Micah 5:2-5; Luke 1:39-55
December 20, 2009: Fourth Sunday of Advent
I know Dan just read it – but in a minute I want to set the scene again. Not because it’s an unfamiliar story – that of Mary and Elizabeth, but precisely because it’s familiar to us. Sometimes, when stories are familiar, our ears hear what they have always heard and some words are at risk of being lost to us. For me, this is one of those stories. It’s familiar and as soon as it begins, the scene starts to take shape in my mind. And it’s a hushed scene – Mary and Elizabeth ambivalent about the news they just heard. They vacillate between excited and scared, expectant and doubtful. They are whispering because there are some people in the next room none too happy about these two pregnancies. Elizabeth is too old and Mary – well Mary is too inexperienced. I’ve even imagined them both a little embarrassed by the whole thing.
But the Holy spirit turned up the volume for me this week so I could hear some previously missed words and phrases. And I realized that I vastly underestimated these women. They were not embarrassed, they were bold! And this scene was not quiet, it was not hushed, it was not still. Right away we hear that Mary set out to Elizabeth’s “with haste.” In other words, by the time Mary got there she was probably out of breath – greeting her relative in panting excitement. Then, as soon as breathless Mary greeted Elizabeth, the child in Elizabeth’s womb danced, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed in nothing less than a loud cry, “Blessed are you, Mary!” There was no whispering here. And they are excited, and proud.
Mary’s hymn continues on in loud excitement and joy, amazement and importance. I have heard many modern versions of this song of Mary’s, and most are ethereal, high floating melodic pieces of music sung by the soprano with the beautiful voice, standing in for Mary. But I think Mary responded in kind to Elizabeth. Her song was loud, filled with joy. “My soul magnifies God!”
The truth is, when we have good news, we want to tell our friends – especially our friends that will really understand. We want to be together in some way, sharing the moment. It is a human instinct. At session this week, Dan McCue was telling us about all of the “groups” that are out there on facebook: which is a social networking site. People can join these groups based on common interests and likes, and the possibilities for these groups are nearly endless. There are groups for people who love the Bears or Danicing with the Stars. I found one group called: “When I am bored I, I go on Facebook and join tons of pointless groups.” This group has 128,000 members. The sheer number of groups and participants in them tells me people hunger to connect with someone they feel a common bond with: People who really “get” them.
And I’m sure that’s partly why Mary went, post haste, to visit Elizabeth. They were sharing something in common that few others could understand. But that’s not all that was going on between these two women. They were doing something people in these facebook groups generally are not. They were coming together to share the moment with each other – but also with God. They knew it was because of God that they were pregnant with hope that would change the world. That’s why Elizabeth shouts her greeting and why Mary belts out her song. In short, Mary ran to Elizabeth’s house in order to worship!
When we worship together here, it is not ultimately because we like each other and can relate to the things that go on in our every day lives, though these things are surely true. We come to worship because of our common hope and belief in the possibilities found in Christ. We sing to God in a loud voice. We celebrate Jesus’ birth and resurrection. We are drawn to each other because we know – we know that this is where hope is born and where we can be as changed by that hope as Mary and Elizabeth were that day.
We see the change that took place in Mary through the words of her song. Her whole orientation toward the world and her role in it shifted after she was visited by the angel and became pregnant. She realized that being filled with the spirit of God meant she had a responsibility to share that spirit with the world. She had to give birth to this new world she could feel taking shape in the core of her being. When God takes up residence inside her and waits to be born as a child, out comes this hymn – a song that would ring though people’s hearts for 2,000 years and counting, and inspire them to live differently, live in service to others, and bring peace on earth.
It’s the song of a prophet. In fact, Mary’s song and the themes found in Luke’s gospel story about Jesus’ birth have a familiar ring to anyone who knows their Hebrew scriptures intimately. The prophet Micah was active when Israel was “under siege” by foreign powers, and domestically the people were subject to the whims of the powerful – both religious and political. Priests, prophets and judges were self-serving and corrupt. Micah railed against socioeconomic injustice, and he spoke out in defense of shepherds and poor farmers whose lands were being exploited by the rich.
But Micah had a message – his own hymn – of divine forgiveness and hope, even with all of that going on. Even as he spoke against the injustices around him, he spoke of the future restoration of the temple and looked forward to universal peace. That peace would come in the form of a messenger, and this messenger is befitting of a prophet on the side of the poor and oppressed. It is not a king or high priest – it is a child born of the “little clan” of Bethlehem who becomes a shepherd. Sound familiar? Bethlehem, shepherds, songs of hope for the lowly and exploited. Mary is the Micah of her day, and Luke uses Micah to tell the Christmas story we hear and love every year.
