4 Advent

Dec. 19, 2021

 Luke 1:39-49 (50-56)

 + A few weeks ago, our very own Jean Sando preached a sermon about the Blessed Virgin Mary at one of our Wednesday evening Advent Masses.  

 It was a wonderfully defiant sermon (I don’t know if Jean viewed it as defiant, but it was).

 In it, she addressed some very important issues regarding Mary, especially the Church’s continued view of her as “meek and mild.”

 We are definitely being inundated by “meek and mild” Marys right now!

 Jean also preached about the view of Mary as some perfected virginal being that is held as an unattainable ideal of what good Christian women should be.

 I agreed entirely with Jean’s sermon because she and I shared many of the same frustrations about Mary.

But I do have to say that my frustrations might even be deeper, especially since, as you all know, I have a very deep devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

She has always been a major presence in my spiritual life.

And I know the psychologists here will have a field day with this, but since my mother died, my devotion to Mary has definitely deepened.

In fact, for me, Mary has always represented much, much more than just the meek and mild image the Church sometimes saddles upon her.  

For me, I think my devotion and love for Mary actually encompasses seeing her as a symbol of feminine aspects of divinity—of God.

Which I think is also very much a reason the Church does the whitewash they sometimes like doing on Mary.

 To approach the feminine aspects of divinity is frightening to the Church.

 As you know, I have been studying Judaism for the last several years, and for my it has definitely deepened my own Christian faith.

 I have found that to truly understand the Gospels and the life of Jesus, I need to sometimes to see what was happening not through Greek, Hellenistic eye (which we as Westerners tends to do all the time), but rather to look at all scripture through a Hebrew lens.

 At times it’s hard to do so.

 But it has also been revolutionary for me, as a Christian and as a priest. 

 Seeing the Gospel stories through a Hebrew lens is sometimes difficult.

 But one aspect of doing so has been the approach to the scriptures we find about viewing representatives of God as divine beings.

 For early Hebrews people it was not uncommon for them to see the people who they believed were sent to them from God as being divine.

 We find this most profoundly in the story of Jacob and the Angel.

 The angel, of course, is not God, but God’s representative.

 But for Jacob, as he wrestled with angel, he felt he was truly wrestling with God.

 Certainly, for the followers of Jesus, who saw him as a very unique representative of God, they saw him as divine.

 And in him, they saw God.

 More importantly, they saw in Jesus a loving, compassionate and wildly inclusive God.  

 It did not take much of a leap for the Greeks to take this Hebrew view of God’s representative and formulate something as complex and mysterious as the Trinity.

 We’re not going to get into all of that today.

 But we can see God’s divinity in other people in scripture as well.

 And when we start seeing that divinity in someone like Mary, we are offered a glimpse of something particularly unique.

 We are offered a glimpse of the feminine aspects of God, which we find in the story of Mary. 

 This is important, because, as Jean pointed out in her sermon, there are not many opportunities in scripture for women to act in the capacity of representative of God.

 But we do see it uniquely in Mary.

 Bear with me.

 In our Gospel reading for today, we find Mary and Elizabeth rejoicing in the ways in which God was working their lives.

 Mary, carrying within her flesh God’s very Son—the Messiah made flesh, this very unique representative of God—carrying divinity within her— and Elizabeth, carrying within her flesh John, who would later be the Baptist calling to us from the Jordan River (and also, might I add, a representative of God to many people as well), meet and there is a spark between them.

 What is that spark?

 That spark is God’s energy at work in them.

 What I have always loved about this story from scripture is that neither Mary nor Elizabeth probably can fully comprehend what is going on within them.

 How could they?

 How could any of us?

 But what they do know is that something strange and wonderful and HOLY has happened.

 God is happening. And in a big way!

 Mary, the young virgin, has conceived under mysterious and certainly scandalous circumstances and is about to give birth.

 And Elizabeth, the barren elderly woman, also is also about to give birth.

 Neither should be having a child.

 Yet, somehow, they both are.

 These sort of things don’t happen in ordinary life.

 Certainly nothing even remotely like this happened before in the lives of these two  Jewish women.

 But now, here they were, greeting each other, both of them pregnant with children that came to them by miraculous means.

 And, although they might not fully understand why or how, they feel real hope and joy at what has happened to them.

 The full expression of this hope and joy finds it voice in the words of Mary’s song.

