Sermon for December 20, 2015: Fourth Sunday of Advent
Rev. Amy Welin:Today we light the fourth Advent candle of Love. This last Sunday in Advent is all about our longing and expectation, and the Love that fulfills those desires. In that light, there is something wonderful about Mary of Nazareth. I am not talking about the Mary of statues and popular paintings. That Mary is often smiling faintly, as if she knows a secret. She is completely serene, and sometimes she is holding her baby Jesus. But the statues and paintings do not capture the spirit of the Mary of the gospels. Mary of Nazareth was faithful and courageous and surprising. God chose her to fulfill an important and challenging role, and she fulfilled it gracefully.
Today the gospel tells us of Mary’s joyful visit with her kinswoman Elizabeth. Two women of Israel, both unexpectedly and inexplicably pregnant. Each woman knew in her heart that her pregnancy was an act of God, who makes possible what is impossible. Both women rejoiced over their good fortune, for to have a child in Israel was to fulfill the commandment to be fruitful. And Mary proclaims her praise of God in the passage we often call the Magnificat (from the first word in Latin), which we used as our psalm today.
Mary of Nazareth is a strong, faithful woman, who has been liberated by God to do the amazing work of bringing the Reign of God to earth. “Mary’s courageous song of praise [is] a radical resource for those seeking to honor the holy amid the suffering and conflicts of real life.” (Carolyn Sharp)
Do you know that the Magnificat has been considered a subversive hymn? In the nineteenth century, the British prohibited the singing of the Magnificat in churches of India. In the 1980s, Guatemala’s government decided that Mary’s words about God’s love for the poor were too dangerous and revolutionary. Mary’s words were inspiring the Guatemalan poor to believe that change was indeed possible. Similarly, after the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo – whose children all disappeared during the Dirty War in Argentina – the Magnificat’s words on posters throughout the capital plaza, the military junta of Argentina outlawed any public display of Mary’s song.
Mary’s Magnificat is a revolutionary story about how God operates within real human life.
The gospel relates a story of a young woman’s radical hope for the future. For Mary, this hope was framed by a harsh political reality. Rome had conquered and occupied Israel. The Jewish people were oppressed and abused. They lived virtually powerless and paid high taxes to a government that exploited their religion. They longed for the Messiah to set them free. When Mary calls God her Savior, she is expressing the sort of extravagant hope that religious people have. Hope is not based on the evidence at hand but on the faith that nourishes it.
The gospel does not reveal how things were going in the little town of Nazareth when Mary’s family – and perhaps their neighbors also – realized that she was in the family way. G Matt records the scandal: Joseph knew that the child was not his and he was considering breaking the betrothal. No wonder she went to the hill country “in haste”. Mary lived in a time when a woman carrying a child conceived in an irregular relationship could be expelled from her house or even stoned to death. This is not about the embarrassment of a birth out of wedlock, but a strict enforcement of family and property rights. When Mary said “yes” to the angel, she was accepting tremendous risk. She was a woman of great courage, doing what God called on her to do, even though it must have felt dangerous.
The gospel does not say much about Mary’s place of origin, but the first hearers of this story understood its significance. Nazareth was a small and unimportant town: a backwater. The biblical question “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” may imply that the town had an unsavory reputation. According to G Luke, Mary was a distant descendent of King David. Yet it is likely that Mary’s family was poor, certainly by our standards and probably by the standards of her own time. Yet God chose Mary to bear Jesus.
Two thousand years later, this story of Mary teaches us a lot about God and about our own identity, as followers of her son Jesus.
Living out what God calls us to do often feels risky, because God asks us to embrace new experiences. We may long for the predictable and the traditional, what used to be “normal” – but God has greater things planned for us, as God did for Mary and for Jesus. God invites us to begin a new life and to trust in divine guidance.
When God invited Mary to be the mother of Jesus, God revealed that those the world considers unimportant and marginalized are very close to the divine heart. The Nazareths of the world are where God prefers to operate, because the people there listen for the divine Word. God calls us to worry less about imitating the rich and the famous and to worry more about imitating a holy, courageous person like Mary, who can do great things by saying yes.
Today, our waiting is almost over. In a few short days, it will be Christmas. And before we celebrate that miracle, today we celebrate the miracle of God’s action where it is least expected. We are all called to sing out the glory of God in our own Magnificats. Not as perfect plaster statues or as serene paintings, but in our ordinary life, with all of our selves. We are all called to be Mary: to bear Christ to the world, to bring the good news of God’s love to people who need it.
WE can accomplish the great work of God in a new world.
Are you willing to say yes?
Resources
Carolyn Sharp. Magnificat for a Broken World. Huffington Post. December 14, 2011.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carolyn-sharp/luke-13956-magnificat-for_b_1146988.html
http://enemylove.com/subversive-magnificat-mary-expected-messiah-to-be-like/