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Advent Prayers: Luke 1:46-55
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
Maybe you recognize this in your story. A change of scenery can open you up to new ways of seeing the world. And sometimes, a new way of seeing the world necessitates a change of scenery. Welcome to the commons cast. We're glad to have you here.
Speaker 1:We hope you find something meaningful in our teaching this week. Head to commons.church for more information. Once again, we are in the season of Advent. My name is Jeremy. I'm part of the team here at the church, and it's great to have you with us anytime, but particularly during this season as we are preparing ourselves for Christmas.
Speaker 1:Of course, you saw all of the Christmas decorations when you came in the room today. We have new Advent artwork up on the wall to guide us. It's also why I'm wearing this purple stole today. This color purple reminds us that we are in a season of waiting together until Christmas Eve when the Christ child arrives and on that night, this stole will turn to white as we celebrate Christmas. So this is just one more the way that we decorate the room and we remind ourselves of the season that we're in so that we can prepare ourselves well for what is coming.
Speaker 1:By the way, I put up a little video on YouTube this week talking about the importance of waiting. For me, I think that Advent becomes ever more important every year as our world continues to speed up and move quicker and quicker. Waiting becomes a sacred duty. And so, you can subscribe at commons or at youtube.com/commonschurch if all that stuff is interesting to you. But this year, we have chosen a series of prayers as our frame for Advent.
Speaker 1:This set of five prayers that come to us as the Christmas narrative unfolds. And, Bobby laid them out last week. She led us through the fiat mihi, Mary's prayer of welcome to the angel statement that she will give birth. Today, we look at the Magnificat, Mary's prayer of prophecy for who this child will become and what he will accomplish. Next week is the Benedictus, the Negloria in Excelsis, and finally on Christmas Eve is the Nunc Dimitis.
Speaker 1:And all of these fancy Latin words have me feeling a little festive, but before we jump into the Magnificat, which by the way is one of the great protest songs of history, let's look back at the story so far. Because last week, we saw Mary receiving some pretty fantastical, and let's be honest here, probably frightening news. There is this meme that's going around on Twitter right now. Someone has suggested that before you spring bad news on someone, you should prepare them by texting, are you in the right headspace to receive information that could possibly hurt you? Now first of all, I love the heart behind this.
Speaker 1:Preparing people with care and putting yourself in their shoes. This is a holy thing to do, but please do not ever actually text that to anyone. There is no way that anyone is going to receive that on their phone and not be immediately sent into a spiral of anxiety. So maybe something a little softer if I could suggest something like, hey, are you in a headspace to talk about something sensitive right now? That might get the same intent across without freaking your friend out.
Speaker 1:But my favorite use of this meme this week actually came from Maddie who imagined the angel Gabriel texting Mary just before he flew in the window, which I found very amusing. However, church history often depicts this scene very differently from what we might imagine. Rather than swooping in from the ceiling, the icons of the church generally depict the angel coming and kneeling before Mary in supplication. Saint Bernard of Clairvaux wrote that when Gabriel announced to Mary that she had been chosen to be the mother of God, it was as though all of heaven held its breath waiting for her reply. And so after what I'm sure seemed an eternity of waiting, as Bobby described last week, our hero Mary says, yes to God.
Speaker 1:Yes to something new. Yes to something risky. Yes to charting a new path for the divine in the world. And I love how she captured this. Bobby said, it starts with a baby about to grow in this young, poor, unwed mother and nobody really.
Speaker 1:But a nobody who is captured by the imagination of God for a world where power and violence do not have the last word. In Mary's own words, I am God's servant. May it be to me as you have said the the last word, let it be. Today, we move ahead in the story, and we are about to find Mary going to meet her cousin Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, and there she will unleash the Magnificat for us. But first, let's pray.
Speaker 1:God of Advent, who reassures us that the night is far spent and the day is almost at hand. Keep us a work awake and alert in the season of waiting, watching for your presence and kingdom, looking for ways to bring, to be your light to the world. Make us strong in faith, unafraid of the dark, and yet still vulnerable enough to feel deeply so that we may join others in the healing of all of their hurts. God of glorious, simple, unexpected gifts, help us to set aside the trappings of the season to be present to this small story so that we might bring the same surprising gift of love to everyone we encounter this Advent. And as we wait for you, would you help us to wait well with hope and with anticipation and with an active investment in the world that we know you have planted beneath our feet.
