Mary's Hope

Luke 1:39-56  Advent IV

The sun was brilliant at Ein Kerem, a small and quiet suburb west of Jerusalem the day that I visited in 2007, now ten years ago.  It’s an artsy little community with lots of ceramic and jewelry crafters but it also has a lot of historical significance for Christians.  It is here that the current Church of the Visitation was built in 1937 completed in 1955 by architect Antonio Barluzzi.  But, of course, like everything else in the Holy Land what we see today is contemporary compared to what lies below it.  Layer upon layer of history is built into this holy place.

The Church of the Visitation is where it is told that Mary sang her beautiful song, the Magnificat.  So said Helena of Constantinople, Constantine’s mother when she declared this site the home of Zechariah, John the Baptist’s father.  Zechariah, as you remember from my sermon two weeks ago was married to Elizabeth, Mary’s cousin.  Well the crusaders took the spot and built a church over it.  By 1480 it was abandoned and it had fallen into disrepair until the Franciscans bought it from an Arab family in 1679.  They spent many years excavating and finally built the current church by Barluzzi.

So it was into the sunny courtyard of the church that I walked and found a statue of two women facing one another in robes.  Both pregnant and showing their bellies. On the wall behind them are 42 tilled versions of the Magnificat in 42 different languages.   It was quiet that day and only the sound of birds nestled in the trees can be heard.  I walked into the sanctuary and a priest sat vigilant so I was quiet, trying not to disturb him.  I sat for a good long while, only something you can do when you are not with a tour group rushing you from site to site.  I began to think of this story of Mary and Elizabeth. Both women were vessels in God’s new ordering of Judea and the world.  It is here where hope began.

It is said that after the angel appeared to Mary to tell her of the impending birth of her child, she travelled from Nazareth to this place to visit Elizabeth.  Elizabeth too was with child.  After their embrace of greeting and joy possibly they sat under an olive or almond tree and sipped tea.  Maybe they strolled along a stone path and picked up the dried pomegranates that had fallen to the ground.  Perhaps Mary glanced out of Elizabeth’s kitchen window into the terraced Judean hillside and just pondered her future and what it all would mean.  We do know that when she saw Elizabeth she expressed her joy in the beautiful song, now known as the Magnificat.

Let us now hear the Gospel of Luke telling us the story:

In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.”

And Mary said,

“My soul magnifies the Lord,

and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,

for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.

Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;

for the Mighty One has done great things for me,

and holy is his name.

His mercy is for those who fear him

from generation to generation.

He has shown strength with his arm;

he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.

He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,

and lifted up the lowly;

he has filled the hungry with good things,

and sent the rich away empty.

He has helped his servant Israel,

in remembrance of his mercy,

according to the promise he made to our ancestors,

to Abraham and to his descendants forever.”

And Mary remained with her about three months and then returned to her home.

Mary’s faith must have been great for such a young, young woman.  While other girls her age were occupied with adolescent activities, Mary was with child by the Holy Spirit.  In the blink of an eye, her youthful womb had become a temple for the Christ who would be born some months later.  She understands her new role as best as she could and in faith, her soul, her body, her character, and her entire self magnifies the Lord. 

And so she sings. But by all strokes of the imagination she should not be singing this beautiful canticle; she should be crying buckets of tears because of her scandalous situation.  Poor, pregnant, single and living in the time of the Holy Roman Empire that was just awful for lowly people.  The odds were not in her favor, they were against her. 

In spite of her difficult, almost dire and extenuating situation she sings of being God’s favored one.  She sings of God’s strength in lifting up the lowly and scattering the proud, of how God has filled hungry bellies and has brought down the powers of oppression.

Her song expresses the needs of the poor and lowly, the marginalized and oppressed. Her song is an act of resistance; she did not retreat from what she was asked to do, her song is a proclamation.  Mary sings her song within this dichotomy of despair and anticipation.

Yet she chooses only hope because not only has God found favor with her, but in this act of divine commitment God has found favor with the world.  She praises God for this critical and much needed intervention into the human condition.  This is the God incarnate and she is filled with God’s saving grace.

For us the glory and joy of Christmas comes by way of this young and ordinary one who accepted God’s call into her life.  God sought her out and met her where she was and after that she did not look back.  She only looked forward with optimism and trust. 

Like with Mary, God meets you too where you are – wherever that might be and with whatever you have come into the sanctuary with today, God meets you and greets you, “favored one”.  We are all favored in God’s sight, now that’s something to sing about. 

How will you belt out the good news? How will you dare, like Mary to sing even though you have considered all of the facts?  What would your thanksgiving be to God?  What would your message be to the people? You see singing, it’s not about the degree of proficiency of music or the clarity of voice or even if you know the correct lyrics.  It’s about making a sound that praises God amidst the adversities of your life until your whole body trembles, with conviction and joy and in hope.

What we learn from Mary is that God does not seek out the perfect human being but rather takes us on in our uniqueness and fallen selves, all imperfect and gnarly to be favored and holy.  And there is so much grace in that. 

We know this is the season of joy, of good tidings, and of giving, but we can’t forget that all of this is preceded by God’s grace and that’s what gives us the conviction to be joyful.  God has found favor with you.  You are full of grace, full of the goodness of God, full of the Christ, the one who sets us free from earthly tribulation, full of hope that tomorrow will be better than today.  That within the errors of the human condition you are forgiven and asked to start anew.  So make room for Christ in your heart, like Mary made room for Christ in her womb and soon they only thing you will be able to do is to sing out, my soul glorifies the Lord!

 

God has broken into humanity through Mary.  Heaven knew that the world needed changing at that time.  And the world was changed.  Mary sings because of her youthful hope.  Hope that this child would be everything a mother dreams of, hope that this child would laugh and sing and skip happily in the fields, hope that this child might take care of her in old age.  Hope that what God was doing with her would be for the good of humanity.

It’s a big task to give birth and to give birth to Jesus, well, that’s a whole other story in and of itself.  And it is.  It is the Christian story of redemption and hope.  Transformation comes through this tiny babe and his young mother.  From this birth onward we have been charted for a new life and a new hope.   

Amen