Advent 4 Year C

Hello All, 

The readings are here

This sermon was a bit of an attemt to try to both wrap up Advent, and deal a little with the Sandy Hook shootings. I had a hard time with it--really struggled. You can't hit it out of the park everytime, that's for sure, but I still like to try. 

            Last Sunday after church I went to Ikea to pick up a lamp. I am not sure why it suddenly seemed so necessary for me to take the shuttle bus out to Red Hook, and wander slowly around the store looking for a floor lamp that might brighten up my apartment a bit. This had nothing to do with Christmas, or even my husband’s birthday which was last Thursday. It was something else altogether. Somehow it felt like it was born out of the darkness of the Sandy Hook school shooting. I found a lamp. It is silver, tall and has brightened up the apartment a bit. In order to get home from Red Hook I took a ferry over to Manhattan. It was raining, so I sat down below. Christmas carols were blasted in the ferry. Not very nice, or classy ones, but those sort of cheap sounding carols that seem overly sweet or cutsey. I don’t know if you have ever taken the ikea ferry, but not only is there music, but there are also some large flat screen tvs. If you don’t like the view of lower Manhattan you can watch the tv screens. I looked up at the screen and saw a man talking to camera, he was looking down, you couldn’t see his eyes. The caption on the bottom read “father tells us how he will move on after the death of his child.” I don’t know what the father was saying. The sound was turned down in order that we hear the “falalalala” music. The juxtaposition of the image of the broken father and the oppressively cheerful singing was a bit much. Especially on a grey rainy day. There is something about this advent season which has been interrupted, totally shaken, and hard to repair. The disturbing death of small children, the inane reaction of those who think more guns might solve this problem, and the realization that an entire cultural shift might be necessary has made it difficult to find the time, the energy, the right feeling to prepare ourselves for God.

            This week the words of our collect assume that we have busy preparing and that at the arrival of God, we will be open, and ready. That God will find in us a mansion prepared for God’s self. And this year Christmas itself falls very close to this last Sunday of Advent. I don’t know about you, but I kind of want to ask God for a few extra days to get myself ready to be a mansion, or even really just to be open and willing to experience God’s love for each of us, and to express God’s love in our relationships with one another.

            Our Gospel passage like the words of our collect is about God with in the bodies of humanity. There is the Holy Spirit who speaks through Elizabeth, and more obviously there is Mary, who is pregnant with the Son of God. These two pregnant women share something in common with all of the pregnant women of the Hebrew Bible, there is a connection between having children and God’s promise. Look no further than Abraham and Sarah. The story of Elizabeth and Zechariah is like that- they don’t expect to have a child, the don’t believe it at first, and there is a connection to their child and the future of the people of Israel. In their case John will make their people ready for their Lord. This passage presents these two women who did not expect to be pregnant: one because she was old, and had been infertile for her whole life, and the other because she was an un-wed teenager. And though these don’t seem to be unwanted pregnancies, they both are unexpected ones. And yet even though both Mary and Zechariah ask the Angel Gabriel, how can this be, when they first hear that they will each have children, by the time Mary goes to see Elizabeth, both women are not only ready but eager to talk about what God is doing with each of them. What I am looking to Elizabeth and Mary for today is how to get prepared for God in these last few days of advent.

Turning to the text then, we don’t know why Mary goes to visit Elizabeth. Luke doesn’t take the time to explain it to us. His narrative goes right from Angel Gabriel visiting Mary to “In those days Mary set out and went with haste…” Why the haste Mary? We might wonder. Why does Luke want to get these two women together? From a story perspective, it clearly links the births of John and Jesus, and shows us that both the women have some sense of what is about to happen to them. I think it also gives these two women a chance to speak. Mary never speaks this much either before or after in Luke’s Gospel. It is actually the longest speech of any woman in the New Testament. In some ways it seems that Luke has told this story in order to give Mary a chance to sing her song, to speak her turn. When we hear it, it activates our biblical memory and we think of Hannah’s song and Deborah’s song. Like being barren and then pregnant suddenly this is a biblical trope. Like the women of the Hebrew Bible, Mary’s song is about the joy she finds in God, God’s care for the lowly, and a reminder of God’s promise.

When I first read this passage this week I was struck by the list of things that Mary says God has accomplished. She tells us that God has scattered the proud, brought down the powerful, lifted up the lowly, and filled the hungry with good things. I was struck by this list because so much of it seems unfinished. God hasn’t done these things yet. Maybe it seemed possible to Mary with God present with her, gestating in her, but as we read her song today it feels unfulfilled. As I read this later in the week though it had a different tone for me, and it is the tone I hope you will hear it in this morning. Mary’s song is about a salvation that is already accomplished in God’s time, even if it is not quite there in our own. Perhaps with God with her she is offered a small peek into God’s time and sees what an exciting future we are in for. In fact it is not just something that will happen someday, but it is the sorts of things we must work for. We must lift up the lowly. We must fill the hungry with good things. Mary is calling for us to be people working towards justice. Mary’s song is a justice song. It is because of the justice offered in God that her soul magnifies God. Her justice is personal, she has gone from being lowly to being called blessed for generations to come.

If we become the justice people that Mary imagines our souls, our selves will be functioning like Mary’s soul. She says at the outset “My soul magnifies the Lord.” Theologians sometimes have a hard time with this. They ask, how can a soul make God bigger than God already is? God is limitless in size. But the answer is that Mary, as a willing human participant in God’s entry to the world, is magnifying God, and God’s vision for the world.

You might be thinking that we have traveled pretty far from that Ikea Ferry. Back then we were in the land of discordant images and having a hard time imagining being made ready to be a mansion for God. And I don’t want you to think that we have turned away from Sandy Hook or that we are only focused on things that are more rosy colored or easier to handle. But I think this Gospel passage, and Mary in particular reminds us that we have a role in magnifying God within a world of chaos, violence and confusion. Our job is not to turn away from the violence or to live in fear of it, but our job is to seek God’s justice in it. Seek to ensure that this sort of thing never happens again. Seek to show those who want to solve this problem with more Guns that we as Christians say no. Seek greater resources for families who are grieving. And greater support for those with serious mental illness. Our job is to magnify the Lord. It is by doing this that we will be transformed into the prepared advent people that we are. Awaiting God’s presence, and working to bring it about.