Celebrating With Mary

A sermon for the fourth Sunday of Advent given at the United Church of Acworth, NH on December 23, 2012.

Luke 1:39-56

What does it mean to have joy? In light of tragic recent events how do we come to church and light a candle of joy?

Rachelle and I were listening to NPR's On Point on Friday morning. The episode which you can still listen to online was addressing the spiritual challenges of Newtown.

Near the beginning of the show Miroslav Volf, a professor of mine from Yale and a guest on the show made the comment that “it feels like a dark cloud has descended on the season of joy.”

As we listen to our gospel reading we hear the joyful singing voice of Mary:

“My soul proclaims your greatness, O God, and my spirit rejoice in you”

Why is Mary rejoicing? What gives this poor, unwed, teenage mother the joy that so beautifully pours out in these verses?

Well, what is the content of her joy? What do we hear in her song?

We hear about a God who acts as Savior in this world.

As commenter Charles Campbell put it, “God is great, but equally important – and harder to believe for many in our day – God is good.”

A God who has done things, is doing things, and will do things to heal and redeem a broken world.

One of the peculiar things about Mary's song is that everything she sings is sung as if it already happened. Barbara Brown Taylor notes:

"she was singing about it ahead of time – not in the future tense but in the past, as if the promise had already come true. Prophets almost never get their verb tenses straight, because part of their gift is being able to see the world as God sees it – not divided into things that are already over and things that have not happened yet, but as an eternally unfolding mystery that surprises everyone"

“she was singing about it ahead of time” – she sees God's design of healing for the world – she has that moment of revelation, that dream moment and she sings. She celebrates. Because in her is renewed the faith that God is the author of this world-story and God is great and good.

Mary's joy is not on account of delicious Christmas treats (although she does praise God for filling the hungry with good things)

Mary's joy is not pleasant feelings on account of some cool movie or exciting new gadget.

Mary's joy is not grounded in the fleeting momentary pleasures.

As we listen to Mary's song, we realize that Mary's joy comes as a gift from God's own self. Mary's joy is founded in God's salvation.

It's just as much a joy for what God will do as for what God has done.

We are a culture that has pleasure down to a science. We know the right substances to take to induce the pleasure chemicals in our brains. We know how to be entertained and tickled by internet memes or TV shows.

But we are slowly forgetting how to celebrate. I was amazed when I found this quote from Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel written almost 50 years ago but still so relevant to our time.

He makes this point:

The man of our time is losing the power of celebration. Instead of celebrating, he seeks to be amused or entertained.

Celebration is an active state, an act of expressing reverence or appreciation.

To be entertained is a passive state—it is to receive pleasure afforded by an amusing act or a spectacle.

Entertainment is a diversion, a distraction of the attention of the mind from the preoccupations of daily living.

Celebration is a confrontation, giving attention to the transcendent meaning of one’s actions.

Mary's song is a song of celebration, not a song of entertainment. Her words are grounded in the transcendent meaning of her own existence and God's presence behind the curtain of history.

She sees God's design for a restored creation and the hope inspired by God's loving design for peace in this earth produces in her a joy that issues forth in a song of celebration.

This is the joy that is possible in the midst of suffering. This is the joy that is available in hard times. It's the not the fleeting pleasures of consumption, but the hopeful joy of God's unfolding story of love redeeming human beings, human communities, and nourishing us toward the path of peace.

It does not deny suffering, it recognizes and confronts suffering but sees it anew in the light of a much bigger story. A story where God is at work bringing light to dark places.

And I think this kind of joy can exist without smiles or even pleasant feelings.

Mary lives in the midst of an oppressive Roman rule.

She's a woman in male-dominated society.

She's a young person.

She's marginalized for her pregnancy outside of wedlock.

But yet she celebrates. Because she rejoices not in herself or her own life, but in what God will do through her and around her and in the ages to come.

Let's not force anyone around us to rejoice – and let's not try to force ourselves to rejoice. Joy doesn't need smiles stretched across our faces. Let us celebrate within ourselves God's gracious activity in us and around us, and consider the dream that Mary is given in her prophetic moment here: “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.” “Singing about it ahead of time.”

But Mary's song is not just a disconnected moment of ecstasy. The song leads us toward a reimagining of our world politically and socially. It's a moment of celebration which reorients her faith toward joining in the work of God's healing of the world.

So the last thing I'll say about joy is that if it is founded in God's design of healing for the world, then the song we sing will lead us to make manifest that healing in our work in our homes and communities.

Gustavo Gutierrez writes that “the future of history belongs to the poor and exploited. True liberation will be the work of the oppressed themselves; in them, the Lord saves history.”

God uses the weak to overcome the strong. As we join in Mary's celebration of God, may we remember the joy of God's promises of healing this broken world.

Let's relearn how to celebrate and see our lives caught up in the larger picture of God's design.

May we sing with the Psalmist, “Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation”

So that our joy might bear fruit for the healing of the world. And what Mary saw ahead of time might be celebrated again and continue come to pass in our midst.

Amen.