Will
you pray with me? Lord, may the words of
my lips and the meditations of all
our hearts be
acceptable in your sight, our rock and our redeemer.
Amen.
So one day, an
angel came to a young, unwed girl, there in her parents’ home. The angel came to the girl, and told her that
if she watned to, she could change everything. The
angel called her Favored One, and told her that if she
chose, she
could bear a child, a son, and that that son would be the saving of the
world. And the girl? She
said, “Yes.”
She is a
remarkable figure, this girl. I mean,
she raised God, right? You parents out
there know that it’s hard enough to raise a regular kid, and she raised
God, through diapers and terrible twos
and puberty and the whole thing. She was
the only person—the only person!—to be present at both his birth and
his
death. Later tradition would come to
call her the Queen of Heaven.
Next to Jesus
himself, there’s probably no character in the Bible that has imspired
as much
art as has Mary. I’m willing to bet that
even the mention of her name causes somebody’s painting of her to
spring to
your mind. These images are powerful
conveyors of the meaning and content of the stories they represent. So I’d like us to begin today by spending
some time thinking about them. I’d like
to invite you to turn to a person, or people, sitting near you, and
take just a
few moments to describe your favorite image of Mary.
What painting
comes to your mind when you think of
her?
(30-seconds of
conversation, then from the floor)
OK, so when you
think of Mary, what do you see? Let’s
start
with how old she is.
What’s she
wearing?
And what’s she
doing?
Where’s she
looking? Is she looking right at
you? No, she’s looking up in rapture,
isn’t she? Or looking down, averting her
eyes.
And what would
someone looking at her say about her personality?
(heading back
into pulpit) So, in our images, Mary is
young, she’s wearing blue, she’s holding a baby or looking at an angel
surprised. She almost never looks into
your eyes. She’s meek, mild, obedient,
loving. Gorgeous images, aren’t
they? I have to confess, though, that
often while looking at these gorgeous images of Mary, I find myself
wondering
whether any of the artists had ever actually read the Bible.
Here’s what I
mean. Close your eyes.
Hold in your mind your image of Mary, and
listen to these words of hers again:
My
soul magnifies the Lord…surely from now on all
generations will call me blessed.
God
has shown strength with his arm; he has
scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
She
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.
You can open your eyes again. Does the Mary in your mind say things like that? Predict political
turmoil and radical redistribution of
wealth? Sing about God taking the food
right out of
the hands of the wealthy (and by the way, by most of the world’s
standards, the
wealthy is us), and giving it to the hungry? Does
your Mary say things like that?
I don’t know who decided that Mary the mother of Jesus was
meek and mild, but I want to tell you that these are not the words of a
mild
person. These are the words of a woman
with hope, a woman that knows that
God is with her and about to enter into the world to change everything,
to turn
everything upside down, to make mountains into valleys, wolves to lie
down with
lambs, make rough places plain, to make a whole new creation of us. She says them in the past tense, but they’re
her prediction for the future and friends, they are not the words of a
meek
person.
These are the words of a revolutionary.
And they are dangerous words, a dangerous song here in the
mouth of a pregnant and powerful teenager, and while this fact may
sometimes seem
to have been missed by the artists out there, not everyone has missed
it. In the 1980’s, a statue of her and her
baby
was visited by as many as five million pilgrims a year, each
remembering the
words of her song and coming to ask her to help them in resisting the
oppressive communist regime there. Her
words are so subversive that, also in the 1980’s, the government of
Guatemala
banned Mary’s song from being read in public, fearful that it might
incite the
poor and disenfranchised to revolt.
But of course those government guys
missed the point, as
those guys usually do. God’s revolution is about upsetting the status quo, but
it isn’t one of guerrillas and guns. It
is one of forgiveness and vulnerability and just distribution of
wealth, of
hope born with each new birth, far more peaceful and far more powerful
than any
violent way of doing business. When God
comes, it is not business as usual, where the stronger attack and
enslave the
weaker, where the poor keep getting poorer and the rich keep getting
everything. It is the revolution of the
heart
against business as usual,. It is the
belief that submitting to God makes you not meek, but powerful beyond
measure.
[pause]
This song of Mary’s is called the Magnificat, for the first
line of the song in its Latin translation: Magnificat anima mea Dominum. My soul magnifies the Lord.
You see, Mary knew that it takes a soul,
a human soul, to
magnify God, to make God and God’s love great enough, big enough for
the world
to see, and hear, and touch, and be transformed by.
Which, of course, is the whole point of
Christmas. Christmas is the revolution
waiting to be magnified in every human soul, the turning upside down of
the
world so that it looks not like a place created by humans, but by God,
where
justice, equality, and unabused vulnerability rule.
It is a revolution in which you have a part
to play, a part that God
is seeking to have you birth into the world right now, and all the
revolution
needs to begin is for you to join Mary and say, “Yes.”
What is God calling you
to birth into the world this Christmas? You
see, God may have chosen Mary to bear Jesus to the world, but Mary’s
story, and
her song, remind us that God chooses each of us, me, and you, and you,
and you,
to bear God to the world as well. The
Magnificat isn’t supposed to be just Mary’s song; it’s supposed to be our song.
So, I’d like to offer a different picture
of Mary for you
this Christmas Eve morning. Picture a
young girl, not in blue and gold robes but plain, everyday clothes. Picture an uplifted chin and a joyful,
hopeful, knowing smile. Picture clear,
bright, snapping eyes staring right into you, inexorable and powerful. Picture two hands resting lovingly on a very
round, very pregnant belly. Picture her
singing.
And picture it all framed not in a painting, but in a mirror.
Magnificat anima mea Dominum. Come, God, come. Amen.
