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Sermon for
Advent 3B by the Rector ©
December 11, 2005
“Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us.”
Sometimes we call this
3rd Sunday of Advent “Stir up” Sunday because the
Collect of the Day begins this way. Sometimes we call it
“Rejoice” Sunday or “Gaudete Sunday” because of the first
word of the Epistle to the Thessalonians, “Rejoice always,”
and the first word in the Epistle in Latin is Gaudete.
Sometimes we light a pink or rose-colored candle in our Advent
wreath on this Sunday, but this year we are using white candles
along with our blue Advent colors. So, Advent 3 may be approached
in many ways, and I suspect for most of you, that you would not call
it “Hail Mary Sunday”—at least not unless you’re Roman
Catholic. But we’ll get to the “Hail Mary” in a moment.
Let us see what our
readings give us this day. The lesson from the Hebrew Bible opens
with the preaching of Third Isaiah, either an individual or a school
of prophets in the difficult period following the return from exile
in Babylon, perhaps around 500 BCE. In this famous passage, which is
one that Jesus reads in the temple much later in the beginning of
his ministry, we hear the rapture of song, the awareness of the
prophet’s feeling God’s Spirit and the messianic mission to the
exiled community. That mission is filled with the great reversal of
the exiled remnant that will be restored in God’s Jubilee year. The
prophet sings of the transformation of Zion whereby the destruction
of the past gives way to the reconstruction of the future and the
centrality of justice.
In the letter to the
Thessalonians we find them being instructed to rejoice and pray
always and to take the message of the prophets as good news. Then
in the Gospel reading, we read again of John the Baptist preparing
the way for the anointed one, the Messiah to come, much like the
reading from Mark last week. John is a witness to the light that
Christ will bring and he prepares the faithful by baptizing them
with water. The Evangelist John introduces John the Baptist as a
transitional figure preparing the way for Jesus to come.
So those are the lessons. Well, except for the psalm. We have two
choices in the response to the reading from the Hebrew Bible: Psalm
126, a post-exilic psalm, and Mary’s Song, the Magnificat.
We have chosen the Magnificat because Mary sings it as a song
of praise of God’s saving grace and the joy Mary feels in being the
bearer of God’s Son. The context of Mary’s Song is the story of the
Visitation of Mary to her cousin Elizabeth in Luke’s narrative.
Luke writes, “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.”
I imagine not many of
you say the “Hail Mary” every day, but it goes like this:
“Hail Mary, full of grace, the LORD is with you. Blessed are you
among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus. Holy Mary,
Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our
death.”
The “Hail Mary”
which is part of the Rosary, and the “Magnificat,” which is
one of the Canticles of the Daily Office of The Book of Common
Prayer, form a part of an ancient song that has stood the test
of time for more than 2,000 years. It all starts with the great
story we have today of the “Visitation” of Mary to her cousin
Elizabeth who is pregnant with John the Baptist.
The accounts of Mary
and Elizabeth are woven together showing how the work of God is
coming to fruition. Mary’s song, the Magnificat, is
reminiscent of other scriptural hymns of praise in the Hebrew Bible
that were sung in response to God’s intervening graciousness and
power. The singers of these ancient songs include Miriam (Aaron’s
sister), Deborah, and Hannah. These similar ancient songs go back
to the 12th century BCE, being among the oldest texts of
scripture. The genre of the victory hymn was well known from
Egyptian and Assyrian sources dating from the 15th
century BCE.
The song of Miriam
(Exodus 15:20) celebrates the victory of the Red Sea crossing, and
echoes Moses’ song just before it in Exodus. We hear these words:
“Then the prophet Miriam, Aaron’s
sister, took a tambourine in her hand; and all the women
went out after her with tambourines and with dancing, and
Miriam sang to them, “Sing to the LORD, for he has triumphed
gloriously; horse and rider he has thrown into the sea,”
The Song of Deborah
(Judges 5:1-31) celebrates God’s victory over a Canaanite army led
by Sisera. Some of the words of the song are:
“Hear O kings; give ear, O princes;
to the LORD I will sing, I will make melody to the LORD, the
God of Israel.
To the sound of the musicians at the watering places, there
they repeat the triumphs of the LORD, the triumphs of his
peasantry in Israel.”
The Song of Hannah
praises God for giving her a son in her barrenness,
“Hannah prayed and said, ‘My heart
exults in the LORD; my strength is exalted in my God. The
bows of the mighty are broken, but the feeble gird on
strength. The LORD makes poor and makes rich; he brings low,
he also exalts. He raises up the poor from the dust; he
lifts the needy from the ash heap, to make them sit with
princes and inherit a seat of honor.”
