Sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Advent

Readings
Micah 5:2-5a
Canticle 15
Hebrews 10:5-10
Luke 1:39-45, (46-55)

Today we have the familiar story of Mary, who is pregnant with Jesus, visiting Elizabeth. But we would be wise not to romanticize what is going on here. Remember, Mary is pregnant with a child that is not Joseph’s. She is facing the shame and possible death that comes with such a scandal. In fact, it is this difficult and dire circumstance that makes her, as the Gospel says, go out “with haste to a Judean town in the hill country.” Much like women throughout history who find themselves with an unmarried pregnancy, Mary gets out of town to stay with relatives. This is no pleasure trip, this is a desperate act to save herself and her child. It is marked by the shame of polite society and we could reasonably expect she will not receive the most pleasant of greetings when she arrives. But, despite what we might expect, we are told that when she says hello, her cousin Elizabeth’s fetus “leaps” in her womb. Elizabeth, inspired by the experience, greets Mary with joy and calls her blessed.

What a strange and unexpected narrative. Even having only just heard about the visit of the angel Gabriel to Mary in an earlier passage and the understanding that God is at work in all of this, the fact is that the circumstances Mary finds herself in are not the kind one would expect for the mother of God. To those who first heard this it would have been scandalous to imagine all of this and a stretch to see how any of this points to the sacred. But then comes Mary’s response to Elizabeth. We now call that response the “Magnificat” and it has become a great canticle in the tradition of the Church. But because of that we may miss what is going on in her song of praise. We may romanticize or ignore the powerful message contained within it.

Mary starts with what we might expect. She praises God and extolls how her scandal is anything but. She goes so far as to say that “all generations will call me blessed.” But then things change. Mary doesn’t simply leave it at that. No, she becomes a prophetic voice in the tradition of the great prophets of Israel. She speaks of God’s vision for humanity. She points to the very thing that will be at the heart of her son’s message. In short she proclaims that God will reorder society. He will “scatter the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.” He will bring down the powerful and raise up the lowly. He will “fill the hungry with good things” and send “the rich away empty.”

This is not the voice of a scared teenage girl with a questionable pregnancy. No the writer of this Gospel wants us to see Mary as a strong, emboldened woman who can see clearly what the coming of the son of God will bring about. And is that about saving us from our sins? No. The message is as clear as when Jesus makes it again and again. The message is that God’s vision for humanity is radically different than the world’s. It is radically different than what most of us buy into day to day. Mary is proclaiming a vision that calls us to live in equity and justice. It is about abandoning economic structures that reward only the few. It is about challenging political systems that rest power in primarily or only the elite. And it is about recognizing that we cannot get there simply through our own cleverness, but through a communal approach grounded in the vision of the prophets.

Peter Gomes, the late theologian and author, regularly referred to the Gospel as being scandalous. He said that we had forgotten the scandal because we stopped preaching the message of Jesus and instead preached a message about Jesus. We sanitized the Gospel so that things like the story we hear this morning become pastoral images of a narrative we created apart from the Gospels. We see Mary and Elizabeth in a “rose colored” light that leaves them without any of the controversy that would have come with a questionable pregnancy. Moreover, we gloss the prophetic parts of Mary’s song of praise and look only at the idea of her being blessed.

But the truth of the Gospel is that God is most often at work in those parts of life that polite society see as either unworthy or scandalous. God is most often at work in the areas of life that are on the fringes of society. God is at work wherever positive transformation is at work – with the homeless, the oppressed, and the marginalized.

Polite society would prefer the practice of religion to not be involved in commerce, or economics, or politics. Polite society would prefer to defang Mary’s message that we hear this morning. Every major action the church has taken in society has been met with negativity and/or violence. Why else would there be martyrs of the church like Oscar Romero, the priest who preached a message of liberation to the poor and oppressed of El Salvador. Why else would things like the civil rights movement or the work to raise the poor out of their poverty be met with resistance and even violence. The work to end racism, classism, and economic injustice continue with many voices, both within and outside the church, ignoring the Gospel and saying that the Church has no say in such matters; that the Church should stick to spirituality and leave such matters of the world to secular minds.

But we need to recognize that the transformative work of the Gospel occurs most profoundly when we strive to make real Mary’s vision, which is nothing less than the vision of the prophets, nothing less than the Kingdom that Jesus proclaimed. It is a call to reach into the places that society finds most scandalous and raise up the sacred that is already present. It is a call to push back against the secular forces that corrupt and destroy human society. It is a call to push back against the powers and principalities of this world that would seek to diminish the voice and vision of Christ.

Ultimately the Gospel is about the incarnation of God in this world. We know what that incarnation looks like because of Jesus. He truly was the son of God in that his life and message, as witnessed in scripture, reflects a biblical vision for humanity. It reflects what human society would look like if we truly embraced what the prophetic voices of the Bible proclaim. Through Mary’s words we are being offered yet again that vision of what the Kingdom of God looks like.

As we move ever closer to the celebration of Christ’s birth, let us set aside our rose colored glasses and embrace the bolder message of the Gospel. Even as God was at work in the scandal of Mary’s pregnancy, let us reject the presumptions of polite society and instead look for the sacred in the scandalous fringes of our world. Let us, as Christians throughout history have done, become agents of prophetic vision for humanity even in the face of social resistance. Let us with joy, proclaim the greatness of the Lord and let our spirits rejoice in God our savior.