, there are times of desert. Of course. There are times of war, battle, impossibilities that must be confronted. You have to take the sword and you have to fight but God's destiny for you is that you enter the promised land and eat from the land that flows with milk and honey and drink from wells that you did not dig and live in houses that you you did not build That is what God wants.

Now, there is a middle ground of struggle and complexity. But what a beautiful novel it doesn't have, what adventure story doesn't have a villain to defeat and two or three Indians out there with spears who want to eat you. But that is what makes the story beautiful and it is necessary for the story to be a noble and adventurous story.

Now, it is interesting that both Mary and Zacharias react strangely when the angel tells them that they are going to have a son. And the promises and miracles of God, as I have said, always cause us strangeness, the question always arises, how will this be? That housewife that I was saying that one day while washing the dishes feels that perhaps it would be good for me to learn to speak English, the question, well, how am I going to do it? And between that moment of I want to learn English, which is the vision, to how I am going to do it, there is a trajectory. So, you have to start walking that path. If she, when she says, I want to learn English, she says, hmm, what's up, I can't, I shouldn't, I don't have time, where am I going to go, they're going to laugh at me, I'm too busy at home, the boys who will attend to them while I go. Yeah, if he started thinking about all that, he lost the battle before it started, he died in the movie, at the very beginning. There is no movie, what's more, his hero, the heroine died. The announcement, an announcement came but how am I going to do it, how will this be. The moment of announcement is the most dangerous of all. How we react to the announcement will determine what follows in the film.

Now look at these two beings: Mary and Zacharias. Maria asks a technical question, this is important. She asks a technical question, a neutral and to some extent legitimate question and receives an explanation that satisfies her curiosity. Well, how will this be. Well, the spirit of the Lord will rest on you and he will fertilize you with his life and the being that is born will be the Son of God, so don't worry, that's the way. María, because many people have wondered, well, why did María ask a question and Zacarías ask a question and poor Zacarías got the java, as they say, they hit him with a mallet and María was released. I think there is a difference between the two questions and that is very important too.

How one asks the Lord, if he asks with disbelief or if he asks how looking for a little more response, elaboration, give me an idea of how to do it, give me the strategy, give me what is the plan that you have. That is what you have to do, when a desire to do something great, different, impossible, difficult, complicated comes into your life, ask the Lord, ok, Father, what is the strategy that we are going to follow? Sit down and develop the plan. Ask the Lord for illumination. Ask the Lord for wisdom, clarity, that's not bad. You have to spy on the land. There is nothing wrong with spying on the earth. The important thing is that when you spy on her, you don't come back in disbelief like the ten did.

Now, Zacarías does ask with disbelief and that is why the story says that the angel told him, since you did not believe, that is the thing. The angel had a very strong psychological training. He took some psychology classes up there in heaven, they're better than the ones down here. And he understood that Zacarías' question was an incredulous question. Ah, but what's up, how can that be if I'm old, so is she. There was a different discernment. Maria's question is a technical, neutral question, well, how will this be. Zacarías's question is, how will it be, how am I going to know that this is true and who you are, where are your angel credentials. Show me your angelic position or if you are an angel or if these priests, my fellow priests, are playing a bad joke on me. Zacarias asks in disbelief, even though he knows the Scriptures and asks for a sign. And the sign they give him is a sign that he will remain mute and humiliated until he proves God's faithfulness.

Zacarías who was a priest, something else, to whom much is given, much is demanded. María is a simple woman, she is a little maiden, she has not studied the Bible, she probably does not know how to read or write. He doesn't know the Biblical stories except so, by the way. Zacarías is an educated man, a priest, he should, he should know better. He should know that there is a story back there from another old woman who conceived, her name was Sara, who interestingly something similar happened to her. Because God loves to impregnate people who can't give birth, you know? That is one of the great stories of Scripture, one of the constants, the great paradigms of Scripture. God loves to fertilize people who can't give birth, so he always chooses the people most clearly marked as impossible to give birth to. And when God wanted another very powerful prophet of his, Abraham, to be a sign to all humanity of his son, by the way, because Abraham's life follows certain parallels with the life of Jesus Christ and God, he appears to him and says, you and your wife are going to have a child.

