a sermon

(Those of you who have the RevGals Advent book will recognize some of this!)

At the beginning of our service we sang one of my favorite hymns, “The Angel Gabriel from Heaven Came.” Verse three describes Mary as such:
Then gentle Mary meekly bowed her head,
“To me be as it pleaseth God,” she said.

Ah, gentle Mary—mild, meek, the handmaiden of the Lord, head bowed in reverence. This has been the predominant view of Mary, and not without reason. Our hymns are full of such images. “Gentle Mary laid her child,” according to another hymn. “In the Bleak Midwinter” speaks of the “maiden’s bliss.” “Mary was that mother mild,” we sing in “Once in Royal David’s City.”

Gentle, meek and mild.

Even in the scripture, when Mary asks, “How will it be that this child will come to me?” the angel answers, “the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.” Mary is overshadowed by God’s power. It’s the same “overshadowing” that happens during the Transfiguration of Jesus—the disciples are on the mountain and a cloud comes and covers them, overshadows them—they enter the cloud and are so terrified to hear God’s voice that they are stunned into silence. (Luke 9) And so yes, Mary is an instrument of God, but God will overshadow her. She will be cloaked, covered in God’s power. It’s no wonder that gentleness and meekness have been two of Mary’s defining characteristics; she’s barely even visible!

Today we hear the song of Mary, the Magnificat, which she sings a few months after the angel Gabriel’s visit. We hear the Magnificat put to music pretty often this time of year, and it’s usually music suitable to a lullaby—delicate, lilting—fitting for a “gentle Mary who meekly bows her head.” The John Rutter Magnificat is one of my favorite pieces and it has a beautiful jingly-bell quality to it. But listen to these words and decide for yourself if this is the song of a meek and gentle Mary:

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.
God’s 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."

So much for hiding in an overshadowing cloud! The Magnificat does not sound like a lullaby from one who is docile, meek and mild, concealed in a veil of God’s power. It is a battle cry, a prophetic witness, and a celebration of Mary’s own unique role. The Magnificat is Mary’s Yes—Yes to the goodness of God, Yes to participating in God’s story. Mary is not a passive tool for God’s plan, although God’s power is central here; Mary has an active role to play in this drama, and she claims it. Her song is an enthusiastic, Yes.

“All generations will call me blessed,” Mary sings. “My soul magnifies the Lord.” Other translations say “My soul glorifies, exalts, praises the Lord,” but this is the Magnificat! Mary’s life magnifies God. Like a magnifying glass, Mary magnifies—makes larger—the mighty acts of God. Through her, we see who God is. Her life and her faithfulness bring God’s gracious intentions for the world into focus—into sharper detail.

This is our call in Advent. It’s all well and good to glorify God, to exalt God, to sing God’s praises, and certainly we’re pretty good at that during this season with all our Advent and Christmas songs. But Mary urges us not to stop with praise. How are our lives magnifying God? When people look through us, through the lens of our lives, what do they see? Do they see God more clearly?

In order for us to magnify God, of course, we must first be clear as well. If our lenses are clouded up, any image of God will get lost. In fact, magnifiers of God are called upon to be transparent, and that’s not an easy thing to do anytime, but particularly this time of year, when joy and jolliness are all but required. I can’t tell you how many people have told me how the pre-Christmas revelry has seemed more hollow to them this year—the ubiquitous decorations, the sale fliers, the twenty-four hour radio stations playing chirpy holiday songs, world without end. It’s as if, in the midst of the war in Iraq and its increasing unpopularity, and widespread unease regarding the economy, and gearing up for a nasty battle over Samuel Alito’s nomination to the Supreme Court, and scandals in government—not to mention tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes—we just need some jolly Christmas cheer and if we have to fake our way through it, well so be it.

But as magnifiers of God’s reality, we are called to be transparent in the face of all that—to be real… and when “real” for you is depressed, or overwhelmed, or dismayed by the state of the world or by what Christmas has become, then we have to tell the truth about that… and the church needs to be a place where that truth can be heard and not dismissed as raining on our Christmas parade.

Magnifiers of God not only need to be transparent, but we need to be aligned properly, otherwise we’re magnifying all the wrong things! We need to be aligned to God’s purpose and desire for us. A friend of mine shared this week a childhood Christmas memory of her father, a man who exemplified a life aligned to Christ.

One Christmas afternoon, I was reading—probably a book I had received that morning. The house was relatively quiet after the family breakfast and present opening around the tree. Suddenly I heard a woman crying and pounding on the door. Dad opened the door to a friend who had recently been through a divorce. She and her ex-husband were both alcoholics. She had had too much Christmas ‘cheer’ and now was wallowing in melancholy and regret. All the rest of us scattered. My mother stayed upstairs and didn’t come down. We didn’t know how to react to this woman whose grief was out of control.

