Fourth Sunday in Advent
Love
Rev. Brent Gundlah
First Reading (Micah 5:2-5a/NRSVUE)
Gospel Reading (Luke 1:39-55/NRSVUE)
I will freely admit that I’m a lousy cook. And the biggest reason for this is that I’m kind of impatient, and always have been; I just don’t do idle time very well. So, when I had to take cooking class in middle school, I figured that if a recipe called for something to be in the oven for twenty minutes at 250 degrees, I could do it in half that time if I just turned it up to 500 degrees and still have ten minutes left over to do other things. I mean that’s just math, right?
Well, I learned pretty quickly that cooking doesn’t work that way. I also learned how loud smoke detectors are, I learned how hard it is to separate cookies from baking sheets when they’ve been welded together at temperatures you’d find inside a volcano, and I learned how angry the otherwise mild-mannered Mrs. Haynes could get when you almost torch her classroom. But perhaps the greatest lesson I learned that day was this: sometimes you just have to wait — and Advent is all about waiting.
Yet we all know that patience is a virtue that’s difficult to enact. Our lives are busy places; we have too many things to do and never enough time in which to do them. And is there any time of year in which this is more true than this one? In the weeks leading up to Christmas, we shop and bake and clean and shop more and write Christmas cards and deal with challenging relatives and shop again and then go stand in line at the post office. Oh, and don’t forget to be happy and smile through it all; tis the season, isn’t it? These days, the call to do such things during Advent is tough to resist. This is what we’re supposed to do — what we’re expected to do — during the lead-up to Christmas. Or is it?
Let’s consider the second half of today’s passage from Luke: the Song of Mary, which is more commonly known as the Magnificat (a name taken from its first line: “My soul magnifies the Lord”). At this point, we are only a half chapter into the Gospel and a lot has already happened. We’ve met the priest Zechariah, his wife Elizabeth and, of course, Mary. The angel Gabriel has been pretty busy — he’s shared with the elderly Zechariah and Elizabeth the good news that they will have a child (who will, of course, grow up to be John the Baptist) and has also taken away Zechariah’s voice (though only temporarily) for his seeming lack of faith that his impending parenthood could, in fact, be true. Gabriel then seeks out a young, unmarried woman named Mary in order to share some information about what God has in store for her — namely, that she will give birth to a son named Jesus, who will be, you know, the Son of God.
It is all pretty unbelievable, really — to Elizabeth and Mary, these two unlikely mothers — one far too old, one quote young, and both living on society’s margins — will be born children who will change the world. The unwed and pregnant Mary then sets out on her own “with haste” through the dangerous hill country in order to see her cousin Elizabeth; we don’t really ever know exactly whyshe does this and it certainly doesn’t seem like the wisest thing for her to do. At this point, the story is unfolding really quickly. And then all of the action just stops on a dime.
Luke, who is a masterful storyteller, puts us in a holding pattern for a full fifteen lines in which nothing happens to move things along. Mary’s been told about God’s plans for her, for her child, and for all of Israel, and now she simply must wait for it all to unfold — as must we. Inside this humble house outside of Jerusalem, beyond the center of power where everything important happens, two expectant mothers talk, John the Baptist (in his first prophetic act) kicks inside Elizabeth’s womb upon hearing Mary’s speak. And then Mary sings. Welcome to Bible: The Musical.
The situation here is similar to a couple of others we see in the Bible — the story of Sarah in Genesis and that of Hannah in the first book of Samuel. In both of those instances, as in this one, God promises the gift of very special children — children who will alter the very course of history — to improbable mothers who are outsiders. In all three of these cases, God elevates three women and does the seemingly unthinkable through them — they become not only mothers but also partners in God’s plans for creation.
Luke’s obvious references to these prior stories are meant to remind us that God has done this kind of thing before and, perhaps more importantly for us two thousand years later, that God continues to do so “from generation to generation.” God has chosen to act in the world in concert with seemingly ordinary people throughout history, and God dependably still does. And, for some reason, this causes Mary to break into song.
We should never, ever, ever underestimate the power of music. I mean there is a reason it’s a part of our worship every Sunday morning: it’s because music conveys emotion and meaning in ways that the written or spoken word simply cannot on their own. The entire book of Psalms consists of songs that have been with us for thousands of years — imagine for a moment just how differently we might experience them if we were to sing them rather than simply read them.
Think about the significance of the song “We Shall Overcome” to the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Consider the impact of President Obama singing “Amazing Grace” at a service mourning the victims of the Charleston church shooting.
So on those occasions when the Bible actually sings to us, it’s probably a good idea to stop, to listen, and to try to figure out what the song and it’s singer are trying to express.
In the verses leading up to the Magnificat, Elizabeth says to Mary, “And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by God.” Elizabeth’s is celebrating, in advance, all that Mary has been told will eventually happen. Yet, Mary’s spontaneous musical outburst begins with thanks and praise for what God has already given her — “he has looked with favor upon the lowliness of his servant,” and “has done great things for me,” she says. As she waits for all that God has promised her, she acts as if it were certainty. In other words, Mary responds to God’s promises with a song of faith.
And as she continues to sing her declaration of faith, Mary does something else here that’s really interesting — she moves from praising God for all God has given her to considering what God’s gift means for others. Mary abruptly changes her focus from herself tothe fulfillment of God’s intention for all. She contemplates a world filled with mercy for the downtrodden, one in which God will scatter the proud and bring down the powerful from their thrones, while lifting up the lowly and filling the hungry with good things. In this shack in the hills of Judah these two poor pregnant women are envisioning with glee a world completely turned upside down; they are pondering the evolution of a revolution. But for right now anyway, they must faithfully wait.
And so too must we. A few thousand years after the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus, the powerful often remain perched on their thrones and the poor often still go hungry. Yet here we are on another Sunday morning, gathered together singing God’s praises for all we have been given and for what is still to come. And why do we continue to do this? The only good answer that I can come up with is faith.
And so it’s appropriate that we consider this pregnant pause in Luke’s Gospel at the end of the season known as Advent (sorry, I couldn’t help myself). This is, after all, that time between times in which we stop to reflect upon the year just passed and look forward with hope to the one about to begin. It is a holding space in which we come together, like Elizabeth and Mary, as a community to contemplate what has been, what is and what is to be; to celebrate all that God has done, is doing and will do. Every year during Advent, we pause to consider what all of this means to us in our place and time, to do as the Psalmist says and “sing to the Lord a new song, for the Lord has done marvelous things.” So, how might our song go this year? How might we respond faithfully to God’s call right here and right now?
Maybe we could start by taking some time out of our overloaded holiday schedules to reflect — even if only for a moment — upon all that God has given us, to thank God for our many blessings, and to think, like Mary did, about how what God has shared with us might be used to in service to the world.
God’s abundant grace and steadfast presence in our world and in our lives has always inspired people to celebrate and to sing — and we should, for even at Christmas, it’s kind of hard to imagine a gift any better than that.
Thanks be to God.