So Mary’s song,
echoing Hannah’s song, and the other ancient songs, grounds her
praise and God’s present activity in God’s faithfulness and ancient
promise. Luke especially highlights two motifs: 1 God the warrior
delivers God’s people and 2) God the merciful remembers the lowly
and cares for the needy. Viewing the coming salvation as a great
reversal, Mary’s Song anticipates key motifs that occur throughout
Luke’s writings.
Right after today’s
passage from Luke, after Luke says, “Mary remained with her about
three months and then returned to her home,” we continue the
narrative with Zechariah’s mute state being returned after Elizabeth
gives birth and Zechariah names Elizabeth’s and his baby John.
Then, in the tradition of the songs of Miriam, Deborah, Hannah and
Mary, Zechariah sings a song as well after the birth of John, being
filled with the Holy Spirit. Hear a verse of that song as well:
“Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,
for he has looked favorably on his people and redeemed
them. He has raised up a mighty savior for us in the house
of his servant David, as he spoke through the mouth of his
holy prophets from of old, that we would be saved from our
enemies and from the hand of all who hate us. Thus he has
shown the mercy promised to our ancestors and has remembered
his holy covenant.”
This song is familiar
to many of us as the canticle Benedictus from the Daily
Office. Then after this song, the narrative halts again, so that
Luke can tell the Christmas story, the birth of Jesus.
So, now that you know
everything about these ancient hymns of the celebration of God’s
victory in the great reversals and we’ve even said the “Hail Mary”
in Church, what matters most about these stories and songs for us,
many many centuries later?
First of all, the situation in our world looms large before us these
days before Christmas, with continued violence in Iraq, murders and
crimes all around us, people in the Gulf Coast still suffering and
being exiled from their homes, tragedy happening everywhere. Second,
Mary's "Magnificat" proclaims a great reversal of the power
relations of this world, brought about by the birth of Christ. That
social revolution is absolutely central to the Christmas narratives.
The point of the great reversal and our hope for Christmas can be
simply put like this: The story of Mary and Elizabeth is a story of
hope and of joy -- of ancient longings for redemption and security
finally fulfilled; of a future that can be faced with confidence and
with excitement. Those two impossibly pregnant women-the barren wife
of an aging priest, and an unknown virgin with neither royal blood
nor an important family-began a song of praise that has continued
through twenty centuries: "My soul magnifies the Lord," Mary
sings, "and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior."
And on this “rejoice” Sunday, both the world out there and
the world in our own souls desperately need this pure word of joy
and of hope and rejoicing. For in the midst of all the Christmas
spirit around us, we know people with a lot of pain. We all know how
Advent can be an especially difficult time, and an especially empty
time, and an excruciatingly painful time, for so very many people --
people out there, and people in here. I realized that so well this
week as my 92-year-old father is failing and is having great
difficulty swallowing as a result of small strokes. He is faced
with difficult ethical decisions concerning his quality of life and
the risks of having or not having a feeding tube and other heroic
measures that might prolong his life. I know a young man waiting
for a liver transplant and Bob who is waiting for his bone marrow
transplant and others who are facing Christmas for the first time
without a parent or spouse or even a lost child, and parents who are
sending their children off to Iraq to fight for us.
It is to all of this despair that the joy and hope of Mary and
Elizabeth speak most loudly. For their joy is aimed directly at the
world's pain-at our pain. Both women rejoice, both sing -- yet
neither celebrates anything of her own doing. Neither sings because
of what she has accomplished, or because of what she deserves, or
because of what the world is doing for her, or because it is the
time of year people are suppose to sing.
Mary and Elizabeth sing because they have been given a
new life to share. Each sings because that which nature and the
world have named as barren is suddenly filled with life -- life that
will, in its own time, shake the foundations of a world that has
absolutely no idea what is going on.
These two women rejoice, and we are called to rejoice
with them, for one reason and one reason only: because God loves us
enough to act on our behalf. Their joy, and ours, is deeply rooted
and real. Their song, and ours, is sung only because God loves us
enough to come to us-to the most barren, the most unnoticed, the
very least of us-and to plant in us, and in our world, God's own
life, God's own hope, and God's own promises of peace.
For the real business of these days before Christmas is waiting, and
listening, and trusting that God will regard the low estate of God’s
servants, and that God will give to us what the world can neither
give nor recognize. And perhaps, as happened to Mary and Elizabeth,
some new life will begin to grow within us, new life that can begin
once more to transform us; and, through us, to renew our world. And
for that, we can rejoice always and sing “Magnificat,” “Gaudete,”
“Stir up your power,” or even, “Yea, God.”
Amen. |
