Preacher: Rev. Anne Jensen
Readings: Luke 1:39-56
Songs are powerful. Think of “Battle Hymn of the Republic” and the Civil War; “We shall overcome” in the Civil Rights Movement, and in the world of the theater, and “I dreamed a dream,” from Les Miserables, in the context of the French Revolution.
Today’s gospel is the story of another song, an ancient song, one that continues to rock the world. We call it The Magnificat, from the first word in the Latin translation of the passage that starts, “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord… We use it as a canticle in our worship throughout the year. Today we hear it in its proper context, which is following the story of Mary’s visit to Elizabeth.
I love today’s gospel! It is full of joy—and hope and expectation! It’s a story that is often skimmed over in our rush to get from the annunciation, when the angel comes to Mary, to birth the birth of Jesus in a stable. We all know it takes nine months before the baby comes, but we are in rush, and so we miss the beauty of this part of Luke’s gospel.
Today we hear the overture to Luke’s gospel; we hear the themes that we will hear again—the attention he gives to women and to people on the margins and the activity of the Holy Spirit as the Spirit enters into and works through human beings. Above all we are privy to a sacred moment between two women: one beyond the age of child-bearing and the other very young and not yet married. They are both unexpectedly pregnant, by the grace of God.
This part of the story follows immediately after Mary says, “Let it be to me according to your word.” That is Mary saying “yes” to God. “Yes, let it happen to me!” The angel tells her that her kinswoman Elizabeth is pregnant, and so it makes great sense that Mary hastens to a Judean hill town to see her. Luke does not tell us Mary’s motivation—perhaps it was to congratulate Elizabeth; perhaps Mary is seeking knowledge and wisdom from her older relative. What actually happens between the two women is both incredibly intimate and profoundly sacred.
Mary enters the house of Elizabeth and Zechariah and greets Elizabeth. Who knows where Zechariah is…the priest who is the official religious person of the family. He has been struck dumb for the duration of Elizabeth’s pregnancy for doubting God, which makes the faith of the woman all the more powerful.
Women, all of us who have been pregnant, can identify with what happens: The baby in Elizabeth’s womb leaps at the sound of Mary’s voice—I’m sure it was a full summersault of joy. Elizabeth-- filled with the Holy Spirit --twice blesses Mary; the awe and joy just spill out:
- She says, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.”
- She calls Mary the mother of my Lord and
- She blesses Mary for her faith that what was promised would be fulfilled.
And what does Mary do? She sings! She sings to all who will hear her words and her joy. She lifts her voice and praises God for all that God has done and for what shall come. Elizabeth and Mary are the prophets in this story….they are the ones who proclaim and bear the word of God. Together these women and their unborn children proclaim the advent of the Lord.
They are living signs of the Great Reversal: two women, insignificant in the eyes of patriarchal culture: one old, one young; one barren, one not yet childbearing; neither possessing any particular dignity nor power, yet they are the first to recognize the embodiment of God’s holiness in a human life." It is a transformative moment. Wow! I think they must have laughed out loud, embraced each other and just rocked back and forth for a few minutes, awe-struck at what they have just come to understand.
For three months Mary and Elizabeth live together and encourage each other to truly accept the motherhood given to them. As Henri Nouwen, a spiritual writer and poet, reads this story, neither woman had to wait alone for the extraordinary events to unfold, slowly, as pregnancies do. He says, "They could wait together and thus deepen in each other their faith in God, for whom nothing is impossible. Thus, God's most radical intervention into history was listened to and received in community." (The Road to Daybreak)
In this Advent season, we in the church are keenly aware that we wait in community for the promises of God to unfold in our lives. Here, in community, we hold each other up when one of us needs encouragement or support. We help one another search for meaning, rejoice with one another, walk alongside each other. Just as Elizabeth must have listened to Mary, and helped her prepare for what was to come (at least, as much as such a marvelous thing might be prepared for), we help one another work things out. Sometimes, we just sit in the dark quiet and wait, together, trusting in the promises of God, listening for a word from the still-speaking God. "In a way," theologian Timothy Mulder writes, "here is a preface for Emmanuel…God with us. We humans are not meant to go through the tough or the wonderful alone. Both need to be shared." (New Proclamation 2009).
Mary's song is music that comes from deep within her, deep from within her tradition. On that doorstep, she sings for Elizabeth and both of their babies, and maybe for the bewildered priest in the background, watching the whole scene. This young girl, inexperienced and sheltered, sings about God's blessings in her life, and of God's vision of a world made right. Perhaps she got carried away:
Barbara Brown Taylor, one of my favorite preachers, imagines the scene like this: "She is no longer singing the song; the song is singing her, and what music, what verse!" This teenager is "no politician, no revolutionary; she simply [sings her] song, but all of a sudden she has become an articulate radical, an astonished prophet singing about a world in which the last have become first and the first, last" ("Magnificat"). "Elizabeth and Zechariah are the first to hear her song, but it was not just for them," Taylor writes, but "for every son and daughter who thought God has forgotten the promise to be with them forever, to love them forever, to give them fresh and endless life" ("Singing Ahead of Time").
How do you feel when you hear those words, or even more, when you sing the words of the Magnificat? I feel caught up in her feelings of gratitude as she praises God, and I feel hope for a time when justice will be fulfilled. I, like Elizabeth and Mary, wait in hope and expectation. In the meantime you and I become companions to each other, in our joys and in our sorrows. I hear the words as both a promise and a challenge. The promise is something to look forward to; the vision Mary sees speaks to us in our vulnerability…God is faithful and is for us. The challenge meets us in our strength; in the face of that challenge we gather together and make our song strong enough and courageous enough to change unjust situations.
Songs give us the chance to voice our confident and courageous hope alongside Mary and in doing so actually become more confident and courageous, that we can become God’s agents in the field. We need both confidence and courage. Singing together helps bring us together—we have to listen to each other as we sing. At the same time we have to take into our hearts the words that give us strength and hope and confidence. Today we sing songs of Advent – songs of hope and anticipation. We persist in our hope for a world at peace in which there is enough for all people. Restore us, o God of hosts and show the light of your countenance and we shall be saved. Come Lord Jesus and be our light in the darkness!
Amen
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