Advent Lutheran Church

"Mary, Tell Us About God, How It Really Is (Advent 4)"

            Grace and peace to you from God the Creator and the Lord Jesus.  Amen.

            For several weeks now I’ve been asking a variety of people the same questions: Why do you come to church?  What do you hope to find when you come? 

            The answers have been interesting, and they seem to divide along generational lines.  Those in Generations X and Y tend to say things like, “We come for a sense of community, for relationship; we want to connect.  And we want to be seen as unique individuals in this community we want to be a part of.”  Those in the Boomer and Veteran generations tend to say things like, “It’s just part of what we do and who we are; it’s what our parents did, and they raised us to do the same: You do your part, you pitch in, do your share.”

            But the more I talk to people the more I believe that there is a reason underneath those stated reasons, that under the desire for community and the desire to do what’s right is a desire that connects the generations, a desire that expresses itself in a very simple and eloquent plea: “Tell us about God.  Tell us how it really is.”

            Addressing that desire flies in the face of much that passes for “church” in modern America.  Many preachers find great success with sermons that promise to reveal the top three (or eight or five, use your favorite number) Biblical principles for financial security; managing your family; or finding your best life now, or your real purpose, or the greatest fulfillment of your personal life.  Note that the subject here is “you,” not “you, child of God,” but “you, consumer.”

            Stanley Hauerwas is a professor of ethics and a very astute observer of the religious scene.  When he was recently asked why the Church hasn’t raised more of a protest of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, he said, “The church has lost its ability to be a disciplined community because [the church is] now in a buyer’s market.  Christianity has to bill itself as very good for your self-realization, and that’s killing us because we’re not very good for your self-realization.  We’re good for your salvation, which is not the same thing.”

            Financial security, family, personal fulfillment – they’re all worthwhile topics, but they’re secondary; they satisfy, but only temporarily.  The deeper hunger remains: “Tell us about God.  Tell us how it really is.”

            That’s the preacher’s task, and this morning there is no better, more faithful preacher than Mary, the mother of Jesus. 

            Mary goes to visit her cousin Elizabeth.  Both women are pregnant, both pregnancies ordained by God, specifically to suit God’s purposes.  The women realize that they are woven into the very fabric of God’s design for the salvation of humanity, and Mary breaks into song:

            “[God] 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.”  Note that when Mary sings of God, she uses the present perfect tense: He has lifted up the lowly, he has filled the hungry with good things.  What Mary tells us is not possibility but reality, God’s reality that turns everything upside down and reverses all of our culture’s values: who’s in and who’s out, who are the winners and who are the losers, what constitutes true beauty and real ugliness, what makes for real security and pitiful powerlessness.  God turns everything upside down, and whether we see that as good news or hear it as a threat depends on whether we choose to live out God’s values or our culture’s values.  And they are not the same.

            This is the first time Mary talks about God, but certainly it couldn’t have been the last.  Surely, after she gave birth to her first-born son and as she went about the normal duties of motherhood – nurturing him and caring for him – she continued to talk about God, continued to talk about the way it really was.  Through all the time of his growing up and on into young adulthood, Mary might even have used these same words, even daily, to make sure her son knew about God.

            The boy grew into a man, but his mother’s words never left him.  In fact, he would adopt her message as his own when he began to tell people about God, about how it really was.  The message was the same, but the words he used were uniquely his own:

            Blessed are you who are poor, for yours in the kingdom of heaven.  But woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your reward. 

Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled.  But woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. 

Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.  But woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep.

            Jesus told them about God, tells us about God, that God will not forever tolerate injustice, violence, the victimization of the powerless by the powerful.  It was a message that the world could not abide, would not tolerate.  It was a message that got Jesus killed, this son of Mary.

            But the God who Mary talks about, this God who turns the world upside down, who reverses everything, this God would defeat even the power of death on Easter morning.

            And you have to wonder: When news of the Resurrection reached Mary, did she revisit in her heart these words she first had spoken so many years before?  As she walked away from that empty tomb, did she walk away with a secret smile in her heart, and sing softly and with renewed meaning: “My soul now magnifies the Lord, and my soul rejoices in God my savior?” 

            Good news: It’s Advent, time to get real about God, time to let our lives magnify the Lord.  Amen.