The Love That We Are Made For

This morning, I would like us to take a moment to center ourselves – to be still and listen to the Spirit of God as Mary, the mother of our Lord, had been doing before proclaiming boldly her words from our text for today. Mary allowed God to begin to put the pieces together for her and help her see what Salvation in her son would mean. 

May we this morning begin to put the pieces together and allow the Spirit to invite us to give birth to Jesus this Advent in our own lives. After a moment of centering silence, I want to set the stage for us to wrestle with Mary’s song (The Magnificat) by hearing the story leading up to Mary’s famous song from The Book of God by Walter Wangrin Jr.  Let us be still and listen:

[Pause]

A reading from Part 8 “The Messiah” taken from The Book of God (p. 432-433)

So Elizabeth opened her door herself -- and there stood her nephew's child, Joachim's little girl, whom she had not seen in years. "Mary!" Elizabeth cried. "Pretty Mary, it's you! But you're alone!"
 But this was no common visit. 
And Mary was not a child anymore. 
Her dark brows were lifted in an intense appeal, and her eyes were filled with beseeching. Clearly, she had come with a question. 
Then several things happened so swiftly that they were all one thing, and that thing was the revelation of God. 
Mary's eyes dropped to Elizabeth's breasts and then to her belly. In the softest of whispers, she said, "Hail, Elizabeth." 
Immediately the baby in Elizabeth's womb leaped up to her heart, and old Elizabeth shrieked. 
Because Elizabeth suddenly understood everything: the child inside of her, the reason for Mary's appearing, the glory of the days in which they were living, the great things that God was starting to do!
"Oh, Mary" Elizabeth cried. She grabbed her young niece by both her arms and pulled her into the house. "Mary, blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!"  
Mary mouthed the words, My womb?
Elizabeth gathered the woman in a crushing embrace and howled, "What a gift has been given me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me!" 
Mary said, "You know about me?" 
Elizabeth released her, covered her face, and began to cry. 
"Mary, I know!" she said. "I know what child is in your right now. 
As soon as you spoke to me, the babe in my own womb jumped for joy, and that was a prophecy. Oh, sweetheart, blessed are you to have believed that the Lord would fulfill the word he spoke to you!" 
"He told me that I would conceive a child," Mary said to Elizabeth. "He said that the child would be holy, the Son of God! He said my baby would be called the Son of God." 
Elizabeth stepped past Mary and shut the door of the room. She returned, took her niece by the hand, and led her to a small, three-legged stool.  Gently Elizabeth urged her to sit, then she knelt down before Mary, and the two women gazed at each other, one whose hair, all white, was gather in a braid, the other whose hair hung all around her shoulders like a black cape. 
Mary whispered, "Things are changing. Elizabeth! I think God is turning the whole world upside down. What do you think?" 
The older woman started to nod, but the words were pouring from Mary now: "God is lifting up the little people, a lowly maid like me, Elizabeth. He is blessing me! Next he will knock the mighty from their thrones! And hungry people will eat, and rich people will go hungry! Things are changing! I know it. The world will not be the same tomorrow. Does anyone else know this, too?" 
Elizabeth reached for Mary's hands and put them on the tough roundness of her own womb. "This baby knows it," she said. "And maybe my old husband knows something, too." 
"God is rising up, just as he did for Israel in Egypt." Mary's eyes were filled with a hectic brightness.  The times themselves were converging in her mind. Elizabeth watched the young woman fairly explode with understanding. Mary said, "God is remembering his people! He is remembering the promises which he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to Abraham's children forever. Oh, Elizabeth, my soul magnifies the Lord! I can't help it anymore. My spirit is rejoicing in God my Savior!"

Let us pray…

What a story…  What an experience…  No wonder Mary broke out in song – literally exploded with the reality of what was happening from within her own womb.  

Our text for this morning is this beautiful song, or what I consider more of a “spoken word” thrown down (as they say) by Mary as she declares a subversive and revolutionary message. 

I think too often we “nice-it-over” and soften the edges of this rather gritty message from Mary.  Over the years we have put Mary’s words to classical music or a specific tune and kind of taken the bite away from the message.

Rev. Carolyn Sharp put it so well when she said,

“Don’t envision Mary as the radiant woman peacefully composing the Magnificat.”  Instead see her as “a girl who sings defiantly to her God through her tears, fists clenched against an unknown future… Mary’s courageous song of praise [becomes] a radical resource for those seeking to honor the holy amid the suffering and conflicts of real life.”

Over the years, I have come to hear Mary’s Magnificat not in classical tunes or peaceful soft voices, but rather in the voice and soul of my black sisters of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in the inner city of Chicago where I used to teach the Bible. 

In my mind, I envision Mary as a black woman declaring justice, freedom, and hope for her world, instead of the pale white Mary wrapped in baby blue quietly singing in the corner that we are used to seeing depicted on Christmas cards. I see a strong woman with arms flaring, fists raised, wild bodily movements, beads of sweat forming on her brow, and a strong voice throwing down these words from Luke 1:46-55:

My soul magnifies the Lord,

And my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,

For he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant.

From now on all generations will call me blessed,

For the Mighty One has done great things for me.

Holy is his name.

His mercy extends to those who fear him,

From generation to generation.

He has performed mighty deeds with his arm;

He has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.

He has brought down rulers from their thrones

But has lifted up the humble.

He has filled the hungry with good things

But has sent the rich away empty.

He has helped his servant Israel,

Remembering to be merciful to Abraham

And his descendants forever, even as he said to our fathers.

