Sermon Advent 3 2013 - Luke 1 Mary's Song

Sermon:

Text:

Grace and Peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ who right-side ups us.

            I love all our texts for today. I love James’ calls for patience, especially important in this hectic advent and Christmas season as we try to get everything done before heading out to meet family and friends. Talking to confirmation kids this week and they are so looking forward to break, but this little issue of end of the semester tests are looming. And I’m sure it’s the same for most of you as well. Sure you may get Christmas off, but that doesn’t stop work from piling up, and unless you want to be buried when you come back, better get ahead now. So, yeah, it can be stressful this time of year.

            I love our Gospel text for today, but well, it’s a rather strange text to be reading a week and a half before Christmas, because it’s a good ways into Christ’s ministry, not a leading up to Christ’s birth like we would expect. I love it though because it shows us so much of what Christ is coming here to do. “the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers[a] are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.”

            I love our Isaiah text as well, I love the call to a people in exile, that God will rescue them and restore all things to them. Like last week, I see in Isaiah an echo of our situation, where the difficulties of this time are filling our minds and lives, and we need to see God at work, turning everything upside down.

            But, I think I love our psalm reading for today most of all. It comes from the first chapter of Luke and is well known to most of us as Mary’s magnificat or Mary’s Song. The whole scene is a wonderful one. Mary, probably in the mid teens, 13-16, has been engaged to Joseph, and one day the Angel Gabriel, the bearer of good news, appears to her. “Greetings, highly favored one. The Lord is with you.” And as usual at an appearance of an angel, Mary is scared, confused and plain perplexed at those words. Who expects an angel to just appear! And umm… I’m highly favored? I’m just a young woman, I’m not even married yet, or had children, I haven’t done anything. So, the angel continues, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. 31 And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. 32 He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. 33 He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.

Mary is understandably confused at this. I’m a virgin, she says, how can I be pregnant? And again, what’s with the favored business?

But, the angel explains that the spirit will come upon her, and that in fact her cousin Elizabeth, probably more like an aunt figure to Mary, is pregnant herself. God can do astounding things! And Mary accepts this news, and goes off to visit Elizabeth. As Elizabeth sees Mary, John leaps in her womb, and again Mary is called blessed and favored. “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.” And to this we get Mary’s song. Where she doesn't push aside being highly favored, doesn't discount God’s abilities to work in the midst of the seemingly impossible. But, sings out God’s greatness, God fills the hungry, lifts up the poor, blesses the lowly, and looks with favor upon the world.

I realized something as I read this text this week. I’m Mary. Ok, I’m obviously not going to become pregnant or anything, but as I prepare for advent I realized that Christ is coming to me. It made me aware that I am also highly favored, and like Mary not through anything she is doing, but through what God is doing.

And you are highly favored, and you, and you, and everyone. Why, because Christ is coming to us, and we haven’t done anything to deserve it. And in fact I think many times we think we aren’t worthy of it, let alone feeling like we are highly favored. We Lutherans do a good job of thinking about the fact that we are sinners. We certainly think about our own faults and misdeeds. If we are asked who we are, we’re going to start with sinner, instead of highly favored.

Here we are seeing ourselves as sinners, and God is coming to us and says, You are highly favored!

God is flipping everything around by saying that. We think, Oh, I don’t deserve it, I’m not special. You don’t need to have preferential treatment for me. And yet that’s what God does all the time.

In our Isaiah passage, God promises that then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,
    and the ears of the deaf unstopped;
6 then the lame shall leap like a deer,
    and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.
For waters shall break forth in the wilderness,
    and streams in the desert;
7 the burning sand shall become a pool,
    and the thirsty ground springs of water;
the haunt of jackals shall become a swamp,
    the grass shall become reeds and rushes.

Our Gospel shows Christ’s claim that he does the same, the blind receive their sight, lepers are cleansed, the poor have good news brought to them.

We see this action by God, in all three texts flipping everything upside down, but that’s not really what’s going on. We are the ones who flipped it all upside down, through sin we broke it all, and now God is coming to fix it.

Pastor Steve Martins of Brule Creek and Dalesburg said a rather profound thing this week about this concept of God flipping things around, that this isn’t a story of upside downing, but a promise of right-side uping.

God isn’t changing the order of thing, but God is making things right, making them how they are supposed to be.

God is taking the wall we make with sin that blocks us from God, and tearing it down. God comes to us to destroy that sin, so we can be in relationship with God.

What I love about this text and the whole season of advent is that it shows us the right way up. And that the right way is not us as sinners, but God claiming us as beloved children. We are so highly favored by God, so loved by God, that God comes to us, God becomes Immanuel, God with us, and rights us. What a glorious thing to prepare for.

Amen.