by Rev. Carole Horton-Howe
Please note that the following sermon text was provided prior to the audio recording. The two versions may differ substantially.
Luke 1:39-55
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.”
The gospel writer today gifts us with a brief story about genuine connection between two pregnant women of different generations. And in this connection we get to see God at work in a deeply personal way that also just happens to change the world. God starts the salvation story by choosing a poor young girl, her aged cousin, a kick of recognition and a song.
And we hear Mary’s story is in her song, the first Advent hymn. It tells us that she knows who God is and what God is about. She understands that her “yes” to God is a “yes” to everything that God has always been - one who scatters the self-centered and hard hearted, who takes away their power in favor of the lowly and fills up those who hunger for truth and justice. It tells of Mary’s expectations for what her son will accomplish – wondrous reversals in the world upsetting the status quo and inverting human structures and values. There is fire in Mary’s song.
It underlines that the focus of Christmas is on those who struggle with the realities of life. This story reminds many that, in the midst of their struggles, hope is born. Not in any way as a denial of their realities, but confirming them.
This story of Mary and Elizabeth reminds me of my relationship with my much older cousin. I have an unusual family situation: both of my parents were only children. So I have no aunts or uncles and no cousins of my own. My mother, though, had a cousin, Carolyn, who was 35 years older than I was. Carolyn and I had a similar story. Like me she was married many years and did not have children. In my 20’s and 30’s I had a big and rich circle of girlfriends. And in the natural course of life, each of them started to have children. As this happened, I was so happy for them. But it meant that they sought community with other new moms. Naturally they sought support and connection with other women who were also giving birth and raising children. So I saw my relationships with each of them diminish and fade away. And I felt those losses deeply. It was a source of grief.
But God in God’s mercy at that time helped me renew my connection with my mother’s cousin, Carolyn. We started to spend time together. She lived in Arizona and I would make the trip to see her. We discovered that we had interests in common that I didn’t share with anyone else or with my mother. Carolyn, who had been a widow for many years, referred to her friends as “the widow ladies.” She took care of them. Every time I visited we did something for them. We would visit them and run errands for them. Carolyn would say there’s someone who needs a plate and we would fix food and take it to them. She showed me that there was more than one way to engage in mothering.
What a tremendous, what a tremendous gift of connection. Like Elizabeth recognizing in Mary that she had a critical role in the salvation of the world, Carolyn helped me realize what I could do. I don’t remember either of us ever bursting into song but I think we both felt filled up and empowered after our visits. That’s why I love this powerful story of the connection and mutual support of these women.
Mary is remarkable because she knew what she was getting into because she was well acquainted with the God of Israel. There was no learning curve for her the way there was for me. Perhaps she was one of those courageous girls who craved knowledge about the kings, prophets, heroes and heroines of Judaism and pestered someone to teach her.
Would it surprise you to learn that Mary is not the first to sing this song? Perhaps it was among well known among the young women. It’s from the Book of 1 Samuel. It was sung by another pregnant woman, Hannah the mother of Samuel, the great priest and prophet. Hannah was unable to have a child for a very long time. She was a subordinate wife who endured incessant teasing by the wife who was able to bear children. But Hannah finally has a son. And when she does, she dedicates him to the temple to become a priest. She sings something very like the song we heard today from Mary. Hannah’s story and song emboldens Mary in hers.
We delight in singing about the mighty works of God this time of year. We find it easy and comforting to sing about God bringing peace and joy into the world. The Magnificat can be read as an invitation to sing along with Mary about our part in that divine action. This is what Jesus’ incarnation tells us. It’s what Mary is telling us: that God brings peace, and joy, and love, and hope to the world through us, by magnifying God’s grace and spirit through us.
“My soul magnifies the Lord,” can mean that through me, through you, through all of us, others can see God’s powerful actions of love more clearly. Through me and through you, through the way we choose to live our lives and practice our faith in the world people can catch a sustained glimpse of God’s justice and peace.
Through each of us, through our words and our actions, through all that we do, we magnify God. We magnify God’s being with our own bodies. We magnify God’s action with our own practices. We magnify God’s word with our words in the world. God is the one who acts. We magnify that action and give it hands and feet and hearts and minds. We collaborate with God in the divine actions of lifting up of the lowly.
A good question to think about in this week leading up to Christmas might be: how is the Lord magnified in me, in my soul? That’s a big question. It’s easy to think that it’s too big for any one of us to handle. But another important lesson the Magnificat teaches is that you are more than enough to contribute significantly to God’s work in the world. Whoever you are, whatever you have or haven’t done, you are enough. You are more than enough. The song of Mary reminds us of all of the scriptures, of all of the people where “who me?” is the vehicle for salvation.
Bethlehem is nothing special. Hannah was unimportant. Elizabeth was also thought to be barren, and felt disgraced. And Mary is merely an underage woman from the nondescript town of Nazareth engaged to a man we’re told is from the house of David. But that doesn’t really make Joseph all that special; a lot of people were distantly related to David.
All throughout scripture, whenever God wants to do something, it’s the seemingly insignificant and ordinary people that God uses. When God wants to create, God reaches into the mud. When God wants to raise up a king for Israel, God chooses the youngest of many sons, the one sent out to watch his father’s sheep. When God wants to redeem all of creation, God enters in fully and completely as one of the most vulnerable creatures on the planet, a baby.
And just like Mary and Hannah and Elizabeth, we are enough. Each of us is enough to magnify God. Imagine what would happen if we let God work. If we truly made room for God to be born in our hearts. If we let God magnify the good work that God has begun and is already doing in each of us. What if we joined together with others to magnify that work? Imagine the world that would be born from that.
The Christmas story is not an affirmation of those who have, and those who can afford more–and yet, ironically, need it less–but the story of a God who enters lives at their deepest vulnerability and need. Christ is not born in triumph, but in the ordinariness of life, into lives of fractured relationships, lives of deferred or destroyed dreams, lives of alienation and isolation.
As we prepare to welcome Christ once more into our hearts and our homes, may our souls magnify more and more the glory of God and our hearts exult in the goodness of God, this day and always. As Mary says may we also say “The Lord has done great things for me. Amen.
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