One Tough Cookie

Text: Luke 1.47-55 December 24, 2006

Let’s not make Mary out to be too sweet. Let’s not put her in a beautiful blue robe (why is it always blue?), with blushing cheeks and flowing hair, a contemplative smile, and a halo-like glow surrounding her.

Mary was a street kid, or would be if she lived now in the city. She was very poor. Her husband-to-be, Joseph, was a carpenter, not an admired craftsman but low on the economic ladder, a rung even lower than a subsistence farmer. She was probably young, maybe thirteen or fourteen. She lived in a really bad time for Jews in Palestine. Roman armies patrolled the streets, and crucifixion was common for minor crimes, including not knowing your place, or talking about a time when Israel might be free again. If you kept your mouth shut you might keep your life.

Mary was one tough young lady. Not at all fragile and shy and retiring. We do her an injustice if we sentimentalize her. When we do, it is too easy to forget that Mary has something to do with Jesus besides being a vessel for God’s grand scheme. Some call her the first model of a Christian disciple, and if that is true, we who are trying to follow Christ need to see her as an agent in the story of God’s work.

Today we read aloud Mary’s response to Gabriel’s message. This beautiful song, called the Magnificat—from the first word in the Latin version—is a song about God shaking things up, unsettling things, and delivering on a promise. Listen, disciples of Christ, to the three things that Mary says.

Mary says Yes.

She says Yes to God’s invitation, even though it would have been very clear to her that lying low would be more prudent. It was not a good time to be talking about a Messiah or the restoration of the power of Israel and in memory of its great former King David. That would be dangerous talk.

And it is clear that Mary knew it, for her song is all about turning things on their heads. Things that seem to be settled will be unsettled. Things will be stirred up, and when things get stirred up, stuff on the bottom and stuff on the top can mix in odd ways, and the dregs can become the cream. Raising up the poor and, more threateningly, bringing down the rich. Raising up the lowly and, worse, throwing down those in power—the mighty down from their thrones. This is seditious, Mary’s song is.

And into this world, and into this mess, Mary will bring a child who is not going to be shy about his mission. Mary knows it. I’m sure that’s what she ponders in her heart when her son is finally born.

Yet, smart and tough, Mary says Yes. Yes. I’ll bear the son of God and I’ll raise him and fear for him and be proud of him and watch him through to his end. Yes, she says.

When God calls, who knows what is going to happen? We don’t live in perfect times, no one ever has. If we are waiting for conditions to be just right before we do anything—in our lives or in our world—we’ll never say Yes. And we cannot set conditions, no bargaining with God. I’ll do this if you, God, make sure everything will work out the way I want it to. That is not to say you can’t complain to God or make demands of God or be unhappy with where God takes you. And I’m sure if you do that God will listen and will promise to be with you all the way. It’s just that it will be God’s way, not yours.

Mary says Help!

Mary is not afraid to ask for help, or to be person who agrees she needs help. A savior has come, she sings. To be saved, you need something to be saved from. To be redeemed, you need to be captured by something. Saving means healed, and to welcome healing—and Mary does—you have to admit you are not doing all that well.

When you are privileged you get things no one else does: you never have to wait, and you never have to be crowded. But all the rest of us live in a world constrained by other people and by time and logistics. We are limited, as creatures are. Mary calls the privileged “proud in their conceit,” and in the King James Version of the Bible she calls them “proud in the imagination of their hearts.” In the Greek, it is “arrogant in their understanding of their hearts.” In other words, they don’t think they need anything.

Christianity does not have much to offer to people who are totally satisfied with the way they are and the ways things are in the world. But who is so satisfied? Not the people in Mary’s situation or in the situation of any real person that I know.

To say Help! means to admit that we need help. That we would welcome some divine intervention because we need that intervention. That we cannot do it, whatever it is, without help, and that we welcome God’s hand in our lives.

And Mary says Hooray!

The whole song is one big Hooray! Hooray not for Mary herself, though that, too (“The Almighty has done great things for me,” she says). But hooray that God’s regime is, or soon will be, the one in power. For the writer of Luke’s Gospel, who the ruler of the world is—Caesar or God—is one of the main points of the coming of Jesus. And to Mary, the answer is definite and clear. The jubilation that Mary feels is the joy at a major good change in things. Maybe it’s like the way the Democrats felt at the last election. Or to be a little more personal, the way you might feel getting married, or having a child, or beginning a new friendship. In the present event there are signs so definite and true as to be certain that a new future is about to unfold. A great future.

Christians live under a promise. For some, that seems absurd. Things go on, and what will be is what will be. There might be hope, but to the cynical it is more like whistling in the dark. But it is part of the fabric of Christianity to be naïve enough to think that God has something in store for this world that will recover and renew it.

The story of the Bible is a story of an ongoing relationship between God and people. We do not have a faith in which God does all the work while we sit around like lumps. Nor do we have a faith in which people struggle or prevail by themselves while God watches without much interest. The history of our faith—over time and for some, in our individual lives—is a conversation, full, as for Mary, of both contemplation and passion.

Advent rushes up against Christmas, especially in this year when we celebrate both in the same day. The song of Mary is like the overture to the greater song. Which in itself is a duet. Call and response. One asks for help, the other responds. One calls in invitation, the other agrees. And in the heavens and on this earth, all say Hooray!

Amen.