Advent 4
December 20, 2009
Micah 5:2-5a
Psalm 80
Hebrews 10:5-10
Luke 1:39-55
“My soul magnifies the Lord.” “Magnifies” is the word Mary uses to describe what it feels like to carry God inside her body. Can you imagine what that might feel like? This might be a stretch for a man, or for a child, or for women who have never been pregnant. But I think we can all relate to the word “magnify.” Magnify, magnificent, magnanimous, magnitude—all of these are words are used to describe something vastly greater than meets our ordinary experience.
There is no doubt that Mary expresses something of greatness occurring in her. But not even these words can describe what is really happening in Mary, because Mary is not describing something which can be seen by the eyes or experienced by an onlooker simply because it has been increased in size or volume. Mary describes something which is happening inside her; inside her soul. It’s her soul that magnifies the Lord. And the word “magnify,” as we use it in today’s world, cannot begin to explain it. Yes, there is a clear element of greatness, largeness, expansiveness, something quite extraordinary in what is happening to Mary, but in biblical times “magnify” also meant something else. To magnify someone or something was to glorify it; to reveal it more clearly for what it is. So, then, glorifying God was an act which revealed God’s greatness to others. Today Mary tells us that the child who magnifies her belly as he grows inside her womb also reveals the power of God to bring himself into our world by inhabiting a human body who would magnify God by his own life. In other words, Jesus will glorify God by his actions in this world, and his actions will reveal God to us. Meanwhile, as Mary carries that child insider her, she recognizes her own role in glorifying God. And she cannot contain what she is feeling about that. Her entire spirit rejoices in the God who is her Savior.
By submitting to God’s request to bear him to the world, God honors Mary, and blesses her. From that moment on Mary scripture calls Mary “blessed.” People in orthodox catholic traditions even refer to her as the “Blessed Virgin Mary.” They recognize the blessing she was to God and the blessing she is to us by her own act of glorifying God. Incarnation required that God be born of a human person so that he would become flesh, become like us, so that he could redeem our flesh, redeems us, and reconcile us to God. There is no doubt that Mary took on the most profound role of humankind in all of creation. She carried God in her body and delivered him to the world. And today we can feel her awe and her joy
Any woman who feels blessed by carrying a child in her womb certainly has an advantage in knowing what Mary must have felt. Our own bellies become magnified by the child who shares our body with us. Like Mary, we also feel blessed in our role as child bearer, and we know that overwhelming feeling of joy when that child emerges from our womb. And just as Mary took pride in the special child she was carrying, we also carry a special child we believe will serve a unique and important purpose in the world. Most of all, we know that, like Mary, all women glorify God by the children we bear into this world. The difference is that we are not God-bearers---or are we? And men are not even equipped to bear anything into this world—or are they?
I say that we are God-bearers, all of us. I say that every man, woman and child who bears the name given to us at our baptism and is sealed in baptism by the Holy Spirit has been chosen by God to bear God to this world. And just like Mary’s child, we are meant to glorify God by our life, as well. And I know when I am being that child who glorifies God, and when I am not. I know that whenever I am serving God’s purpose for my life, I feel a lot like Mary. I know that I carry God in my heart and mind and soul whenever I am able to bear God to the world and reveal who he is to others. It’s a good feeling, too. Like Mary, I feel my own soul grow more expansive and my own spirit rejoicing in it. On the other hand, when I find myself acting contrary to God’s will and purpose for my life, when my thoughts, and words and deeds are revealing the worst of who I am rather than the best of who God is, I know it. My feelings of disappointment, shame, regret, remorse cripple my mind, harden my heart and diminish my soul. Such feelings only serve to remind me how difficult it is to carry this God inside a body and mind and spirit who wants to have her own way; how selfish it is to feed my own body, but not God’s body within me; how challenging it is to bear a God into this world who gives me the freedom not to; and how impossible it is to glorify God to others when he is shriveled up and dying inside of me
This is why a God-bearer needs to be in relationship with other God-bearers in this world. This is why we need this community of faith we call the church; this is why we need our liturgies of worship, most especially confession and absolution which forgive our negligence and our acts of betrayal so that we can be reconciled to God, and refocus our mind and body and spirit on him. We need to feed on him at our Eucharist to maintain our strength and grow our courage to bear him to our world. It is not an accident that at every dismissal from our Eucharist we are given our commission: “Let us go forth in the name of Christ.” God in peace to love and serve the Lord.“ “Let us go forth into the world, rejoicing in the power of the Spirit.”
