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Sermon for December 22, 2024
Advent 4 C
Luke 1:39-55; Psalm 80:1-7
Rev. Karl-John N. Stone
It’s a time of excitement, this time of year. Christmas concerts and parties, decorating your house and stringing the Christmas tree with lights, eating wonderful food and lots of cookies, sending cards and presents, spending time with family and friends, singing songs and carols—and maybe even finding some time to reflect on deeper reason for the season.
It was a time of excitement for Mary, as well—the virgin Mary, that is. She had just learned from the angel Gabriel that God had chosen her—yes, her, of all people—to conceive in her womb and bear a son, and this little child would be named Jesus, and he would be called “Son of God”. And what’s more, Mary said “Yes!” to the angel’s strange message; she answered “Here I am, the servant of the Lord. Let it be with me according to your word.” For this teenage girl, from a small town in the middle of nowhere, who was a person of no special importance, this must have felt very exciting! But also…scary? Uncertain? Like, what did I just get myself into? And becoming pregnant before she married Joseph? This opened the very real possibility of being mocked and shamed by her neighbors, or worse, according to the customs of the time.
So Mary “set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country.” It was about 90 miles on foot, or if she was lucky a 90 mile ride by donkey, to travel from Nazareth to the Judean hill country. That’s about the distance from here to Madison! What motivated her to leave so quickly on such a long journey?
Was it the excitement? When you’ve had an awe-inspiring experience, like a brush with an angel, you’d want to share it with someone. Who would possibly believe her, though, without shaming or mocking or punishing her for being an as-yet unwed, pregnant mother? Only her wise old cousin Elizabeth, down there in the hill country, who was 6 months into her own very unexpected pregnancy.
Or was it fear that motivated Mary to “leave with haste”? Fear of how she might be mistreated if she stayed home? Fear of Joseph’s possible reactions? Fear of the general unrest around the Galilee region near where she lived, where Jewish rebels had clashed with Roman soldiers just a few miles from Nazareth?
Or maybe it was both the excitement and the fear? As much as we find joy and inspiration in Mary’s story, the difficulties and challenges she had to go through before giving birth to Jesus are good reminders that not everyone is “merry” at Christmastime. You might go through a whole range of emotions at this time of year, because our lives and the world as a whole keep spinning with its mixture of good and bad, hope and heartbreak.
This is reflected in our Psalm for today, Psalm 80, which starts off with praise and excitement: the Lord can shine his saving grace upon us; God’s strength can help us. But the Psalm-writer quickly transitions to lament: a feeling of God’s absence, a fear that instead of receiving gifts of grace and strength, that God will feed us with “the bread of tears” and give us “bowls of tears to drink”; a fear of God rejecting our prayers and handing us over to enemies who will laugh in scorn. Was Psalm 80 on Mary’s mind when she left on “the next bus” out of town? Did she sense right away that her amazing brush with God would lead to both praise and lament, hope and heartbreak unfolding in her life?
Mary’s visit to Elizabeth shows that it’s important for us to allow room for whatever you may be feeling this time of year, whether it’s the joy and hope and excitement that we want to have, or the sadness and difficulty and fear that we sometimes get stuck with. But whatever her motivation, Mary (just like all of us) needed someone to support her and help make sense of it all.
And when she knocked on the door of Elizabeth’s house and said hello, Mary must have realized she was in the right place! Mary—from little Nazareth, poor, young, ordinary Mary—is given the royal treatment. Elizabeth herself is filled with the Holy Spirit because she is the one whom God was working through to shine forth his strength and help upon Mary. She greets Mary not quite with trumpet fanfare, but with a voice calling out like a trumpet: “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 the Lord would fulfill what was spoken to her.” Elizabeth is an encourager. We all need someone like that!
And Mary herself—poor and ordinary, with no earthly power or prestige—becomes a model of faith. She wouldn’t have rushed out of town in excitement and fear to walk 90-miles if she didn’t believe that maybe this crazy message from the angel might be true. But it was the encouragement of Elizabeth that allowed Mary to take the leap from belief to faith—that is, to move from knowing what the angel had said, to trusting that God would keep his promise and somehow make it happen.
“My soul magnifies the Lord” Mary sings, “and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowly state of his servant.” Living in a world in which very few people would have given Mary a second thought, Elizabeth’s encouragement opened Mary’s faith to realize that God had noticed her; God had looked upon her with favor; God had done great things for her. Mary is in awe! Her faith comes gushing out in poetic prophecy, like the weight of the world has just been lifted from her shoulders.
We often refer to John the Baptist as the prophet who bridges the Old Testament and the New Testament—and he was. But so is Mary. Her song, which we call the Magnificat, begins with praise for God’s activity in her own life, but quickly shifts to proclaiming God’s purposes for the whole world. Her song rings with the echoes of the prophets Isaiah and Micah, and tells how God would fulfill his Word through the ministry of Jesus. God is on a mission to redeem the world through Christ—to heal the broken places, to allow both the lowly and the powerful to exist as partners instead of rivals, so that everyone can have what they need to live in dignity, instead of some dominating while others are dispossessed. Mary realizes that if God can notice even someone like her, who has everything in the world seemingly stacked against her—and still keep such amazing promises—then God must be bringing a whole new world on its way through the birth of this Christ-child.
And of course, that new world of God’s Kingdom which appears among us through Christ—even today—does brings excitement, and fear, and the crazy realization that if God can notice poor, lowly, ordinary Mary then God can notice you and work through you. Yes, even you. God’s mercy is for you. God’s help is available to you. Will you sing Mary’s song along with her? Will you take that leap from belief to faith, from knowledge to trust, and begin magnifying the Lord with your soul because God has noticed you? Singing along with Mary will always lead you closer to Christ. Amen.