It’s important to notice that neither Mary nor Micah were not blind to reality. Mary sings the truth of the broken world she lives in, even as she knows God will change all that. The powerful will lose their power over the people and the rich will see the hungry and give them food. Micah, too lays it out starkly at first: “We are walled around with a wall, and siege is laid against us. With a rod they strike our ruler on the cheek.” Pretty bleak stuff. But in the next breath he says that from the very ones under siege would come someone who would bring peace and an end to that oppression. Both Mary and Micah knew the pain of reality. What gave them joy – deep joy – was the belief that this reality was only temporary; because God was about to be born as a child.
Somehow Mary knew her child would bring an end to an era and a beginning for humanity. When God is a child, the era of kings and lords and soldiers and overseers and hunger and oppression ends. A new world is born right in the middle of it all as a child…and then that world begins to grow.
So what is our hymn? When we come to worship, are we not like Mary and Elizabeth? Don’t we also expect God to do amazing things through us and in the world? We come and greet each other out of breath – because we have run from the world and taken a temporary break from those things that dampen our song with their monotones of individualism and consumerism. We come in haste because we know that here we will find something different. Here the Spirit will sing a different song that will fill our hearts, sear through our bodies…and that is so refreshing. Once moved by this spirit we can’t help be sing a song like Micah’s and Mary’s. A song of joy in the unexpected and hope that God will change the world and bring universal peace – no matter how bad it looks out there. What a great song!
Coming together – our worship – seems particularly important during the Christmas “season”. Ever since “black Friday” the worldly story about Christmas has washed over us all. But we in the church have a different story – we have Advent, which began two days after black Friday. Advent is a really weird thing. Very few people outside the church understand its importance. Even in the church many of us don’t really know why we insist on slowly going through the advent season before we get to the Christmas carols and birth of Christ. Four weeks of strange and hard to sing Advent hymns before we break out in the familiar, wonderful “Joy to the World!”
But that’s partly the point – the strangeness of the songs. Mary’s song was strange – unlikely, improbable, and not the familiar hymns of the Empire. The truth is, our Christmas Carols used to be strange too. They tell of the Good News that God comes as a child, which we know threatens the powerful and the rich. Yet they have been co-opted by those very people and become the songs of the Empire. They are played over and over again through the loud speakers in the churches of consumerism: The stores and the malls. And they have become so familiar they have lost their power to change the world. Instead they inspire us to keep things exactly as they’ve always been. They’re nostalgic, not subversive. They “take us back”, not “move us toward the realm of God.” They cheer us up when we are shopping instead of changing our whole world view.
Advent, is an answer to that. If we are prepared for Christmas, those songs will sound different to us. Once again they will say that when God is a child, the world shakes and new things are bout to emerge.
Another weird thing about Advent is although we are waiting for that time when Jesus is born and the world changes, we are also watching for the end of all that competes with God’s realm. This end is not looming out in the future somewhere waiting to descend violently upon us. That end – God’s realm – is in us. We are pregnant with the Realm of God. And it comes through birth, not by force. It comes by presenting something so new and different to the world that other ways of living begin to look foolish and no longer have a hold on us. Things like war and violence looks foolish! Not sometimes necessary or “just”, but absolutely ridiculous as we sing our new song in joy and hope.
What we do here, our worship, is extraordinary and exciting. Stepping away from what’s called “normal” and boldly, excitedly, breathlessly telling each other what God has done and what we know God will do. Mary’s song sets the stage for the most amazing birth. And our worship sets the stage for what can happen when we return to the world and expose the lie; showing people that what we think is normal is not what is true or inevitable.
And so we can find JOY in our Advent waiting, and peace in not rushing to Christmas with the rest of the world. It’s the joy Mary and Elizabeth find before they give birth. Joy in the waiting, not in the rush and bustle and immediacy of the “Christmas spirit” sold to us every other day of the week. We like Mary realize the extraordinary fact that the possibility is here…right here in us. When God is a child, our song changes and proclaims a whole new world that is now possible. A world where the thoughts of the proud are scattered, rulers lose their power, the lowly are lifted up, the hungry are fed with good things, the things we thought brought richness are exposed as empty; when God is a child, there can be peace – universal peace. My soul magnifies God! Amen.
