Sunday, December 02, 2012

The Wonder of Mary

WESTMINSTER PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
December 9, 2012
Rev. Mark R. Miller
Luke 1:33-65
“The Wonder of Mary”

            We have heard the announcement of a royal birth!  A child will be born who will rule!  A new King will be born… or a queen depending on the sex of the child of Kate and William.  The world is dying to know about this child.  Will Kate’s morning sickness be something graver?  And those who are truly interested in the lives of British Royal family can add to this list.

The best news is that this is Advent… and Christians know something about waiting for the birth of a child.  The problem is that no one was really waiting for the birth of Jesus except Mary and Joseph.  The world did not get a play-by-play of Mary’s morning sickness.  The world press of Rome did not take notice of this upcoming birth.  No one noticed that a young, soon to be married woman was going to have a child.  No one noticed and no one cared. 

And why should they care?  After all, this woman and her family came from a village of less than two hundred people.  Nazareth was a small village where most, if not all people, still lived in caves.  To make matters worse, the hill country of Judea was known for little else than bandits, revolutionaries, and backwoods troublemakers.  Who would or even should notice the upcoming birth of a person who had no value to the Roman Empire?  The life of this child, let alone the mother, and even her whole village, wasn’t worth noticing at all.

In a world based on balance sheets, and insurance formulas, the life of Mary and the future life of Jesus her son had no value.  But the good news is that God is not bound by such foolishness.  Where we see waste, where we see death, where we see loss … God is at work turning the whole world upside down.  And the good news is that Mary new her faith well enough to recognize when God was at work.

Maybe it was the stories she had heard on the Sabbath … stories about Sarah … Leah, Rachel, and Hanna … stories where God had done the unexpected … stories of the Exodus … And now, stories of her cousin Elizabeth.  God was going to work through her.  Someone no one expects, someone no one knows, someone no one, outside of the Judean hillside and cave dwelling town had ever heard about.  It is this person who God calls, the most blessed woman. 

It is safe to assume this because of what we call the Magnificat.  This beautiful piece of poetry that has been set to music in so many memorable ways is one of THE most revolutionary statements ever made.  I say one, because there is another woman who has spoken in similar ways.  Instead of proof texting let me read it for you here.  I Samuel 2:1-10.  “The bows of the mighty are broken and those who stumble are lifted up … those who are full are hungry and the hungry are filled with good things.”  Mary clearly knew the song of Hannah but takes it and makes it her own.  The power of knowing the stories of our own faith is that we are able to see more clearly when God is at work all around us.

Mary must have been in awe and wonder.  Mary probably felt fear and uncertainty as well because, despite having heard the word from the angel, she was going to have to tell other people as well.  This would mean the possibility of ridicule, shame and possibly being shunned from her village.  We have no record of what happened or who the first person was she told.  But it is clear that others had heard of Elizabeth and that is why Mary goes to see her cousin.  Despite the community talk Mary knows that Elizabeth will understand. 

 It is a pretty incredible story.  Not the part about how Jesus is born, but just about everything else.  We know the story so well that we forget the raw power and frightening implications of how this happens.  The creator of the universe, the author of love, becomes vulnerable in the form of a baby.  This happens not where anyone is going to notice but in the person of a poor young woman on the outskirts of the Roman Empire.  No one waits for the birth of this child except those closest to Mary.  God is born in obscurity, risk and even scandal.  And that is how it all started.

The problem is that the church throughout history has taken this revolutionary story, this revolutionary ballad, and this revolutionary woman and domesticated it all.  We tell stories about how Jesus was born on a quiet night when all was beautiful.  I have seen a couple of births – three to be exact - and while a beautiful thing, it was not neat clean or remotely quiet.  And then with Mary the church has focused on her virginity, her purity, and so obscured the fact that she is God’s first disciple that we either scorn her as unimportant or domesticate her into fairly harmless intercessor.  So what are we to do with the revolutionary ballad?

With all due respect to Handel and to the versions we use this morning, I think that it is time someone does a version of the song that expresses the struggle, the anger, and the hope for our own time.  I have heard it said that the reason it was sung in Latin for so long was to keep people from hearing how dangerous it was for those in power.  But more importantly than how the story is told is that it is told in each and every age.

If God chose to enter the world in this way it has very serious implications for our lives, and our journey of discipleship.  Because of Mary we are reminded that god is always working on the margins of our world.  God’s revolution of love will not be televised.  It will be ignored, and ridiculed and be risky.  It will not occur in the great cathedrals or in the transformed sports stadiums but in the least expected places... the abandoned houses in forgotten places… rural hamlets… but what is more important than the place will be the people.

I love nativity scenes.  I like to see how people interpret what happened when God entered into the world in such a strange and obscure way.  All our attempts at historical accuracy really do not matter all that much.  What matters is figuring out how we can enter and how we tell the story.  Having the announcement of the impending royal birth gives us the opportunity to remember that Jesus was born in desperate times and was not chronicled in the 24 hour news cycles.  And so this week … as you remember the witness and wonder of Mary … as you hear the music of the Magnificat … ask yourself – if God was going to be born today … where would it be?  What would it look like?  And how should I respond?   We answer that question most faithfully when we answer it with our whole lives.  Amen.