Sermon for 4th Sunday of Advent
God still can change history with our help
By The Rev. Eric Christopher Shafer -
Today’s Gospel lesson, this 4th Advent Sunday, tells us of a visit between two pregnant cousins, Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, and Mary, the mother of Jesus. Mary speaks very little in any other part of the Gospels, but here we hear the most words from Mary in the entire New Testament.
And what words they are! We know these words as “The Magnificat” which is Latin for the first words of Mary’s song, “My soul magnifies the Lord.” We sing these words every time we sing the Holden evening or morning prayer service as we are again today.
Scholar Matthew Skinner, whose work I am using extensively in this sermon, Dr. Skinner reminds us that we sometimes forget that Mary was a person living in an occupied land. She needed to watch what she said in public settings. Criticism of the Roman Empire, the status quo, could have got Mary killed.
But, when Mary, after learning she would give birth to God’s son, a son designated to assume the long-vacant throne of Israel’s King David, when Mary went to visit her cousin Elizabeth, Luke tells us that she made a revolutionary declaration, the one we have just heard, the one known as “The Magnificat.” God will bring down the powerful, God will lift up the lowly, fill the hungry, and send the rich away empty.
These are revolutionary words. They were, and are, an affront to those in power in her world, in this world.
This declaration makes Mary the voice behind some of the most powerful claims in all of the Bible.
Mary’s declaration sings about revolution. Its imagery remembers, celebrates, anticipates events that are revolutionary in the purest sense of that word. Kings are removed from their thrones. The lowly are elevated and dignified. The hungry eat. The rich lose their purchasing power.
There is a legend, probably untrue, that Mary’s words were so revolutionary that the military junta in 1980’s Guatemala banned their public reading. Probably just an untrue, if interesting, legend, but if it were true those political bosses would have understood what Mary was really saying – the powerful will fall from power in God’s kingdom.
Now, Mary is not an agitator. She is not supernaturally brave. Her words just indicate that she is fed up with the way things are in Roman-occupied Judea. And so, Mary holds God to account, singing about God’s revolution to come.
What sets Mary apart, along with the others who appear in Luke’s first two chapters, what sets Mary apart is her vision of a world that God has NOT forgotten.
In Mary’s time, most people thought history was guided by divine beings or other invisible forces. Calling people to march in the streets or write letters to officials was not something they would even have thought of since people believed that they themselves could not do much to influence history or do anything to change the course of nations.
Mary believed similarly. Mary believed that only God could change history.
So, Mary, bearing the people’s Savior in her womb, Mary considers her condition and surveys her religious convictions. Then, Mary utters the conclusions she has reached – God MUST be on the verge of doing something. God will again be the source of major change.
Mary’s pregnancy and hope provide all the evidence her conclusions need – There is no way God’s Messiah will leave the current state of affairs in her world as they are, where the powerful humiliate and coerce the powerless. No, if Jesus is really coming, and Mary knows that Jesus is coming, if Jesus is really coming, then something big is going to change.
In Mary’s world, in Mary’s time, to those in power, Mary is a bit player in a Jewish and Roman political drama starring gods, emperors, elites and generals.
So, why should Mary’s vision even matter? She could be just another idealistic teenager dreaming of a future that sounds entirely out of touch with the real world.
However, Mary does not just imagine such a changed reality, her words demand it.
Some people today may hear Mary’s words and clumsily apply them to themselves and their circumstances. They hoard her rhetoric about a victorious God as a way to protect their own privileges. Which is ironic, given what Mary says about the world’s rich and powerful.
Instead, we, you and I, we need to listen to Mary’s words, Mary’s understanding of who God is and what God is committed to accomplish in this world God loves.
Most other voices in the Bible lack a perspective that lets them articulate how God’s power might be exercised in ways that differ from the coercive techniques of human hands and policies. After all, Mary’s revolution essentially imagines that God will make the losers and winners trade places.
Notice how Mary’s view of God will not let her be resigned to the current state of affairs in her world. She refuses to view long-term suffering and the proliferation of victims as the sacrifices a society must offer the guardians of the status quo in exchange for security.
Therein lies Mary’s power.
This young woman’s restlessness beautifully characterizes this Advent season – not a season for slowing down or shopping, but, rather, a time for Christians to survey the world and shout to God, “Enough!” Enough of blaming the poor, the homeless, the immigrant, the refugee, the surging poor at our southern border, black and brown people. They are not the problem. And more than not the problem, the poor are those who will be lifted up, chosen, in God’s kingdom. God will make winners into losers and losers into winners.
God desires all of humanity to flourish. It is, perhaps, God’s top priority.
Mary still sings her song today. As we light our candles of Advent and Christmas let us remember Mary, the mother of Jesus, Mary who refused to let the night win. Let us remember the poor, the homeless, the refugee – they are those who, in God’s kingdom, will be lifted up and filled with good things.
That is Mary’s song and hope. Hers are God’s promises for humankind. Our task is to find ways to help bring in these promises in this time and place, using the power we have, the power we have to enact the future God promises for everyone now. Our task this Advent. This Christmas. Today. Amen.
(With thanks to Dr. Matthew Skinner).
The Rev. Eric Christopher Shafer
Senior Pastor - Mt. Olive Lutheran Church
Santa Monica, California
Sermon for:
December 19th, 2021
