Peter JB Carman, December 17, 2017
Emmanuel Friedens Church, Schenectady, New York
Readings:Luke 1:46b-55 and Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11
I.
Growing up, nobody told me that the blessed virgin Mary was a full-blown revolutionary. Or maybe somebody tried to tell me, but I just couldn’t hear it. No, let’s be real, that was not what they taught us in Sunday School.
In Protestant churches, all we knew about Mary was that the Catholics made a lot of her, called her the Mother of God, dressed her in blue, maybe, we suspected, even worshiped her. Well, this was the 1960s, and while the national and international church leaders were busy trying to relate across the old lines, the message was still in the air, in the water, and in most Protestant church pulpits: if the Catholics said it, it must be wrong. You who grew up Catholic probably got the other flavor but the same medicine. If we taught it, it must be suspect if not just automatically wrong.
Not that we actually did much biblical research into Mary the mother of Jesus. The most we Protestants did was argued about the virgin birth, and whether you had to believe in it to consider yourself a Christian. But nobody asked us to sign on the dotted line with Mary’s manifesto, otherwise known as the Magnificat, the words that Luke’s Gospel ascribes to the young woman as she spoke in advance of the birth, while visiting with her cousin Elizabeth.
The image most of us had of Mary was drawn not from the bible but an old carol: “Mary was that mother mild, Jesus Christ her little child.” Mother mild? No way. Listen again to the words she shouts or whispers, chants or sings, echoing down through the generations:
God’s mercy is for those who fear God from generation to generation.
God has shown 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…
and to [their] descendants forever."
II.
At a Christmas concert at Proctors the other night with the Gibson Brothers, local bluegrass artists of national fame, Lynn and I watched two older brothers tease their younger sister…on stage. They were all adults but, you know, in some ways we never grow up.
Eric and Leigh Gibson had, as usual, invited sister Erin, a local kindergarten teacher, to sing a few with them for the Christmas concert. There they stood , two professional musicians with their little sister, who isn’t on stage nearly as often. Leigh began to reminisce. “Erin used to go into town and buy us the best Christmas presents” said Leigh. Erin nodded sheepishly, seemingly just a bit overwhelmed by the huge crowd there in the GE theater. On her other side, Eric, the oldest, asked, “Just what was the idea behind, the purpose for, soap on a rope?” We all laughed, even Erin. The older brother continued, “One year Erin bought me a ….”
“Well Eric, that’s ‘cause that year you were being a jerk.”
“Erin, Erin, this is supposed to be a season of light and peace and harmony.”
“Hey,” says she, “this is a season for honesty.”
Lately, I have been looking for the source of Joy: not just the fleeting joy of a momentary insight or the flavor of a fine meal, not even the thrumming joy of music pounded out by folk in the grip of a transcendent spirit. No, I mean the kind of joy that cannot be taken away. Honest joy.
A few years ago, I was with a small delegation of Church people from the United States, far from home, visiting with a Brazilian church—whose pastor was giving us an extraordinary tour of the many places of ministry of the church, including in some of the poorest and most dangerous neighborhoods in the western hemisphere. Everywhere we went, the pastor was hugging people, and it became apparent the whole neighborhood knew him.
Sitting in the back yard of a tiny house in the heart of a crowded neighborhood with no street access and no clean running water, we were warmly received by a joyful, round-faced woman. She insisted we come in and sit down. And so, we sat on her tiny patio, and ate cake, of all things, white cake with white frosting, fresh made by the woman who was hosting us. She was an older woman, and with some translation, she spoke to us of her love for animals, and her concern about their mistreatment, and more broadly about the environment. She was a strong advocate for a vegetarian diet. Nobody knew what to say. All our stereotypes were getting messed up in the slums of Brazil.
After a pause, one of us asked the host pastor, who was there with us, a question. “Pastor, here we are in this amazing place. We are in this neighborhood with so much suffering. But everyone here seems so happy, even though they are incredibly poor. Here this woman, who has almost nothing, is baking us a beautiful cake. Everywhere we go people are laughing and smiling. How can this be?”
Our friend smiled in response, and his eyes took on a different look than I had ever seen before—a little crazy, a little happy, a little fierce. “This question comes up often”, he said. “This is what we say about it,” he said. “When people ask poor Brazilians how we can be happy, we ask a question back: “They have stolen everything else from us. Why would we let them take away our joy?”
III.
Jesus Christ was born to a woman without a home in which to give birth or raise her baby, in a time of great oppression and poverty for her people. The scripture tells us little about Mary—only a few hints here and there—but they include hints that she was a faithful fellow traveler with her son, up to and through the time of his crucifixion. But the details we have from Luke’s gospel as we read it today come from an earlier time. The words tell us about a young woman who carried in her body a big dream, and strong joy—the kind of joy that cannot be taken away because it comes from some deep well of resistance, and strength and faith in the living spirit, some strong rooting in the Holy Source of every good thing that has ever been. It’s a joyful strong vision, the kind of vision strong enough to provoke joyful, faithful lives of action.
A lot of my friends of late have talked about how they have been in danger of giving up hope. The reasons are plentiful. One works in a setting where it seems like more and more people are in it for the money—rather than providing service, or offering compassion. Another has gotten depressed by the never-ending stream of cynicism, trash talk and half-truths or untruths coming across from political leaders. But whatever the reasons in specific the source of our discomfort may be trying to stay focused, trying to keep our eyes on the prize, when all around us the world seems to have lost its way, or worse.
That young girl Mary sang out long ago, in the days before our savior was born. But I am convinced she yet has a lesson to teach us. Maybe it goes like this: They’ve taken everything else away—why would we let them take away our joy? Or maybe it goes like this: "My soul magnifies the Lord, and 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, and holy is God’s name.”
In the end, Christianity isn’t about ritual and tradition; it is real people on stages bigger than we are used to, picking up the sound of that ancient song, proclaiming that ancient message of deliverance, with deep joy, or maybe just insisting on a little joyful…honesty.
In the end it isn’t about whether we get happy in church or sing ancient chants with solemnity. It is about whether we dare to embrace that same absurd joy and join a soon to be mother and shout deliverance to the nations—with our actions, with our lives.
This much I know for sure—to embrace this joy, we may have to let go of some things—let go of our fear, let go of our separation and solitude, let go of our desire to fix everything on our own, let go of the working assumption that we are alone in the universe. And we may just need to embrace joyfully the truth that there is such a thing as truth; there is such a thing as justice; with God, and with the help of God, there is and will be redemption for the poor, healing for the broken, release for the captive.
If we can remember that joyful vision in our bodies, in our bones, if we can remember the promise of the One who loves us, claims us as the Spirit’s own children…. Then at the very least we can get a little happier in our approach to life! Let’s not let the powers that be steal our joy.
But we can do better than that, more than that. We can start to dare a few dreams, take few chances, act up a little, for the sake of humanity, and for the love of God.
Artwork: He, Qi. The Visitation, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN.