The Greatest Blessing

 

The Greatest Blessing

For

Northshore United Church of Christ

Woodinville, Washington

Dec. 22, 2024

 

Scripture: Luke 1:46-55

 

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

 

It’s almost here, isn’t it. Christmas I mean. It’s something most American Christians look forward to all year. We emphasize its importance by putting a whole season of the church year in front of it, namely, Advent. I suppose I don’t look forward to Christmas as an adult the way I did when I was a kid. I’d await Christmas mostly with impatience. It always felt like Christmas was never going to come. Now, my eagerness for Christmas actually to come wasn’t grounded in any religious faith. Sure. We went to church regularly. We’d put up a Christmas tree and otherwise decorate the house for the Christmas season, never mind that in the church calendar the season of Christmas doesn’t start until December 25. Sometimes we’d put a few colored lights along the roofline of the house. We’d receive, and my parents would send out, Christmas cards. We’d do all of that before Christmas, and it all made Christmas feel like a really big deal.

Though, of course, what actually made Christmas a really big deal for me when I was a kid wasn’t the birth of Jesus, it was presents. Loot. Getting and opening gifts on Christmas morning. I suspect it’s that way with essentially all kids whose families celebrate Christmas in the traditional way, traditional for our culture anyway if not actually for the entire church universal. I remember coming out into the living room and seeing all the presents under the tree that weren’t there the night before. It was the best morning of the year.

Now, in the Christian church, of course, that’s not what Christmas is about at all. It’s not what Advent is leading us to and preparing us for. Christmas is, of course, the celebration of the birth of Jesus, the one we call the Christ and some of us still call our Lord. Advent really is supposed to be a time of our preparing to welcome him into the world and into our lives once again. As part of the way Advent does that, each Sunday of Advent has a theme. The themes of the first three Sundays of Advent are Peace, Joy, and Hope. Today is the fourth Sunday of Advent, and its theme is Love. Advent tells us that Christmas really is about all four of those themes. And since today’s theme is Love, let’s look briefly about what that might mean in the context of Christmas.

We see what it means, I think, in the opening verses of the scripture we just heard. That scripture is called “the Magnificat” from its first words in Latin: “Magnificat anima mea Dominum.” I find the Magnificat to be one of the most powerful of all biblical passages. In it Mary, pregnant with Jesus, acts the prophet, proclaiming God’s justice to the world. I could, I suppose, speak to you about God bringing the powerful down from their thrones and sending the rich away hungry, which is what Mary says God does. I could do that, but I’m not going to. I want to talk to you instead about how the opening lines of the Magnificat teach about what God’s love really is.

We all know the context of the Magnificat. A young woman who is a virgin has accepted God’s invitation to her to become the mother of the long-anticipated Messiah. She has not had marital relations with her husband Joseph, but she is pregnant with Jesus in a nonsexual way through the Holy Spirit. She has gone to visit her relative Elizabeth, who is pregnant with one who would become John the Baptist. Elizabeth has said that Mary is “blessed among women” and has called the child Mary is carrying her “Lord.” Mary responds with the Magnificat.

Now, who was this Mary, whom God as chosen to bring God’s Son into the world? To put it simply, she is nobody. Yes, she may have been perfectly virtuous, upright person; but, to the world, she was nobody. She was almost certainly a very young woman. Some scholars say she was probably around 14 years old. She was from Nazareth of Galilee. Nazareth of Galilee was on the far edge of nowhere. It was a tiny, obscure town in a backwater part of a backwater province of the Roman Empire. She was betrothed to a man, Joseph, who was a carpenter, a worthy profession to be sure but hardly one to bring a person to much public attention. To her world, Mary was just another young woman destined to become the wife of an obscure, poor man and to bear his children. There is, of course, nothing wrong with bearing children even if we do it in poverty, but in the eyes of the world, Mary was nobody.

And she’s the one God chose to bring Jesus Christ into the world. In the Magnificat, Mary herself refers to her “lowliness.” She says that God has “looked with favor” on her lowliness and has done great things for her. It is precisely one who the world surely would have held to be of no account whom God chose to be the Mother of God, as the Christian tradition has long called her.

