Advent 4, Year C

Donna G. Joy

      Luke 1:39-45

Think for a minute, what it would take for you to celebrate… to celebrate with every fibre of your being… to celebrate in a way that you are holding nothing back… to celebrate in a way that you want nothing more that to sing and dance and jump… I heard a story on CBC yesterday about an elderly man and woman who had no financial resources to rebuild their home that had been destroyed so their community pulled together to rebuild it and they presented it to them just a few days before Christmas. When they went on their first tour of their new home it was all set up, complete with a fire in the fireplace and a decorated Christmas tree. Perhaps that elderly couple may have wanted to celebrate this great gift in such a way.

Recently I heard about a project in town called Cateura which is located in Paraguay. Cateura is a small town which is built on top of a land fill. Often the young people there end up destroying their lives and the lives of those around them by getting involved in drugs and gangs. But then a particular orchestra director and music teacher set up a music program, and very soon large numbers of the young people became interested and involved in the music program, so much so that in no time at all there were more students than instruments. (Apparently in Paraguay a violin would cost as much as a house.) All this changed when they came across the idea of building music instruments with items collected from the land fill. Now they have a complete, beautiful sounding orchestra complete with instruments that have been crafted with items from the land fill. They call themselves the ‘Land Fill Harmonic.’

I see this as an amazing story of God working through people to offer hope and joy in the midst of poverty and hopelessness. (… a type of Advent/Christmas story in and of itself.) But my main point here is that these young musicians clearly want to celebrate this gift of music with everything they have; with every fibre of their being. When interviewed, one of the young musicians said that words cannot express how she feels when she hears the music; she can only say that it gives her butterflies in her stomach. And, as these young musicians play these unconventional and beautiful sounding instruments it is obvious that they are celebrating the gift of this music with their whole being.

As we think about this kind of profound excitement it is important to recognize that it is this deep, all encompassing excitement that is expressed in Mary’s song. It is often called Magnificat, because that is its first word in Latin. It is one of the most famous songs in Christianity. It has been whispered in monasteries, chanted in cathedrals, recited in small remote churches by evening candlelight, and set to music with trumpets and kettledrums by Johann Sebastian Bach.

It is, in a sense, the gospel before the gospel, an exuberant shout of confident triumph thirty weeks before the Bethlehem birth we are just a few short hours away from celebrating, and thirty years before Calvary and Easter.

It is – indeed – an expression of that full and complete kind of celebration in which nothing is held back. It is all about God, and it is all about revolution (that is: a sudden, radical, complete change… the promise of the prophets is about to be fulfilled.) And, it is all because of Jesus (who is the fulfillment of the prophets’ promise) – Jesus who’s only just been conceived, not yet born, but who has made Elizabeth’s baby leap for joy in her womb and has made Mary giddy with excitement and hope and triumph. In many cultures today, it is the women who really know how to celebrate, to sing and dance, with their bodies and voices saying things far deeper than words. That’s how Mary’s song appears throughout the ages; that’s how Mary’s song appears to us today.

In our translation this morning, we hear that Mary’s soul – her very soul – proclaims the glory of God – and with this great expression of praise she begins a journey that is to be filled with twists and turns; ups and downs; deep and profound sadness along with great, indescribable joy. This same soul that proclaims the greatness – the glory – of God will – in time - become pierced and broken. She will lose this child for three days when he’s twelve.

She will think he’s completely lost his mind when he’s thirty. She will (and as a mother I am certain of this) despair completely for a further three days in Jerusalem, as the God she now wildly celebrates seems to have deceived her. All of us who remember and sing her song need to remember these things as well. But the moment of triumph will return with Easter and Pentecost, and this time it won’t be taken away.

So, why did Mary launch into a song like this? What has the news of her child – her son - got to do with God’s strong and mighty power overthrowing the power structures of the world, demolishing the mighty and exalting the humble? Mary and Elizabeth shared a dream. It was the ancient dream of Israel: the dream that one day all that the prophets had said would come true. One day Israel’s God would do what he had said to Israel’s earliest ancestors: all nations would be blessed through Abraham’s family. But for that to happen, the powers that kept the world in slavery had to be destroyed. Nobody would normally thank God for such great blessings (or, proclaim God’s glory) if they were poor, hungry, enslaved and living in circumstances that offered no hope of a better tomorrow.

In order to proclaim the glory of God in the midst of such dire circumstances, God would have to win a victory over the bullies, the power-brokers, the forces of evil which people like Mary and Elizabeth knew only too well, living as they did in the dark days of Herod, whose casual brutality was supported with the threat of Rome. Mary and Elizabeth, like so many Jews of their time, searched the scriptures, soaked themselves in the psalms and prophetic writings which spoke of mercy, hope, fulfillment, reversal, revolution, victory over evil, and ... of God coming to the rescue at last.

All of that is poured into this song. It’s like, at the end of a hot summer day of working in the garden, opening a well chilled bottle of beer and pouring it a little too enthusiastically into the beer stein so it rises to the top with the foam spilling out over the sides and onto the surface below. Mary’s song, is like that; it is a rich, foaming drink that comes bubbling over the edge of the jug and spills out all round. Almost every word is a biblical quotation that Mary would have known. Much of it echoes the song of Hannah in 1 Samuel 2, the song which celebrated the birth of Samuel and all that God was going to do through him. Now these two mothers-to-be celebrate together what God is going to do through their sons, John and Jesus.

This is all part of Luke setting the scene for what is yet to come, as the two boys grow up and really do become the agents of God’s long-promised revolution, the victory over the powers of evil. Much of Mary’s song is echoed by her son’s preaching, as he warns the rich not to trust in their wealth, and promises God’s kingdom to the poor.

But once again Luke hasn’t just given us a glimpse of the big-picture. Mary’s visit to Elizabeth is a wonderful human portrait of the older woman, pregnant at last after all hope had long ago disappeared and the younger one, an unmarried virgin, pregnant far sooner than she had expected. An older woman, far beyond child bearing years … pregnant with the one who is to prepare the way for the coming of the One that the prophets have promised. A young, unmarried virgin . . . pregnant with the One who will re-establish God’s kingdom through his saving death and resurrection.

(Just a quick note about the place of Virgin Birth within the context of this story: there are those who believe it to be true and those who do not, and many good arguments to support each. But at the end of the day, it is useful to reflect on why the notion of virgin birth may be significant. That is: if this child came into the world through no human act other than Mary saying “yes” we may be led to recognize that this birth marks the end of the old humanity and establishes the inauguration of a whole new humanity. It is, in a sense, a brand new start; a brand new gift being dropped into humanity’s lap; God finding a way to be with us in a brand new way; the fulfillment of a long awaited promise.)

Indeed, we are to proclaim the glory of God, who allows room for the impossible to become possible. Because at the root of all this is a celebration of God. God has taken the initiative – God Emmanuel; God with us; the Powerful One; the Holy One; the Merciful One, the Faithful One. In just a few short hours we will celebrate the coming of this loving, challenging revolutionary One into our world and into our lives. Let us celebrate as Mary celebrates. Let us celebrate fully and completely and hold nothing back. Amen.

Sources include: N.T. Wright; Robert Capon; Dietrich Bonhoeffer