“Be a World Changer”

December 20, 2009

(Fourth Sunday of Advent)

Luke 1:39-45 Hebrews 10:5-10

Who could have imagined that one tiny baby could change the world? Have you ever heard of a man by the name
of Edward Kimball? Have you ever heard of a Georgia sharecropper by the name of Albert McMakin? I would
guess that most of us have heard of neither Edward Kimball nor Albert McMakin and yet these two men, each in
their own century, changed the world in ways they could not have imagined.

On Saturday, April 21, 1855, Edward Kimball, an average Sunday School teacher in Chicago, Illinois, walked
into the shoe store where one of his students was at work. He said, "I want to tell you how much Christ loves
you." At that moment, in the lunchroom of the shoe store, Dwight Moody, who would become the nineteenth
century’s greatest evangelist, kneeled and accepted Jesus as his savior.

For eleven weeks beginning in September 1934 a well-known southern evangelist named Mordecai Fowler Ham,
and his song leader, Walter Ramsay, held evangelistic meetings in a borrowed field in Charlotte North Carolina.
The prayer of the organizers was that God would raise up, from Charlotte, “someone to preach the Gospel to
the ends of the earth.”

During the second or third week of these services Albert McMakin, a sharecropper’s son, filled his old truck with
people from the neighborhood, both whites and blacks, and in order to attract him to come, invited a young Billy
Graham to drive it to the meetings. (taken from The Billy Graham Story, by John Charles Pollock, Zondervan
Publishing, Grand Rapids, MI, 2003) Before Mordecai Fowler completed his series of services, Billy Graham put
his faith in Jesus Christ and became the very man that the organizers, including Billy Graham’s father, had prayed
for.

As we have seen in these examples, God has used ordinary people to accomplish extraordinary, even world-
changing, things. Our natural response, I think, is to run backwards as fast as we can. Many of us would pray
that God would not intend to transform our comfortable lives, into that of a spiritual powerhouse like Billy
Graham or D.L. Moody. We might pray such a prayer but we know that God knew us since before the beginning
of time. We also know that God has a plan for the future and a plan for the lives of each and every one of us.
Taking these things together, we can only believe that each of us has a part to play in God’s plan but we don’t
have any idea what God has in mind for us. This morning I want to walk through a part of the Christmas story
and reveal, not only the arrival of Jesus, but what that means to each one of us as we listen for the call of God
upon our lives.

Jesus was born in Bethlehem but while Mary was pregnant with Jesus, she went to stay with her cousin Elizabeth
(whom, you will remember was, pregnant with the son who would be called John the Baptist). (Luke 1:39-45)
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At that time Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea, 40where she entered Zechariah's
home and greeted Elizabeth. 41When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and
Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. 42In a loud voice she exclaimed: "Blessed are you among women, and
blessed is the child you will bear! 43But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? 44As
soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. 45Blessed is she who
has believed that what the Lord has said to her will be accomplished!"

Among the generations of women who had waited for the promised Messiah, perhaps Mary wonders why God
had favored her because she herself is so ordinary. What transformed Mary from an ordinary woman into a world

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changer was not anything spectacular that she had accomplished or any spectacular qualifications or even any
kind of well-to-do parents. What transformed Mary into a world changer was her obedience and her willingness
to do what God asked her to do, regardless of how difficult it might have been to her personally.

Mary’s husband, Joseph was intent on divorcing Mary quietly because of her infidelity. Joseph could have had
Mary stoned to death but he wanted to spare her life while still saving his family the humiliation of an out-of-
wedlock birth. Up until that point, Joseph was a pretty ordinary, average, guy. What transformed Joseph into a
world changer was his willingness to do as God asked and to take Mary as his wife despite the damage to his
family name and the personal risks involved in raising a child that was not his own.

Elizabeth too, was an ordinary woman who stood out only in her average-ness. Elizabeth does very little besides
living a lifetime of faithfulness and a willingness to do as God asked, to name her son John and to raise him as a
prophet of God.

Zechariah, besides being born into the tribe of Levi and being genetically chosen to be a priest, did nothing to rise
above his average-ness. For decades he served in the Jerusalem temple when it was his family’s turn but the rest
of the time he lived his life in the hill country away from the city. He had been faithful to God and had done what
God had asked of him and one day, BAM, God transforms him into a world changer.