The main reason I hear Mary in this way, is because these words are rather loaded words from Mary.  Actually these words have had a rather big impact on the church and actually the modern world. Did you know that:

• Mary’s Song (The Magnificat) has been part of the Church’s liturgy since its earliest days of Christianity.  [It was that important.] 

• For centuries, members of religious orders have recited or sung these words on a daily basis.

[Along with the Song of Creation, The Song of Praise, The Song of Zechariah, the Song of Simeon, the Glory in Excelsis, and the Te Deum – it is the only song used regularly by the church which was written by a women.]

• It is the longest set of words spoken by a woman in the New Testament.

• It is also the first Christmas carol ever composed.

• Parts of Mary’s Magnificat echo the song of Hannah (found in 1 Samuel 2:1-10) and are also reminiscent of the anguish of the prophets of the Old Testament.

• In the past century, there were at least three separate instances of governments banning the public recitation of the Magnificat.  Its message, they feared, was too subversive. 

• During the British rule of India, the Magnificat was prohibited from being sung in church.

• In the 1980s, Guatemala’s government discovered Mary’s words about God’s preferential love for the poor to be too dangerous and revolutionary. The song had been creating quite the stirring amongst Guatemala’s impoverished masses.  Mary’s words were inspiring the Guatemalan poor to believe that change was indeed possible.  Thus their government banned any public recitation of Mary’s words.

• Similarly, after the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo—whose children all disappeared during the Dirty War—placed the Magnificat’s words on posters throughout the capital plaza, the military junta of Argentina outlawed any public display of Mary’s song. 

• Even the German theologian Dietrich Bonheoffer recognized the revolutionary nature of Mary’s song.  Before being executed by the Nazis, Bonheoffer spoke the following words in a sermon during Advent 1933: 

• “The song of Mary is the oldest Advent hymn. It is at once the most passionate, the wildest, one might even say the most revolutionary Advent hymn ever sung. This is not the gentle, tender, dreamy Mary whom we sometimes see in paintings.…This song has none of the sweet, nostalgic, or even playful tones of some of our Christmas carols. It is instead a hard, strong, inexorable song about the power of God and the powerlessness of humankind.”

From “The Subversive Magnificat: What Mary Expected

The Messiah To Be Like” on the Website EnemyLove.com

Now, it is important for us to understand the context of Mary’s song.  We heard in our centering time that Mary was visiting her relative Elizabeth. The reality was she was escaping the ridicule and possible retribution of her neighbors, family, and community for being an unwed pregnant teenage girl. 

Scripture even tells us that the situation was grim enough that Joseph had planned to call the wedding off quietly.  He did not want Mary humiliated or become a social outcast.

And to take the story up a serious notch, the reality was that according to Jewish Law Mary could have actually been stoned for adultery.

Mary is humbled by the realization that the God of the Universe is up to something and that she has been chosen to be his vessel. She senses things changing, literally being turned upside down.  Her difficult life of growing up as a vulnerable woman, economically poor, and living in an oppressive world under Herod and the Roman Empire was being turned around.  I believe her Magnificat was a cry of freedom and hope for a new world.   This was the cry of…

·         

• Mary who grew up economically poor. 
• Mary who was a teenage bride-to-be that was pregnant making her a social outcast. 
•  Mary who gave birth to Jesus in a homeless situation.
• Mary who fled with her family as refugees to a strange land because a religious and military power were threatening them.

And this is about a God who knows her condition. Who wants to meet her in her humanity.  Who wants her to identity with Him.  And the same is true for us. God wants us to listen to Mary’s Song – and proclaim it today. 

As Reverend Anne Emry wrote in on her blog, Sacred Story,

“Mary’s song rings in our ears, and calls us to disrupt the hold violence has on our world.  She sings of a future where all children are safe from violence.  She sings of a future where people have homes and food and jobs.  Her words are in solidarity with us. She sees to the far horizon and sings of the coming reign of God. We will be fed, and we will feed others. We will be blessed and we will bless others. We will receive justice, and we will do justice to others. All things are possible with God.”

Mary’s Song is timely for us in our day and age – as much as it was in her day.  The beauty of Mary’s Magnificat is that it is our song as well.  Her passion and words, should flow from us as a hopeful message to our world, today.  The question I keep wondering is…

Are we bold enough to proclaim Mary’s Song today?

…in our political climate?

…with the troubles in our world with race, gender, and economic inequalities?

…with a religious fervor that is focused on being right and creating “us vs. them” mentalities?   

If so, it is going to have to be done in Love.  

This week as I was researching the text, I came across a modern rendition of the Magnificat by Joy Cowley.  I would like to close our time with sharing this version.  There is one line in it that I believe sums up Mary’s intent and ours… Joy Cowley writes...

"It’s the Love that we are made for…"

 

Mary knew this truth and so must we as we proclaim this important message again to our world.  It’s being the Love of God to our world that we are made for this Advent season.  Listen to this beautiful modernized version of the Magnificat.

Mary's Freedom Song - by Bob Henry

Modern Magnificat  by Joy Cowley

My soul sings in gratitude.

I’m dancing in the mystery of God.

The light of the Holy One is within me

and I am blessed, so truly blessed.

This goes deeper than human thinking.

I am filled with awe

at Love whose only condition

is to be received.

The gift is not for the proud,

for they have no room for it.

The strong and self-sufficient ones

don’t have this awareness.

But those who know their emptiness

can rejoice in Love’s fullness.

It’s the Love that we are made for,

the reason for our being.

It fills our inmost heart space

and brings to birth in us, the Holy One.

Ask yourself, this morning:

How will I share the important message of Mary’s Song this Advent?

Who needs to hear it, today?

_______________

Sermon from Advent 3, December 11, 2016, Silverton Friends Church, Preacher: Pastor Bob Henry