Fourth Sunday of Advent

December 20, 2009

Sermon by Rev. Dr. Marcus Pera

The Holy Gospel according to St. Luke, the First Chapter. (Luke 1:39-45 [46-55]

In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.” And Mary said,

“My soul magnifies the Lord,

and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,

for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.

Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;

for the Mighty One has done great things for me,

and holy is his name.

His mercy is for those who fear him

from generation to generation.

He has shown strength with his arm;

he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.

He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,

and lifted up the lowly;

he has filled the hungry with good things,

and sent the rich away empty.

He has helped his servant Israel

in remembrance of his mercy,

according to the promise he made to our ancestors,

to Abraham and to his descendants forever.”

The Gospel of our Lord.

In the name of our coming Savior, Jesus Christ, sisters and brothers, grace, mercy, and peace be unto you. Amen.

Well, all four candles are lighted. It obviously says to us that we are coming to the close of the Advent season. It has been a season of preparation, a season of preparation that is hopeful, a season of hopeful preparation in anticipation of the coming of our Lord and his kingdom once again into our midst.

Interesting today, we are instructed by two people who are two pregnant women. What is interesting about that is for the culture of the time that would be kind of irregular. First of all, women were marginated in society. They certainly were not ones that taught, at least not men. And unfortunately and strangely enough, there are some churches that still think that’s appropriate today. Secondly, the women were pregnant, and that further marginated them. And then one of the women that was pregnant was not married. And that certainly was not acceptable, as well.

John Westerhoff, in a book on the church year, talks about, however, that we should learn from Mary. We should learn how to be open. We should learn to make ourselves vulnerable. We should learn in order that Christ might be pregnant in us, or God might be pregnant in us. He also says that there is something we learn from the virginity of Mary, and that is that God also can create and continues to create something new. So here we are; and, like in Westside Story, we say: “Oh, something’s a-coming.” “Something’s a-coming.” And we need to remove the clutter from our hearts, and we need to open hospitable space in order that we might be open to that coming once again.

And we listen for the words of Mary this day, this 13 or 14-year-old person, as she brings to us the story that is absolutely magnificent, what is happening and coming. First of all, Mary’s pregnancy is absolutely magnificent. And you have to hear it kind of in the context in the history of similar kind of impossible births in scripture.

You have, first of all, Elizabeth. You recall, the Angel Gabriel appeared to Zachariah. Zachariah didn’t believe that they would have a son. He couldn’t talk until the baby was going to be born. But, sure enough, Elizabeth did become pregnant, and now she was in her sixth-month’s pregnancy. That would be the birth of John the Baptist.

Now, we have Mary; the same Angel Gabriel that comes to Mary. And Mary, too, says, “This is impossible. I haven’t slept with a man, and I’m not married.” However, with God, all things are possible. She goes off to her cousin Elizabeth, and talks with her and tells her what has happened. Elizabeth is absolutely excited and rejoices, and says those words that are well known: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus.” And she commends Mary for trusting in the promise of God of that which would be birthed within her. And then Mary responds, and the interesting thing is, it says that the fetus or the baby kicked, I call it kicking, leapt with joy inside of the womb. And it was almost as though John the Baptist was able to read when he heard the voice of Mary, that this is the one who would be baptized and for whom he would prepare the way.

Now, we have another impossible birth in scripture, and that’s the person Hannah gives birth to, which is Samuel. And we will hear more about him later in the forthcoming Sundays. Hannah was the wife of Elkanah. And Elkanah had another wife, and that was Peninnah. And Hannah, the first one, was not able to give him an offspring. And now it had come to the point where the years were beyond her being reasonably able to bear a child, and Peninnah rubs this in her face frequently. And when they make their annual trip to the temple, Elkanah even gives Hannah the greater food for the offering in order that God might bless her in this way. She is very down about this. She is sobbing, and she is staying in the temple longer than usual. And Eli thinks she’s drunk. And so Eli comes over to her and talks with her, and she said no, tells him about her situation. Eli blesses her and prays that hopefully it would happen, as she desired from God. And sure enough, she did become pregnant. As she promised the Lord, Samuel, the baby, after she weaned him, she brought Samuel to the Lord, to the temple, and left him there.

