Waiting and Working

Third Sunday of Advent Year A

December 15, 2013

Luke 1:46-55

And Mary said: "My soul magnifies the Lord,

   my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for God has looked with favor on the lowliness of God's servant.
   Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
   the Mighty One whose name is holy.
God's mercy is for those who fear God
   from generation to generation.
God has shown great strength;
   and has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
God has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
   and lifted up the lowly;
God has filled the hungry with good things,
   and sent the rich away empty.
God has helped God's servant Israel,
   in remembrance of God's mercy,
according to the promise made to our ancestors,
   to Abraham and Sarah and to their descendants forever."

Waiting can be tough.

I remember when I was younger, and I see it now with my own childen, how hard it was to wait those last few weeks before Christmas.  It seems like at least once a day I get asked how many days until Christmas.  It gets harder and harder as each day passed.  Every time you walk out the door, you see something that declares the coming of Christmas.  Each day it gets closer, and the closer it gets the harder it becomes to wait.  The cards and letters begin to appear in the mailbox.  You see a package or two appear, delivered by UPS or the postal carrier.  The Christmas tree appears, begging to have the space beneath its branches filled with gifts.  You find yourself humming the carols and hymns, that may not have been thought of for the last year.  The anticipation builds, and you just want to get to it.

My wife and I were never blessed to feel the anticipation that comes with pregnancy.  We only felt that crazy anticipation of knowing a child was coming, but having no real clue when; and then that call that tells you, “4 weeks!”  I’m not sure which is better or worse, being able to spend 9 months or so in preparation, or only having a month.  Either way, you begin to anticipate.  There are always things to do, trips to the store to buy things you think you need, a crib to repair, a nursery to paint, arrangements to be made at work, double-checking your insurance.  There is always something more, and then there are the thoughts you have about the child.

With a pregnancy comes anticipation.  You wait, and yet you can’t wait.  What will the child be like?  Will it have eyes like its mom or dad?  Whose nose will it have?  When will it allow us to sleep through the night?  Will they inherit my bad habits?  How tall will they grow?  Will we make it as parents?  How badly can you mess up and still succeed?  Will they be healthy?  Sometimes, we might even allow ourselves to wonder even further down the path ahead: what will they be like as an adult?  Will they be someone that inspires others?  Will they be a leader?  Will they be a servant of others?  With the coming of a child comes expectation, there comes endless possibilities, there comes joy.

Today we focus on the song of Mary, the prayer of Mary when she learns of her pregnancy.  These words are her thoughts, her daydreams.  Yet, they are so much more.  Mary sings out her joy, her feelings of being blessed, her feelings of having been chosen by God; and then she gets lost in her song, in her joy.  Her song goes beyond the joy felt in her own self, to the joy felt in creation itself.  She was waiting, yet creation itself was also waiting to be transformed.

These powerful words of Mary have come to be called the Magnificat, from the first words in the Latin translation.  When I hear magnificat my mind immediately goes to an English word that sounds so similar, the word we have in our translation: magnifies.  Mary declares, “my soul magnifies the Lord.”

One of the things I remember about my grandfather was his magnifying glass.  There was always one on his desk.  He used it for all sorts of things, but its primary use was to look at the postage stamps he collected.  He could look through its lens and the details that were in the stamp to see would become more visible.  It didn’t show what wasn’t there; it showed what was there, yet may have been hard to see.  A magnifying glass allows you to really see something, to get into the subject you are looking at.  You aren’t distracted by the stuff on the edges, you aren’t distracted by the stuff that may not matter.  You look closer, you may even see things you had missed before.

So who is the Lord that Mary is magnifying?  What does this God look like?  It’s sometimes said that no one knows someone as well as their mother; so what do we find when we look closer through the eyes of Mary, the mother of Jesus?  This is a God of reversals, of transformation.

God has taken the proud, those who spend their hours focusing on their own abilities, their own successes, and scattered them.  Their focus on self has been dissolved.  God has taken those in power, those who reign over others, those who use their positions to rule over others and taken their positions from them.  In their place, God has lifted up the lowly, the powerless, the oppressed, the over-looked.  Those who are rich, who have plenty, those who have much and have placed their focus on their own plenty have been emptied.  Those who have little or nothing, those who are hungry, those who are in need have been filled.  God has looked upon his servants, upon his children and responded to their cries of need and despair.  That is the God that we see through Mary’s magnification:  a God of love, a God of righteousness, a God of justice, a God of equity.

One of the things I hadn’t noticed when I had looked at this passage in the past was how Mary seems to get lost in her words.  She begins in the present, and then finds herself in the future.  Her spirit rejoices, and she continues to tell what God has done – not what God is doing, or will do.  This is what God has done.  Mary’s hopes and dreams are not just hers, they are the hopes and dreams of the church, they are the hopes and dreams of us.  They are the declaration of what we believe God has done in Jesus our Savior, they are what we look for in the final fulfilment of God’s Kingdom, God’s reign is brought into being.

Mary’s song of joy, her song of motherhood, her song of hopes and dreams, her song of expectation and fulfilment is also our song.  We too may sing with Mary, “my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for God has looked with favor on the lowliness of God's servant….the Mighty One has done great things for me, the Mighty One whose name is holy.”  And we too magnify our God.

In our words, in our actions, in the things we say and do, in the things we place as important in our lives and in the lives of others, we magnify God.  So, the question is, who is the God you are magnifying?  Does the God that you are making easier for others to see, the God that you are defining match up with the one that Mary declares? 

Mary’s song mixes up present and future; that which is and that which will be.  In the season of Advent, we look to the past and to the future at the same time, we remember what has been and is, and what will be.  We think of the promises fulfilled, and the promises yet to be fulfilled in the fullness of time.  Yet, what would the world be like if we, like Mary, could mix up our tenses?  What would it look like if we lived our lives, not looking to the future when the world will be transformed, but lived as though the world was transformed now?

What if instead of praying and waiting for the day when the proud will be brought down and the lowly lifted up, we lived as if that was already the case – lifting up those who we encounter who have been brought down?  What if instead of praying for God to provide for the hungry, we saw that God has already provided for the hungry out of the bounty given to us?  What if instead of praying that the poor and homeless would be cared for, we worked for a world where the differences between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’ was not so great?  What if in our very lives, rather than looking through binoculars at a hoped-for time yet to come, we magnified a God and a time, a kingdom and a reign that is amongst us now?

I began this talking about waiting, and how waiting can sometimes be difficult.  One of the things about waiting that I’ve discovered is that when you stop focusing on waiting, and instead focus on doing, the waiting becomes easier.  So let us magnify our God, let us work to bring the kingdom into focus, let us work to raise up the lowly, to provide for those in need.  Let us work that our waiting will be easier.  Let us work, that in our waiting we may rejoice.  Let us work, that we may join with Mary and declare, “My Spirit rejoices in God my Savior, my Soul magnifies my God!”  Amen.