My father, however, greeted her as if she were a much-anticipated guest. He did his best to cheer her up in his own inimitable style. He finally succeeded when he went to his organ and played loud and fast, getting her to sing Christmas carols with him. By the time she left she was smiling.**

It was a gift of hospitality and compassion, given without hesitation or reservation by a man who was clearly aligned with the living Christ. And God was magnified through his kindness.

This is an important story for us, not only because it calls us to be aligned with God as well, and it reminds us that sometimes it is simple acts of compassion that matter most, but also because it acknowledges that even during this, what Andy Williams’s classic song calls “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year,” there are people in pain and in need. Mary’s song acknowledges this as well—although she begins by singing about what God has done in her life, she moves quickly to the brokenness of the world.

Mary sings for the weak and the lowly, the poor and the hungry. Every hurting son is now her son; every hungry daughter is now her daughter. She bears them in her own body as surely as she carries the Son of God. Before, they were simply among her; now they dwell within her. And the song erupts from that place deep down where she carries them.

…Because the Magnificat is more than just a profound Yes. It is also a song of defiance, in the tradition of the old African-American spirituals, and of protest songs. It is “We Shall Overcome”; it is “Where Have All the Flowers Gone.” It is a counter-testimony to the dysfunction that passes for “normal” in our world. Mary sings this song, because her pregnancy itself is a counter-testimony—God did not choose a queen, a wealthy noblewoman to bear the Messiah. God chose an unmarried peasant girl. God assessed the demands of the world and expectations of a King that would come in power and might and prestige and said, “No, I don’t think so!” And in her song Mary reaffirms this divine No!
No to the proud and their delusions of greatness.
No to the powerful who remain lazy and complacent.
No to hunger that goes unfed.
No to suffering that goes unrelieved.
No, no, no.


Almost three years ago, on a January morning, I was at home, getting ready for an interview with Rev. B, who was flying down to seminary to meet with me for an afternoon. Ten minutes before I was to meet her, I received the news that a friend of mine, who was almost as pregnant as I was, had been attacked on her way to work. A man hit her car from behind and suggested they pull off the crowded two-lane road to exchange information. They stopped in a nearby park, and when she got out, he knocked her to the ground and began beating and kicking her. She turned her body inward around her pregnant belly and yelled at him to stop, to not hurt her baby. The attack continued.

Back on the main road, a woman was driving by, finishing a pre-work cigarette, her window down in the January chill. She heard a voice cry out from a shady side street. She continued on her way—maybe she misheard, probably it was just probably somebody joking around—but something made her turn around to investigate. When she saw the scene unfolding before her she screamed and began ramming the man’s car with her own. He jumped into his car and sped away.

The man was caught, and the baby was fine, born healthy, but early and small, five days after C was born.

What made the woman turn back to help? My friend had an opportunity to talk to the woman afterward, and what the woman said is that she kept on driving, but was stopped by a deep-down, audible No. This woman, who was not particularly spiritual, this woman who does not believe in voices, who had problems of her own, turned back because she heard No.
No to a voice crying out in pain,
no to the temptation to mind one’s own business,
no to doing the safe thing.

The word “No” is sharp. It’s a laser point. Remember, a magnifying glass not only makes things look larger, it can also catch sunlight, focusing it in such a way that a fire might be started. That’s the power of prophetic witness. Everytime we say No—No, it shouldn’t be that way—the fires of the Spirit are ignited—a Pentecost moment right in the middle of Advent!

“No” is as much a part of the Magnificat as “Yes” is.

And this, too, is our call in Advent. Our culture’s way of doing Christmas clatters noisily against the church’s quiet observance of Advent. While radio stations play cheerful holiday tunes 24/7, we dare to sing, “O Come O Come Emmanuel.” And why do we ask the savior to come? Not to create some false dramatic buildup to December 25 (will the baby arrive again this year? of course he will, and right on time too). No, we bid the savior to come because we still need a savior. The world still needs healing and hope. The stories of hurt, violence and oppression that we carry within us remind us of this reality. And so, we sing. Defiantly, expectantly, confident in the God who shows strength and mercy, in hope for the day when all will be free, we sing.

We sing God’s jubilant yes and we sing God’s defiant no.
And in our song, may God be magnified.


Charge for the end of the service….
There’s another quality of magnifying glasses too… I’m told that if you pull a magnifying glass too far away from what is being magnified, the image will flip upside down. Certainly in this season it is easy to wander from what is faithful and true, to be about the wrong things, and thus to present a distorted picture to the world. Let us live lives that remain close and centered on God, that we would truly magnify Christ with clarity, transparency… and with joy!


**used with permission and thanks to Quotidian Grace