Speaker 1:Child of Bethlehem, make your presence known to us this day. In the strong name of the risen Christ, we pray. Amen. Okay. Is the Magnificat.
Speaker 1:And so we want to talk about the journey, the safety, the audacity, and the hope of it all. But before all of that, I want to read this section to you. For one, this is one of the most powerful pieces of prose in the New Testament. And for me, some of that really only comes across when we read it unbroken. But also, this is actually the longest uninterrupted speech by a woman in the entire New Testament.
Speaker 1:And for that reason alone, we should give it space to speak to us undomesticated. So Luke one starting in verse 46. Mary said, my soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my savior. For God has been mindful of the humble state of this servant From now on, all generations will call me blessed. The mighty one has done great things for me.
Speaker 1:Holy is God's name. Mercy extends to those who fear God from generation to generation. For God has performed mighty deeds with God's arm. God has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts. God has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble.
Speaker 1:God has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty. God has helped God's servant Israel remembering to be merciful to Abraham and his descendants forever just as God promised our ancestors. Now, this prayer is packed with allusions and references to the Hebrew scriptures and the story of Israel, and we will look at all of that today before we close. But first, we need to set the scene. Because last week, we left off with the fiat mihi.
Speaker 1:Mary saying to the angel, let it be, and then the angel left her. But if we pick up in the very next verse, we get the story that links these two prayers together. So Luke one verse 39, just after the angel has left says that at that time, Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea where she entered Zechariah's home and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the baby in her womb leapt and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. In a loud voice she exclaimed, blessed are you among women and blessed is the child you will bear.
Speaker 1:But why am I so favored? That the mother of my Lord should come to me. As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leapt for joy. Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill promises to her. And Mary said, my soul glorifies the Lord, which is the beginning of the Magnificat we just read.
Speaker 1:Now next week, we will be back and we will be looking at the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth and their journey to childbirth, but there's some really important stuff here. First of all, it's pretty clear that this story is being told in a highly stylized form. Everything moves very quickly. Everyone speaks in these poetic bursts. Even when it says that Mary got up and hurried to visit her cousin, the English obscures the poetry here.
Speaker 1:And by the way, when I say that Mary and Elizabeth were cousins, that is a bit of church tradition. It comes from the King James Bible, but the truth is the text only refers to them as relatives. So we don't know exactly what the familial relationship here was. Maybe in some ways it's better if we only know them as friends. The relationship is based in love, not some kind of obligation.
Speaker 1:However, back to my point. By translating this phrase, as simply hurried, We actually obscure the fact that the writer of Luke here is introducing one of his major themes that will be woven throughout the gospel, and that is journey. Because more literally, what Luke says here is that Murray journeyed with haste to see Elizabeth. But this idea of journey is gonna keep popping up at important moments throughout the gospel of Luke. In fact, one of the most pivotal moments in the story is found in chapter nine and we're told that at the time, as it approached for Jesus to be taken up into heaven, he resolutely set out to journey toward Jerusalem.
Speaker 1:And, this opens up into what is known as the travel narratives in Luke. It's a central part of his version of the Jesus story, and Luke introduces these two sections here using the same word, Purimai. Now granted, sometimes biblical scholars can get a little bit too excited about some of these linguistic coincidences. Not everything has to have a deeper meaning to it. Sometimes we just use a word too often, but in this case, I do think there is something to this.
Speaker 1:That for Luke, changes in us are often accompanied by changes around us. And maybe you recognize this in your story. The change of scenery can open you up to new ways of seeing the world. And sometimes, a new way of seeing the world necessitates a change of scenery. The the language of journey is woven throughout this gospel, but the metaphor of journey, the story of discovery and transformation and how all of that is tied to all of our choices in the world, that is more than just a coincidence.
