This
was the moment no one speaks of,
when she could still refuse.
Spirit,
suspended,
waiting.
She did not cry, ‘I cannot. I am not worthy,’
Nor, ‘I have not the strength.’
She did not submit with gritted teeth,
raging, coerced.
Bravest of all humans,
consent illumined her.
The room filled with its light,
the lily glowed in it,
and the iridescent wings.
Consent,
courage
unparalleled,
opened her utterly.
There’s something about Mary, for sure. The Song she sings in this moment—the Magnificat—is about what is possible for all human beings, female and male, young and old—with God’s help. About what is possible for this tired world that God yearns to make new. What is possible is LOVE.
Her soul magnifies the Lord. Think about what that means. I think it means something like, with God we can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine. I think it means that when we do a little thing in the name of Christ it ripples out to change the world, magnified to the nth degree! It turns out that Mary’s song is really a riff on an old song: Hannah’s Song. (That song can be found in I Samuel 2:1-10.) In other words, even as Mary says yes to a new world, she draws strength from the past. There is wisdom in that truth for us. St. Michael’s. The Church isn’t a museum – rigid traditionalism. But as we remain open to the Holy Spirit we, like Mary, draw wisdom and strength from the past in order to birth a new future.
Mary prefigures Pentecost, the day when the Holy Spirit breaks down all walls that divide. For the Holy Spirit there is never “them” and “us” - only us, from every tribe and language and people and nation. Only beloved children of God. Mary models for us what it might mean to let the Holy Spirit blow through our lives and make us new in spite of the dominant culture’s expectations. She knew, as Hannah knew, that God cares about justice and cares especially for the poor. She knew that the deck is stacked and that in this world kids attending inner-city schools do not have the same opportunities that kids going to private schools or affluent suburban schools do.
God loves all the little children of the world. Really. You can take that to the bank. All means all whether those kids are black or brown or white. Whether they are male or female or trans or non-binary. Whether they have all kinds of opportunities or all kinds of challenges.
But let’s be clear: the God we meet in the Bible, because that God loves all the little children of the world, wants the playing field to be more level than it is. And so somebody has to take the side of the underdog. This is what the liberation theologians mean when they speak of God’s preferential option for the poor and I think Mary is doing liberation theology in the Magnificat. When she riffs on Hannah’s Song, she stands in a long line of Biblical prophets, male and female, who know this. God knocks the proud and arrogant and powerful down a few pegs and brings the lowly up a few pegs and fills the hungry with good things and sends the rich away empty, not because God hates the rich, but because God really does love the poor, the anawim: God’s little ones.
In this dog-eat-dog world the anawim need God on their side because the privileged generally do pretty well taking care of themselves. Mary will teach her child, Jesus, to love the least among us as God loves them, and as she loves them. She will teach him how to read the prophets so that when his public ministry begins his first words will sound a lot like the song we heard his mother singing today. Remember, when he quotes from the prophet Isaiah in the synagogue:
16 When he came to Nazareth,
where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, as
was his custom. He stood up to read, 17 and the
scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found
the place where it was written:
18 “The Spirit of the Lord is
upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the
poor.
He has sent
me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to set free those who are
oppressed,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
20 And he rolled up the scroll,
gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue
were fixed on him. 21 Then he began to say to them,
“Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
Jesus learned that from his mother. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. His
soul, too, proclaims the greatness of God because his values and his theology
were shaped by his mother.
So it’s right to see in Mary and Jesus the love between a mother and her child – that’s real and whether or not we are parents or grandparents we’ve seen what that looks like and maybe even experienced it. It’s real. But Mary’s love is not limited to Jesus. Just as God so loved the world – the whole world, Mary also says yes to that vision.
Mary is called by God through the very same pattern that we find throughout the Old Testament whenever God needs to have a job done: from Abraham to Moses to Samuel to Isaiah with his “unclean lips.” The angel says, “I’ve got a job for you.” Like those who have gone before her, she is initially fearful and confused. “How can all this be?” she asks. The angel insists that it can be, because with God all things are possible.
And that’s when Mary sings: I am fully open to the will of God for my life! Like all call narratives, including the calls that come to us in our own lives, Mary has a choice. She chooses “courage unparalleled.” Like all of those called by God, Mary is free to say, “get lost angel!” She freely chooses to say: Here I am! Send me! In so doing, she is the first and model disciple of Jesus. She is bold and courageous and strong in this moment, and not this one only. She will have to be bold and courageous and strong to raise a son like the one she raises. And she will have be bold and courageous and strong when her son walks the Via Delarosa some thirty years later, as her heart is pierced and her son dies on a cross. Mary has to bury her child, something no parent should ever have to do. But she had courage unparalleled.
So let's be clear: there is nothing passive about Mary. And while she may not have a starring role in the Bible, her role is crucial in the deeper, wider, tradition. Those of you raised as Roman Catholics may know her better than those of us raised in more Protestant traditions but we should all be clear that Mary’s “yes” to God is bigger than our theologies about Mary. She is Christ-bearer, which is precisely the ministry to which you and I are called: to make room in ourselves for Christ to be born; so that the Word continues to be made flesh in this world.
What
makes this possible? Love. Plain and simple. For nine years we heard our
previous presiding bishop, Michael Curry, speak of the way of love. I’ll remind
you of his legacy on this fourth Sunday of Advent. From day one he proclaimed
to anyone who would listen that we, the Episcopal branch of the Jesus’
movement, are out to change the world from the nightmare it is for so many into
the dream God has for us all.
Now is our time to go. To go into the world, let the world
know that there is a God who loves us, a God who will not let us go, and that
that love can set us all free.
An authentic, courageous life of faith is not without its questions, struggles, uncertainties and fears. But with God, all things are possible. God comes to us, as to Mary, not because we are perfect, but because we are willing to open our lives to the radical transformation that the Spirit offers. May Christ be made manifest—and even magnified—through us, for the sake of this broken world that God is making new again.
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