We find Simeon the priest in the Temple eight days after Jesus’ birth when Joseph and Mary come to have Jesus
circumcised as required by the Law of Moses (Luke 2). Simeon was an elderly man but had lived a life of
faithfulness and devotion. Simeon was not a well-known person but simply a respected priest who had done his
job and who loved God. Suddenly, Simeon is there to be the first to prophecy over the baby Jesus and announce
to the world that this child was the messiah for whom Israel had been waiting.

Likewise, Anna was an old woman, widowed at a young age and had no family to look after her. To survive she
lived in the temple and there she spent her days fasting and praying and worshiping God. There was nothing
particularly special about Anna and some might even call her life somewhat tragic except that God chose her to
speak for him. Luke names Anna a prophetess but we don’t know if that means she regularly spoke for God, or if
her gift of prophecy extended only to this one event. In either case, this penniless widow is chosen by God to
become the first woman to announce the arrival of the Messiah and to publicly praise God for his arrival.

The Bible is full of unlikely heroes not just in the Christmas story and the reason can be found in Hebrews 10:5-
10, Paul speaks of Jesus and says,
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Therefore, when Christ came into the world, he said: "Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you
prepared for me; 6with burnt offerings and sin offerings you were not pleased.
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Then I said, 'Here I am—it is written about me in the scroll— I have come to do your will, O God.' " 8First he
said, "Sacrifices and offerings, burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not desire, nor were you pleased with
them" (although the law required them to be made). 9Then he said, "Here I am, I have come to do your will." He
sets aside the first to establish the second. 10And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the
body of Jesus Christ once for all.

Paul is clear in saying that, twice, Jesus says, “Sacrifice and offering you did not desire." Jesus said that his
mission on earth was to do God’s will. Jesus says that God was not pleased with sacrifices and offerings even
though the Law required them. The concept of sacrifices and offerings can be found in the church still today as
ritual and offerings and church dinners. Paul teaches that legalistic devotion to ritual and offering, to doing good-
looking church stuff, is not enough because that’s not what God wants. Instead God desires for his Son Jesus, and
for all his people, to carry out their mission and to do God’s will, to do the things that God desires. Like the
message we heard from John last week, just because we perform our ritual of going to church and dropping

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money in the plate doesn’t mean that God is happy with us. What pleases God is acting like followers of God,
doing the things that God desires and being the people that God has called us to be.

Each of us carries within us the potential to be the next Dwight Moody or Billy Graham, but few of us will ever
receive a calling quite so extreme. Its easy to see how men like Moody and Billy Graham have changed the
world but neither would have become who they were without people like Edward Kimball and Albert McMakin.
God’s plan is world changing. The coming of Jesus Christ, his life, his death and his resurrection were never
intended to happen for the benefit of a small group of ethnically unique people in a small country in the Middle
East. The Good News of Jesus Christ has always been intended for every human being on the face of the earth
and God’s people have always known that this news is world changing. The Good News of Jesus Christ is world
changing because it changes hearts and lives one human being at a time.

Our bishop is fond of saying “The United Methodist Church is not an organization, it is a movement,” and I think
that, in reality, the same can be said for the church of Jesus Christ. Jesus didn’t rescue people from death when he
was asleep but when he was walking, and talking and eating. Jesus accomplished the will of God when he was
moving. Likewise the body of Christ today does not succeed when it is standing still but accomplishes the will of
God when it is moving.

Jesus said, "Here I am, I have come to do your will." And Paul tells us that, by God’s will, “we have been made
holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.” Because Jesus did what God desired, the
world and everyone in it had been changed. Jesus has invited us to be a part of his movement, a movement of
God, a people who are committed to doing the will of God. If we do God’s will, however small we might be, we
cannot help but change our corner of the world and the lives of the people in it. God might not call us to be the
next Dwight Moody or the next Billy Graham, but we might just change the world the way that Edward Kimball
and Albert McMakin did.

As we celebrate Christmas, let us remember that Christ has come and has invited us to be world changers. Jesus
Christ has invited us to follow him, to carry on the mission that he began, the mission to change lives, to bring
hope to the hopeless, to bring light to the darkness, to bring healing to the hurting and to bring rescue to a world
condemned to die.

Jesus asks you today, will you move past the rituals and offerings of the church and be transformed into a world
changer? Will you seek to know and to do God’s will so that together we can accomplish the mission of Jesus
Christ?

Jesus invites you to be a part of something bigger than yourself.

Jesus invites you to make a difference.

Jesus invites you to be transformed.

Will you choose to be a world changer?

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All Scripture references are from the New International Version unless otherwise noted.