In the end, this is why we God-bearers gather as a community of faith in this place we call a church. It’s because we need each other. A woman doesn’t become pregnant by herself, nor can she nurture the child she carries or bear that child to the world by herself. “It takes a village.” A community of people who support, and protect, and encourage each other in the life God has given us to live. The same is true for people who bear God to our world. In fact, being around people who are not God-bearers is not very helpful. Such people can become a stumbling block to our faith and the actions we might ordinarily take to reveal God to our world. On the other hand being in relationship with other God-bearers only increases our joy and our capacity for glorifying our God. Even Mary knew that.
Luke tells us that when Mary learns she is pregnant, the first person she goes to see is her cousin, Elizabeth. By God’s grace, Elizabeth is also pregnant, and now they share something important in common. And it is not just the joy of being pregnant. It is the awe of knowing that their pregnancies are the result of God’s will and God’s intervention. It is the joy of knowing that their children will serve God’s special purpose for each of them in this world, and for both of them in salvation history.
I know for a fact that the first thing a pregnant women wants to do is to share her secret and her joy with people she is close to. And it is always a special treat to share the news of your pregnancy with another pregnant woman. In fact, many women often sense a special moment of recognition between the children who inhabit their wombs, but nothing can equal the response of the child in Elizabeth’s womb to the child Mary is carrying as Mary greets her cousin, Elizabeth. Luke tells us, “the baby leaped in her womb.” That doesn’t happen to us God-bearers. Or does it?
I say that it does. I say that God-bearers often experience a kind of leaping in our heart and mind and soul when we come together with other God-bearers in worship and service to the God we carry within us. We feel our own spirits rise up when people join us in singing our favorite hymn, when we pray that special prayer together, and when we share a story from life or from scripture that speaks to our heart. We feel it when we share in an act of kindness, and we feel it when accomplish a good deed. And there is nothing like that leap which occurs in our spirit in a moment of recognition when a stranger openly and genuinely identifies himself or herself to us as God-bearer.
Each and every Advent we carry our God in the darkness of our own metaphorical wombs anticipating his birth by our liturgical clock. In just a few days, our God will be born to us yet once again. And the story of his birth will be a reminder that God always bears himself to the world in ordinary people like you and me, and always in the ordinary circumstances of our life. We remember that God honors and blesses those who submit to his request to bear him to our world. And we honor and bless our God by the ways we glorify him by our life.
It amazes me how much God believes in us; how much God believes in our ability and counts on our willingness to magnify him; to glorify him by the ways we reveal him to others. But God always gives us that choice. Even Mary is given that choice. God can only hope that we will choose as Mary did.
The choice to reveal our God to the world is always before us. And God is aware that we will not always make that choice because bearing him to the world is not always easy. In fact it can be hard work; and it will not always look like, or feel like, an honor or blessing to our life.
Any woman who has delivered a baby into the world knows how difficult and painful and messy childbirth can be. Any God-bearer knows that, too. The difference is that a woman feels honored, her family feels blessed and the world welcomes the newborn. But the world does not always honor or bless or welcome the God-bearer or the message he bears to its people. It is no small irony that while Christmas is a celebration of Jesus’ birth very few people ever receive that child in the manger. Only presents. But the Christ child brings the same message with him each time. God bearers know it well. And we know why the world finds it difficult to receive. But we also know why it is important for us to bear it.
Mary captures that message and its importance in her words of Magnificat. We heard them our gospel reading today. It is a message which brings great joy to God-bearers and great discomfort to those who are not.
God “will show strength with his arm,” says Mary. And God-bearers know that we are God’s arms—and legs, his hands and feet in this world. Mary tells us that God will scatter the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. And we know that God uses our minds and hearts to break the pride of those who bring suffering to our world by their self-centered and self-serving ways. God will “bring the powerful down from their thrones and lift up the lowly” says Mary. And we know that we are the people who must raise up leaders in our faith communities who will speak truth to power and lead us into God’s promises for our world. We are the people God is relying on to “fill the hungry with good things by keeping the rich from consuming more than their share of our material and natural resources. We are the only people God has to do the work of transforming the world for the good of his creation. But we have to be willing to choose him, and able to carry him, and ready to bring his vision and purpose to our world for the sake of his world.
This is the short list for the ways God would have us bear him to our world. No one said it would be easy, but there is great honor and blessing in it. And much joy in knowing that we serve God’s highest purpose for us in caring for his world and his people.
On this fourth Sunday of Advent, God wants to honor us and bless us for choosing to carry him in our hearts and minds and souls. God wants us feel Mary’s joy as we magnify him by our life. God wants us to anticipate his being born in us once again this Christmas, and in the coming year rejoice in every moment we give him birth.