And then we have another one, and that is Sarah and Abraham. And you maybe know that story better. But when the three strangers came and stopped where Sarah and Abraham were, what happened is that Abraham was very hospitable to them, offered food and drink. And then one of the strangers said that Sarah would become pregnant. Well, Sarah was out of the tent by the side, but she overheard. She was also beyond childbearing age at that point, and she laughed at them. But, again, with God, all things are possible. And she gave birth, and that person was Isaac.

Yes, Mary is in a line of people, and some people think that Elizabeth is the one that possibly composed this Magnificat. And the reason is that it is so much like the one that Hannah spoke. And it is also very similar in terms of the people who couldn’t give birth. But it makes much more sense to say, “Hey, God is creating something new here.” This is a unique birth, and it is Mary; Mary, the one who, yes, is of age to have a child, but Mary, the one who did not know a man. This would be a unique birth, the unique birth of the very Son of God. And so she sings the Magnificat.

Now, in this Magnificat, Mary also says that God is absolutely magnificent. It’s interesting, this 13 or 14 year old has the maturity about her that she doesn’t make it about her. She acknowledges that God has blessed her and that God has been good to her. But then the whole thing is about God and what God would do. And in this Magnificat we have this incredible story of God’s kingdom and the values of God’s kingdom, and how things would be incarnated in this Jesus, and begun to set in motion in a new way through him. And in some places we call that the great reversal, or in another way it might be just an evening-out of distinctions that shouldn’t be there. But what happens when he says that the mighty are brought down from their seats and the low are brought up, he says that the poor will be fed and the rich will be sent away empty. There is a whole new kind of reckoning. This Magnificat is an incredible revolutionary piece of literature.

In the Middle Ages, illustrating this, there was a kind of play that happened— today we would call it either Gorilla Theater or street theater—and these were medieval plays. And one of them was called “The Feast of Fools.” And one of the things that they would do, strong satire, that they would depict this kind of reversal. And so they would have a mock pope, and they would have a boy bishop, and they would have a dolt for an archbishop. And they would do all these things. And the person that would read—they even did this in relation to the Magnificat—the person that reads that would have to lay down his staff before he could read that portion of the Magnificat. It’s not a wonder that the church of that day did not look kindly upon that, and in fact finally banned it. But it shows, again, the strength and power and challenge of the Magnifcat in terms of how the world order was going to be changed and shifted with the coming of God, in Jesus, and the coming of the kingdom. Now, what is also interesting, it seems to me, is that in each of these songs of deliverance that happens there is a song of response. It isn’t just Mary that did the Magnificat, and spoke and sang the Magnificat.

In another part of scripture, we have the great act of deliverance when God took the children of Israel through Egypt, through the Red Sea. And once they were in freedom and safety, it was Miriam that grabbed the tambourines, and the other women and she started singing, and said, “I will sing unto the Lord, for he has won triumphantly, horse and rider thrown into the sea.” It’s a word that is read at the Saturday-evening vigil during Holy Week.

That word and song of deliverance is also spoken by Deborah in the Old Testament. Deborah is the one, with Barack, that was one of the prophetesses in the Old Testament, of the very few that were. She was a strong leader. And she heard from God that they were to go against the Canaanites and God would ensure victory. She goes to Barack. Barak isn’t very sure about that, but says he will go if she goes with him. And she does that. The interesting thing is, it has a similarity also to the fleeing from Egypt, because the reason the Canaanites were so strong at that point in time over the Israelites and other neighbors was they had one superior military weapon and that was they had discovered and developed iron chariots. But God did another interesting thing. God made it rain so severely that the iron chariots were stuck, and the entire Canaanite army was defeated. And here Deborah sings this song again of praise and deliverance.

And then we also have the Magnificat itself; the wonderful way in which God comes to God’s people, and delivers them, and sets in motion a reordering of society in a kind of way that approximates what the kingdom of God is all about and that it is moving to that fulfillment. And God has placed us into the kingdom, and he has called us to see the vision that is there and to live that future even in the now. And so he invites us to come and taste of that goodness, that which is to come once again this day. He invites us to taste of it as we experience it, a foretaste in the meal that is presented before us. He does it in word, and he does it in song as well.

And so this morning we do our pondering, as Mary did, as we listen to one of the persons that gave such wonderful music, a composition to this Magnificat, J. S. Bach, when he was a cantor at St. Thomaskirche in Leipzig. He wrote an oratorio titled “The Magnificat.” And we ponder as we hear one aria from that this morning.

May your spirit, too, rejoice in Christ our Savior.

Amen.