Now, the Advent theme for today is “Love.” Do these lines from Mary’s Magnificat tell us anything about love? Well, yes. I think they do. See, God could have chosen some wealthy woman from Jerusalem who was married to some man of high standing and regard in the community to bear God’s Son. God could even have chosen a Roman not a Jew for that divine work. That’s pretty much what the world would have expected God to do, right?

But that’s not what God did. Rather, God turned to a person of low estate and lifted her up to become the Mater Dei, the Mother of God. God considered this young woman of no earthly account to be worthy of bearing God’s Son. Clearly, while we confess that God loves all people, in this instance God loved the nobody named Mary more than God loved the wealthy and powerful of the world.

She says her souls magnifies the Lord, and I suppose her soul did. But it is surely also true that God magnified Mary. God lifted her out of obscurity, for a time at least. God made her become one of the central figures of the foundational Christian story. We Protestants don’t pray to her the way Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christians do, but that doesn’t mean that she means nothing to us. For us as much as for those other Christians, Mary is indeed the Mother of God.

God magnified Mary. That means many things, but it is surely grounded in God’s love for her. It is grounded in God’s respect for her. For God, Mary’s poverty and obscurity weren’t impediments to God choosing her for the sacred work of bearing God’s Son. Rather, I think we must understand that her poverty and obscurity were big parts of the reason why God chose her rather than someone of higher economic and social standing for that divine task. In choosing such an obscure if virtuous person for the sacred task God was asking of her, God was showing us that God prefers the lowly to the big shots. Or at least, God was telling us not to consider the big shots as better than ordinary, poor, unremarkable people. God was showing us how God’s love works in action.

That love became incarnate when Jesus was born. God showed us God’s love when God chose Mary. Jesus showed us God’s love in everything he said and did. And in everything he said and did, Jesus lifted up the poor and brought down the rich, the powerful, the haughty, the arrogant, the overly self-concerned and self-important. God and Jesus Christ call us to do the same.

And it doesn’t make much sense, does it. At least, it makes no sense when viewed from the way the world most commonly views things. Jesus may have said blessed are the poor, but the world pretty much blesses the rich not the poor, doesn’t it. Jesus may have said blessed are the meek, but the world pretty much blesses the strong and powerful not the meek, doesn’t it. Jesus may have said it would harder for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, but the world gives the rich access to things the poor can hardly even dream of, doesn’t it. Things like lavash housing and luxury cars. Expensive, tailor-made clothes and fine cuisine. Even more modest things like safe, warm housing and enough food, modest as it may be, to keep from starving. No, God may have what I told you about the last time I was here, namely, a preferential option for the poor. The powers of the world definitely have a preferential option for the rich.

We know that in the years ahead there are going to ever more people in this country who are poor, who lack things like adequate heath insurance; for it seems that the powers that be are intent on making sure they don’t have it. Who lack things like personal safety and secure employment, for the powers that be seem to be intent on making sure they don’t have those either. People who do not have personal autonomy and control of their own bodies, for the powers that be seem intent on making sure people, especially women, don’t have those either. You are of course free to disagree with me, but, frankly, the years ahead look to me like they are going to be difficult at best for those who, like Mary of Nazareth, God chooses in God’s love here on earth.

We are about to celebrate the incarnation of that kind of divine love in Jesus Christ. He was born dirt poor. Angels announced his birth to shepherds who were dirt poor. Yes, God loves everyone; but the wealthy and powerful don’t need us to provide what they need to live and to live with simply human dignity. The ones Jesus called “the least of these” do need us, most of whom, myself included, are so very, very privileged. They’ve always needed our care and our love. They’re going to need it even more in the years ahead.

So, in three days, as we celebrate the birth of Jesus, let’s remember who God chose to be his mother. A virtuous but young, powerless, poor woman of no worldly account. A young woman vulnerable to the vicissitudes of a life of powerless poverty. Let us always remember that people more or less like Mary, even if they are considerably less virtuous than she was, are the ones God loves the most. They’re the ones God calls us to love the most. May our faith in the Savior whose birth we are about to celebrate give us the vision, the wisdom, the strength, and the courage to respond to God’s love with love, love especially for people like Mary. May it be so. Amen.