Speaker 1:This is Luke reminding you that you are more than the product of your circumstance. You can get up and move. You can change. You can journey. You can invite new relationships and experiences around you.
Speaker 1:You can write the story you choose even if you didn't choose every single part of it. And so it makes a lot of sense then that when Mary hears this life changing annunciation, The first thing that she does in Luke's gospel is to get up and move. And she journeys to see her cousin. And she leaves her town and she moves in with Elizabeth for three months to make sure that this new story that's growing in her can take root in a supportive environment. And don't underestimate that part of the story.
Speaker 1:Because as Bobby said last week, we have to remember this is a poor, young, unwed mother in ancient Palestine. A land where any of those descriptors on their own would make things difficult, let alone all three. And yet not only is she brave enough to take on the challenge, she's smart enough to know that she'll need some help to do it. God wants you to do brave things. No doubt of that.
Speaker 1:The world needs you to be courageous, but none of us need you to do it alone. And sometimes, the best things begin with the journey toward those who can help us become who we are. Because think about this. Imagine you are Mary, and you've been told by an angel or maybe a hallucination that you're pregnant. Where do you turn with that kind of a story?
Speaker 1:Look, this is a critical decision because imagine she had told the wrong person here. How would this story have turned out very differently? But Mary chooses well, and we read that as soon as Elizabeth heard her voice, the baby leapt in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. In a loud voice she exclaimed, blessed are you among women and blessed is the child you will bear. Now, here of course in the story, we have the presence of the Holy Spirit named.
Speaker 1:But for those of us who trust in the presence of the divine among us, we have the spirit in and through us always. And part of the beauty of this moment is that we get to witness the ways in which God weaves different stories together. Mary is young and unwed and her pregnancy is a scandal. Elizabeth is old and childless and her pregnancy is no less unexpected. And part of the beauty of this meeting is how each of these stories confirm the sacredness of the other.
Speaker 1:And be honest here, how terrified are both of these women about what these pregnancies might hold for them? But together, drawing strength from each other, leaning on each other, counting on each other, celebrating each other, providing space for each other to be safe from all of those critics throwing stones from outside the story. All of that fear and trepidation now explodes into song and celebration. And here's something I wanna encourage you with. Mary in the story recognizes that things are going to be too big for her.
Speaker 1:And so she immediately gets up and she makes some changes. She seeks out healthy supportive environment where her imagination can be nurtured, and sometimes you are going to have to do the same thing. But look what this moment does for Elizabeth as well. It's getting to welcome Mary. It's getting to see the beauty in Mary.
Speaker 1:It's offering words that encourage and build up Mary that begins to unlock the beauty of Elizabeth's story for her. Next week, we're gonna be back and we're gonna look at Elizabeth and Zechariah as they begin to realize that their son who will become John the Baptist has a role to play in the story of the world's redemption. But the seeds of that story are buried here in this story as the seed within her literally leaps with joy as she welcomes her friend. And I think that if we let it, this story reminds us that often our story and our joy and our courageous contribution to the world around us really comes to life when we start to cheer for each other. Every ounce of energy that you expend, making safe spaces for the people that you care about to be nurtured, cheering on the people that you love, that is an investment in the story that God is building within you right now.
Speaker 1:And often, the best stories that any of us have are the ones where we gave ourselves away, only to find ourselves receiving something unexpected on the other end. And I'm pretty sure that's the kind of story that Elizabeth might tell if she could. But we now find ourselves coming to the Magnificat. And in a lot of ways, this is the climax of the section. It is the thing that we have been building to since the start of this sermon.
Speaker 1:The moment where Mary takes all of these things she has learned and believed and trusted in and now gives voice to the longing for justice the world has been aching for. But all of this so far has not been for nothing. Because I really believe that the courageous words we're about to read from Mary, this fierce faith that's about to be unleashed in her boys. That all of this is the product of everything we have been talking about so far. See, I really believe that the prophetic in the world is the intersection of the divine initiative that comes to us in a new imagination for what the world could be, then nurtured by the community that surrounds us and tells us not to give up on what we've heard.