 “My soul glorifies the LORD

and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.”

 And in doing so, Mary truly does embody God.

 The divine dwells within her in a very unique and beautiful way.

 And because God does, she becomes something more.

 She becomes a unique representative of God.

 Certainly she is a representative of God to Elizabeth.

 And certainly she continues to be to many of us even today.

 But, of course, it can’t just end there.

 It is isn’t enough that we simply look to others a representatives of God.

 Essentially this is our goal as well.

 It is our goal to embody God’s Light and Love and Presence within each of us as well. 

We are—each of us—called to be unique representatives of God in this world.

 We, like Mary, we are called to carry within us Jesus.

 Wherever we go, we should bear Jesus within us.

 Like Mary, God’s own gift to us dwells within us.

 Like Mary, God’s very Word dwells within us!

 And like Mary, we should be able to rejoice as well, at this fact that Jesus dwells within us.

 We too should sing to God, in joy and hope:

 “My soul glorifies the LORD

and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.”

 Now, we have been hearing the Magnificat quite a bit this morning, as we should.

 This “Song of Mary” is one of my beautiful scriptures we have.

 But before we think this is some nice little song to God from innocent teenage girl, I would like you to remember how radical it really is.

 How defiant it is.

 And how political it is.

 Oh, you didn’t catch Mary’s political jab?

 It’s right there:

 “…[God] has scattered the proud in their conceit.

[God] has cast down the mighty from their thrones, *
and has lifted up the lowly.”

 This is no meek and mild teenager!

 For her, living there, in that time, that says a lot.

 And it’s echoing pretty loudly for us here and now.

 God, we realize from this Song of Mary, does not let the “proud” in their conceit last long in that place.

 We know that God has no problem casting down the mighty from their thrones.

 Mary’s song of defiance is our song of defiance today as well.

 And that, even in our defiance, we are full of hope in a God truly does do these things.

 Like both Mary and Elizabeth, this hope and joy we are experiencing later this week should be coming up from our very centers.

 This is really how we should approach the miracle that we commemorate on Friday evening and Saturday.

 Like Mary and Elizabeth, we will never fully understand how or why Jesus—God’s very Son made flesh, Gods divinity—has come to us as this little child in a dark stable in the Middle East, but it has happened and, because it happened, we are a different people.

 Our lives are different because of what happened that evening.

 That is how God works.

 God loves us enough that everything we have feared will be taken from us.

 And that is what we are rejoicing in, along with Mary and Elizabeth, this morning.

 Our true hope and joy is not in brightly colored lights and a pile of presents until a decorated tree.

 Our true hope and joy is not found in the malls or the stores.

 Our hope and  joy is not found in Amazon or Etsy (though I really love both Amazon and Etsy)

 Our true hope and joy does not come to us with things that will, a week from now, be a fading memory.

 Our hope and joy is in that Baby who, as he draws near, causes us to leap up with joy at his very presence.

 Our hope and joy is in that almighty and incredible God has send us the Messiah, the anointed One, the One promised in the prophecies of scripture, in this innocent child, born to a defiant teenager in a dusty distant land.

 Our hope and joy is in a God who send us this amazing gift—who has sent us LOVE—real and abiding LOVE--with a face like our face and flesh like our flesh.

 LOVE embodied.

 This is the real reason why we are joyful and hopeful on this beautiful winter morning—on this last Sunday of Advent.

 This is why we are feeling within us a strange leaping.

 This is why we rushing toward God’s very Messiah who has come to visit us in what we once thought was our barrenness.

 Let the hope we feel today as Jesus draws close to us stay with us now and always.

 Let the joy we feel today as Jesus comes to us in love be the motivating force in how we live our lives throughout this coming year.

  Let us greet God’s chosen One with all that we have within us and let us welcome him into the shelter of our hearts.

 And, with Mary, let us sing to the God who sends Jesus to us with all our hearts,

 “My soul glorifies in you, O Lord,

and my spirit truly rejoices in you, O God, my Savior.”

 Let us pray.

 Our souls glorify you, O God. Our spirits truly do rejoice in you. Visit us, here in this place in which we dwell, and live within us. Let us carry your Presence with us wherever we may go. And go with us wherever we may go. Let us be your representatives to those who need your love, your light, your radical, all-inclusive love, now and always. We ask this in the Name of Jesus our Messiah who is about to dawn like the Sun into the night of our souls. Amen.