Sunday: The 4th Sunday of Advent
Reading: Luke 1:39-55
Preacher: Peter C. Lane

It has been a long time since Luke gave Mary that beautifully worded prediction, "All generations will call me blessed." We, so removed by time and circumstance, make the prediction prophetic by affirming Mary's blessedness. It is why the cross on Jim's chasuble is blue, why our advent candles are blue, why the lights on that tree are blue. Blue is the color of Mary. And it is fruitful to call her to mind. We affirm Mary's blessedness because she represents so much that is central to our faith: God is faithful; God confounds our understanding; God is known in community and song.

Luke, writing this gospel in the later decades of the 1st century had a problem. Although writing to a mostly gentile community, he still had to make sense of the reality that most of the Jewish people seem to have said "No" to Jesus. Well then, what about God's promise to Abraham that he would be the ancestor of a multitude of nations? What about the promise put on the lip's of Hannah that God would raise up the poor from the dust and lift the needy from the ash heap? Luke is a clever writer and needs to be to present this story to a pluralistic world. He knows that if God's promises through Jesus are to be trusted so must God's promises to Israel. And so Mary's song, the magnificat, is modeled after the song Hannah sings after the birth of her unexpected son Samuel. And Mary's song ends, "God has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever." Luke is tying Jesus into the stories of a faithful God. Even Mary's visit to cousin Elizabeth helps establish the reliability of the angelic messenger. What is interesting is that by using Mary to show God's faithfulness, Luke admits that God is changing the goal posts, again moving them back to make it easier and easier to make it through to God. (1) As our understanding of a mysterious God changes, the stories we tell about that God, the songs we sing continue to welcome more people. If God could use lowly Mary? We call Mary blessed because she represents God's faithfulness.

One thing about God's interaction with her people is that there are plenty of surprises. I'll tell you, when I woke up early one Sunday morning back in 1995 and rode my bike from my dorm at 60th and Ellis to St. Paul and the Redeemer, the thought of being a priest was far, far from my mind. Yet, here I stand. If John the Baptist had been the one to fulfill the promises to Abraham, that would have made more sense. His father was a priest in the order of Abijah, one of the few who got to go into the Holy of Holies. But it isn't Elizabeth who is ever blessed. It is Mary. God certainly upset the expectations of the community of faithful Jews represented by Zechariah, Elizabeth, Joseph, and Mary. They understood a God so transcendent that only one priest could enter the Holy of Holies once a year. And now Mary is the mother of my Lord? One fine scholar put the scandal of it this way, "How was it that God, creator of heaven and earth, should enter into his own creation, not simply by taking on a material body (which would have been miracle enough), but, rather, by taking on the very flesh of one of his human creatures and doing so, moreover, by spending nine months within the likewise fleshly confines of her womb?" (2) When Hannah was singing her song back in 1st Samuel, God's breaking-in sounded like it was going to be a lot more noticeable. "The Lord's...adversaries shall be shattered; the Most High will thunder in heaven." (1 Samuel 2:10) How does our God thunder from heaven? By taking up residence in a young girl from an out of the way town but empowering her to sing, "God has shown strength with his arm and has scattered the proud."

I have to say there is an element of this disruptive way of God that is unsettling to me. Mary sings, "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." I am not hungry. The onions in the endive salad at Nightwood on Friday night were incredible. And lowly? I'm going to be rector of one of the most exciting, vibrant Episcopal parishes in the country! Of course my first sermon after learning that has to deal with Mary's singing that God scatters the proud. I am reticent to comment knowing that interpretation can so often be merely protection from the text. And yet I do hope that Mary's words say more to me than that I will be sent away. I think Mary sings about a God who is known in weakness. If anxiety about leading this parish has me rely on God, then let God be known in that weakness. Each of us has our vulnerabilities. Through which vulnerability do you know God? We call Mary blessed because she represents that God is faithful but in confounding ways.

Perhaps the most fun reason for affirming all these generations later that Mary is blessed is that she represents how we know God in community and song. I love what she does immediately after learning the incredible news of her pregnancy: she rushes off to share the joy with her cousin Elizabeth. And then she sings. There is a reason we are so big on hospitality around here. It is not only because we are all brilliant conversationalists. God is known in community. And there is a reason we sing so much around here. God is known in song, especially a faithful, yet confounding God. Singing is a medium of praise and story. Luke didn't have Mary immediately lay out the supposed characters of God: omniscient, omnipotent, and so on. Mary sang about what God had done. Today we sing together in expectation, "My soul magnifies the Lord." On Thursday we will gather in community to sing songs and tell stories about what God has done. We call Mary blessed because she shows us how to relate to God-through community and song.

God is reconciling the world to Godself. That is the story and promise of the bible. God looked on the creation and called it good and God will wipe away every tear from our eye. But how that unfolds is confounding. One thing we know is that God chose not to remake the creation by force but instead used a human Mary to be the symbol of the recreation of all things. (3) Mary is blessed because she represents, more fully than almost anything else, how God works in the world, how that biblical story becomes our story. Blessed is she among women.

(1) Brendan Byrne, The Hospitality of God: A Reading of Luke's Gospel, Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2000.
(2) Rachel Fulton, "Mary." In Christianity in Western Europe c. 1000-c. 1500, eds. Miri Rubin and Walter Simons, pp. 283-96. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
(3) After Anselm of Canterbury, quoted in Fulton