Speaker 1:And don't get me wrong. These are Mary's words. She is the hero of the story. But just as Jesus wouldn't have been Jesus without a mother who would teach him all the things she is about to say. Maybe Mary wouldn't have been Mary without Elizabeth in her corner nurturing the gift that was coming to life in her right now.
Speaker 1:And one of the things that I find endlessly fascinating about the bible is that no one worth looking up to finds their way there on their own. And Mary certainly does find her way there. Mary is certainly worthy of our admiration, but I wanna suggest that if you find strength in Mary's words, then perhaps you could also look for strength in her pursuit of community and her dependence on chosen family and her vulnerability before her friend Elizabeth, her commitment to find the spaces and the communities that would nurture the hope and the voice that we get to celebrate now. Because all of that is part of the story. There is incredible strength in searching out the spaces that will help you become you.
Speaker 1:So now, finally, we bring our attention back to everything Mary becomes. And with this poem, Mary places herself at the very tip of a very long story of waiting. Her poem is of course beautiful. It's why we continue to read it some two thousand years after it was spoken. But even as the poetry rolls off the tongue, to really understand it, we do have to gather up a little bit of history.
Speaker 1:Because at one point, Mary's people, the Jewish people, they really were a very real power in the world. There was a nation of Israel that commanded a lot of resources and a lot of land. And eventually that nation split into two different kingdoms and over time one of those kingdoms was conquered by Assyria, the other eventually by Babylon. But then Persia rose to power and then Greece came to dominate the world and now Rome has emerged as the new military superpower. And during all of that time, almost six hundred years, the Jewish people who had this rich heritage had sort of lived in the shadow of all of these successive empires.
Speaker 1:All the while, telling stories about the good old days and the Messiah who would emerge to lead them back. So by the time of Mary, it's important to realize that there is literally no one alive who actually remembers the kingdoms of Israel. All of that was long long ago. All of that was all just stories from your grandparents, grandparents, grandparents. Yet, when Mary speaks, there's something really interesting going on here.
Speaker 1:Because she speaks using the language of Israel's illustrious history that everyone knew, everyone was taught as a child. She speaks in the stories of her people. There are no less than eight scripture references in this poem. But it's as if she takes all of the history she's been taught and all these stories she's been told and she shifts them into the present. She says, my soul glorifies the Lord.
Speaker 1:That's Psalm 34. For God has been mindful of the humble state of God's servant. That's Psalm one thirty eight. For the mighty one has done great things. That's Psalm 71 for me, she adds.
Speaker 1:God has performed mighty deeds with God's arms, Psalm one eighteen. God has brought down rulers, Psalm 75. God has exalted the humble, Psalm one thirteen. God has lifted the hungry, Psalm 34. God has helped this servant remembering to be merciful, Psalm 98.
Speaker 1:And what Mary is saying in all of this is that all of that, everything that she has been hearing about all her life, all of it is true right now for her in this moment. So all of the stories that have sustained her people for generations, all of the imagination that has fueled their survival over centuries, all of the hope that has kept them moving forward despite oppression and poverty and violence. All of that is still somehow alive in her right now as she speaks to Elizabeth. And I realized it can be easy to look past this. I mean, she's just quoting the bible after all.
Speaker 1:But I was put onto the work of Dorothy Sewell by our Inglewood parish pastor Scott and I love the way that Sewell talks about this intersection of story and action in our lives. She writes, I believe in a God who created the world not ready made, but one who desires the arguments of the living and the alteration of every condition through our work and our politic. What she's talking about here is the idea that the story of God is written in such a way that it invites us to see the story as inherently unfinished. Stories of justice make us want to see more justice. The stories of liberation around us make us want to see more freedom in the world.
Speaker 1:Moments of hope implicate us in the creation of more hope for more people all around us all the time. Because the world is not ready made. The world is waiting to be remade in the image of grace. And this is what Mary is doing here. She's not just reliving the glory days.
Speaker 1:This is not nostalgia that we're reading. This is Mary believing that those stories make her story possible. And, she is not shy about this. I mean, is talking about bringing down kings and humbling rulers. She's talking about lifting up the brokenhearted and feeding the hungry.
