Sermon for SMHP, Year B, Advent IV, Dec. 24, 2023
Luke 1:26-38
26In the
sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called
Nazareth, 27to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of
the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. 28And he came to her
and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.”
29But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered
what sort of greeting this might be.
30The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for
you have found favor with God. 31And now, you will conceive in your
womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. 32He will be
great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give
to him the throne of his ancestor David. 33He will reign over the
house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”
34Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a
virgin?”
35The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon
you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to
be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. 36And now, your
relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the
sixth month for her who was said to be barren. 37For nothing will be
impossible with God.”
38Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord;
let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.
We’re
going to hold the response for a couple of minutes, until we’re ready for
it. Keep it handy—we’ll get to it. For now we’re just going to deal with this
nonsense with Gabriel.
I
trust you don’t need me…to tell you how ridiculous this is. I know we’ve been reading this story for many
years, caught up in the lights and the beautiful holiday music, and we can
almost be lulled into a sense that this thing called Incarnation is a pretty
picture, worthy of portentous pageantry.
But
I also know that you are all bright, seasoned readers of scripture, and you
hear, as we tell the story once again, the almost menacing absurdity lurking
in these pretty, pretty words. If you really want to hear it in all of its
terrifying glory, you have to read the version many of us grew up with, the
version Authorized by King James.
There, in lovely, renaissance prose, we read:
And in the sixth
month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named
Nazareth,
27To a virgin
espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the
virgin's name was Mary.
28And
the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favored, the
Lord is with thee:
blessed art thou among
women.
29And when she
saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind what
manner of salutation this should be.
We’ve been looking at artistic
renderings of this moment at Wednesday Evening Prayer. Here is one painted
in the twentieth century, but in the style of a Renaissance painting.
Here it is with a twenty-first
century response.
“She was troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind
what manner of salutation this should be.”
It’s ridiculous.
Utterly absurd. An angel shows up
at the house of a woman. A betrothed,
but as yet unmarried woman. Luke repeats
“virgin” three times, so we don’t miss it.
And the angel says, “Blessed are you, virgin in an
observant Jewish community in the first century. Good news:
You’re pregnant.”
Darn right, she “cast in her mind what manner of
salutation this should be.”
I’ll tell you what “manner of salutation” this
is! Ridiculous. Ironic.
There is nothing “blessed” about bearing a child out of wedlock in this
culture.
And maybe my first try at bringing the language into
our time is a bit too brief.
Let’s have another go. Here’s a very
famous vision of the Ascension by Henry Ossawa Tanner. And here are some less
vulgar responses straight outa Luke. [3 slides]
The part of this story that is left out of our
readings for this morning is that little visit Mary makes to Elizabeth. It seems like a separate story, but I don’t
think it is, and here’s why.
Mary goes to see her very pregnant cousin
Elizabeth. Anybody remember what
Elizabeth said, or what happened, when Mary entered the room?
Elizabeth, a woman from a high priestly family who grew
up and married a priest, recognized the spark of incarnation in Mary right away,
adding the rest of the Hail Mary to the words Gabriel had already uttered: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is
the fruit of your womb.” And just for
good measure, Elizabeth’s unborn baby—the son and grandson of priests, leapt
for joy upon hearing the sound of Mary’s voice.
So while she might still have been “casting in her
mind” to determine what the heck that shaft of light was trying to tell her,
she trusted her priestly relative implicitly. In that moment, the casting is
quieted, and Mary becomes everything that Gabriel told her she was: the blessed parent of the king who would
reign forever on the throne of his ancestor King David.
Elizabeth then pronounces a blessing over Mary, and Mary
draws herself up to her full height—it doesn’t say that, but that’s what
happened—and utters the most profound prophecy in all of scripture. And while Luke tells us that the Magnificat
was apparently recited to Elizabeth, it is most certainly the conclusion of the
conversation Mary was having with Gabriel.
It is the condition for her assent.
When she says, “let it be with me according to your word” to Gabriel—this is what she means.
She says yes. And yes, tedious
social media memes, she did know what she was saying “yes” to. Most importantly, she knew what this child
would mean. She knew what her life would mean.
She knew why she was betrothed to a man from the House of David: because the child raised in their home as
Joseph’s son was the fulfillment of the prophecy we heard this morning from the
prophet Nathan: “16Your house and
your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me; your throne shall be
established forever.”
Mary knew that what was happening in
her body and in her home was nothing less than the fulfillment of prophecy—God
was sending a Messiah to save God’s people.
Gabriel told it to her, Elizabeth confirmed it for her, and then she
sang a song to let everyone know that she knew—she understood exactly what
God was doing, and she was going to do whatever she needed to do to make sure
it happened exactly as the prophets—of which she was now one—had
decreed.
Let’s
read this Magnificat, with bold, beautiful Mary in mind:
Response Luke 1:46-55
46And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord,
47and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
48for God has looked with favor on the lowliness of God’s servant.
Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
49for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is God’s name.
50God’s mercy is for those who fear God from generation to
generation.
51God has shown strength with God’s arm;
God has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
52God has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the
lowly;
53God has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich
away empty.
54God has helped God’s servant Israel, in remembrance of the mercy of our
Lord,
55according to the promise made to our ancestors, to Abraham
and Sarah and their descendants forever.”
Mary threw down, calling the future from the
past. And these words were fulfilled in
her son. His first public preaching described a world that blessed the poor,
the hungry, the weeping and those who are hated for seeking after God’s
justice. In the next chapter, Luke describes the day that Jesus blessed and
forgave sinful woman, to the chagrin of Simon the Pharisee—a woman whose sin
was likely the same one that followed his mother. Luke’s next chapter opens with a description
of the band of believers now following Jesus:
the twelve and some others—Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Susanna, and many
other women.
Jesus was the fulfillment of this Magnificat vision.
With his words and with his body, he brought down the powerful and lifted up
the lowly. He fed those who were hungry
and healed those who were broken, and in the end gave his body in exchange for
ours. In those final days, as he contemplated
that sacrifice, Luke tells us, he uttered words eerily similar to those we’ve
heard from his mother: “42‘Father, if
you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done.’”
Both Jesus
and Mary are revered for their obedience to the will of the Father. But let us not lionize them for blind
allegiance. When they pray, “Let it be
with me as you will it,” they do so with full knowledge of what it means for
them and for the world. Each of them casts about to understand what God
is asking, and they bring relatives and friends in on their discernment. Okay, Jesus’ friends fell asleep in that moment
in the garden, but they were there the rest of the time, and the women in
particular stayed with him until the end.
When they
said “yes” to God’s will on their lives, they were ready.
As should we
be. As we spend this day, and part of
the night, celebrating a cute little Messiah child in a manger, let us do so
with an understanding of what our allegiance to him means for us and for the
world. It means sideward glances from
those who don’t believe what we say about what God is doing with our lives,
just as there were surely many who didn’t believe the fantastical, ridiculous
tale a young girl told about how a shaft of light told her she would bear a
child.
It means
having to claim the values of the Magnificat and the Sermon on the Plain in the
midst of a culture, and even a wider church, that is happy to lift up the powerful
and ignore the lowly. If we are going to
extend the promise Gabriel gave to Mary and the promise Mary gave to us all, we
will sometimes have to stand over against those who find our values quaint and
even absurd.
By
now we have to know that saying “yes” to an invitation from Immanuel means
first casting in our minds for what it means to follow a king with no earthly
throne—a king who asks us to accompany him as he turns the world on its head. As he is born for us again this day and
night, let us answer him with his mother’s knowing words: “let it be with us,
according to your word.”
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