And look how interesting this other story in Genesis, hundreds of years ago, where two angels come to Abraham's house and tell him, where is Sara, your wife? And he answered, here in the store. Then one of the angels said to him, I will certainly return to you. This is the angel of the Lord, and according to the time of life, that is, the 9 months that a woman has to give birth, behold, Sara, your wife, will have a son. And look how interesting this is, and Sara was listening at the door of the store that was behind him and Abraham and Sara were old, of advanced age, and Sara had already ceased the custom of women, and what did Sara do? So Sarah laughed among herself saying, after I have grown old I will have delight, my lord also being old, ha, ha, ha. Then Jehovah said to Abraham, why did Sarah laugh? Saying it will be true that I have to give birth when I am already old. Is there something difficult for God? At the appointed time I will return to you according to the time of life Sara will have a son and Sara was scared because the angel was upset by her disbelief. And Sara denied saying, I didn't laugh because I was afraid, and he said, it's not like that, you just laughed.

In other words, the Lord doesn't like us to say, no, don't come to me with that, you did laugh and be careful next time. And these are, I see the time, how quickly time has gone, but amen. I am going to cut because I want to be prudent. I've already been reckless, I haven't even noticed what time it is. But we've had a good time, we've had a good time, haven't we?

But brothers, the sermon was left in the middle but maybe I'll continue it next Sunday. But look, get out of here today with that thing, very important that God wants to fertilize you first. God wants your life to be a life of power and fruit, abundance, wealth, creativity. Do not settle for those stories and those schemes of infertility and anonymity and mediocrity. Give it up, renew your mind. Fill yourself, impregnate yourself with the paradigms of Scripture. Believe that the Lord has something for your life and when you feel that God calls you to do something or that something great happens in your life, do not think about how this will be, impossible. No, if you ask the Lord a question, ask rather, ok, Lord now give me the plan, how is this going to be. Do not harbor the doubt because the miracle is so great, so impossible that it seems that it is your imagination. Believe the Lord. Expect big things in your life. Live your life with the expectation that God is going to do something great and live in light of that vision. Dare to take steps of faith, throw yourself in the name of the Lord. Believe that God has called you to feats and give up the idea that you have been called simply to live a normal, ordinary life. You are not normal, you are a child of God. The life of God lives within you. That is the announcement, what makes Christmas possible, the incarnation, the coming of Jesus who was born under a resounding sign of miracle, from nothing to life.

And that is the miracle reduced to its most basic structure of all, from zero to infinity. There is the essence of a miracle and that is for you and me and it is for this church. The Lord loves to do resoundingly big things with small things. May the Lord bless you.

Stand up. And believe that Christmas is every day for those who believe. Christmas was not something that happened two thousand years ago, Christmas is today for you and me. Father, impregnate us with your life and help us to be men and women who do not hinder your intentions to fertilize and bless us. Help us to be like Mary, open our womb so that you do what you have to do in it, your operation, your strange operation, Lord.

I bless my sisters and my brothers, I fertilize them with the blessing of your spirit this morning. I declare upon them miracles, miracles, miracles. Get them out of here with your blessing. Lord, seal this word in our spirits and start with me.

Father, bless us with the absolute certainty that you are the same yesterday and forever and that you want to do miracles of fertility and blessing and creativity in our lives, that you have incredible things ahead for each of us. You want to impregnate us with your glory, your life and let us be like Mary, like Elizabeth, men and women whose womb is ever ready for you to come in and bring the life of Christ in us and through us. We thank you this morning, Father. Lead us now in safety and joy into our normal lives, to live lives that are not normal. We bless you, we glorify you.

Thank you for what you have made possible on this day, Lord in the name of Jesus and the people of God say, amen. They are blessed.