Speaker 1:She is talking about the entire world of politics and economics and power turned upside down and all of that because of her pregnancy. And there is a divine audacity here that almost threatens to neutralize the power of her voice. I mean, her words are so big and her scope is so large. It's almost like we're lulled into thinking we have to spiritualize this to make sense of it. I mean, she can't really be talking about that kind of social change.
Speaker 1:She can't really be talking about the alteration of every condition in the world. This can't really be about what it's about, can it? And yet for me, this is where we really begin to uncover the brilliance of Mary. Because while there were many people in her day, in her world that dreamed of the kind of change she proclaims now, their imagination of Messiah was almost entirely informed by the world that surrounded them. So if there was violent oppression, and there was, then it would be violent conflict that would free them from it.
Speaker 1:And if there was economic disparity that pushed them down into the dirt, and there was, Then it would be wealth and excess that would lift them up out of it. But the problem is that's really just a continuation of the same story with the roles reversed. But the God who creates a world that's not ready made, the God who wants to do something completely different in Jesus, the God who would come to Mary to ask for help has something else entirely in mind. Not just a reversal of roles, but maybe instead the revealing of a new type of story in the world. See, I think Mary seems to know better than most of Jesus' contemporaries ever will what this story is really all about.
Speaker 1:And I think it's why her poem is all about the underdogs and the victims and the scapegoats and the transformation of it all. That's why she speaks about the humble and the poor and the weak and the ignored because that's who Mary is. And in her heart, she knows that's who her son will be too. But for Mary, that's not a problem. That's a superpower.
Speaker 1:Because if the divine has come to her, an unwed minority mother who needs to leave town just to find a safe space, then maybe actually everything is up for grabs. Maybe the rules about who gets to shape the world aren't as fixed and solid as we imagine. Maybe this is what Christmas is really all about in the end. Not the majesty of God that invades our space, but the mystery of the divine among us come to us, helping us to reimagine the world from the ground up. Because when Mary says, you have brought down rulers and exalted the humble and you have done all of this for me.
Speaker 1:This is not just a naive hope. This is a declaration of the world that has begun in her belly. Because what Mary knows is that if God intends to start the story this way, then nothing will ever be the same again. And I often wonder if maybe part of our problem at Christmas is that we tend to start the story too big. Mean, we pull out trees and we hang stars from the ceiling and we wear fancy purple scarves to remind ourselves about where the story is going, but sometimes I think that conditions us to look for change from where we already expect it.
Speaker 1:From the powerful and the celebrated, certainly not in the divine voice that comes to young girls telling them they will change the world. But to start big is actually to miss the meaning and the scope of the magnificat. Because stories that change everything often begin on the margins. So this Christmas, may you begin to look for God where you least expect God to be. May you encounter the divine on the very edges of your story.
Speaker 1:May all that God has done for Mary become all that God is doing in you. And this Christmas, may your most audacious hopes for the world become your gift to those near you right now. Because if you can begin to believe that a story this big will begin this small, then maybe you can actually begin to believe that God is at work healing the world through a story like yours right now. And that is part of Christmas as well. Let's pray.
Speaker 1:God, who catches us with surprise, who transforms the world, who shows up in the poetry of the magnificat, but who starts as small as a child. Frail and vulnerable and somehow dependent on us to care for you. May we recognize that the beauty and the scope and the enormity of the story is dependent on how small and marginalized it all starts. Because if it went any other way, we would continue to look to the places where we expect change to come from. And yet, God, we know now in this story that you work different from all of that.
Speaker 1:That you are present on the margins. That you are with us when we are alone. That you begin the transformations that will change everything in us and around us in the smallest moments where we listen to your voice. And so, spirit of God, we ask that this Advent season, you would be near to us, whispering to us about everything that could be, and that that story would take root and begin to grow in us until your love and your grace shine out from us transforming the world in small ways through your grace. May we slowly transform the world into the image of your son.
Speaker 1:In the strong name of the risen Christ, we pray. Amen.