Luke 2:1-14

And Mary said,

“My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowly state of his servant. Surely from now on all generations will call me blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name; indeed, his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.

He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the imagination 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.

He has come to the aid of his child Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.”

Sermon Text

Across this Advent, we have looked at what Christ coming into the world means. The death of the broken things in this world and the start of a world built upon grace and redemption. The work of God in this world and the next is transformative, leaving no stone unturned. Last week we was that there was redemption in this new world for all people – for the righteous and the unrighteous, for Jew and Gentile, for literally all people willing to gather together at God’s table.

The eventual reclamation by God is not something that sits fallow, waiting for the day Christ returns in final victory. It is something that actively is worked at in the here and now. The work we embark upon every time we show mercy, every time we forgive, and indeed every time we participate in something God begins, we see the Kingdom of God enter into this world – one small act of love at a time. Like a drop of dye into a sea of water, it may seem to disappear at first, but overtime the color of the sea will change as more and more dye enters into it. The Kingdom of God expands further and further with ever act of goodness we participate in.

The Kingdom breaks out on the margins, in places it is least expected to be found. When Christ was born, it was not in riches and splendor, but to a poor family who came to rest in a home for animals. When Christ ministered to the world, it was not among the well-to-do in the Temple, but to sex workers, to the poor, and to those who had been written off by the wider society. Even in the Hebrew Bible, we are told that God chose a small nation, not any great empire, but a small people in a backwater part of the continent. Even among that small group, God chose the poorest among them and decreed that they were the closest to God’s heart. The Kingdom of God is not something that breaks out in palaces and the halls of government, it breaks out in the alleyways and the bars, in mission houses and factory floors.

Before Christ was even born, we had a glimpse of what his time on Earth and his eventual reign would look like. Mary, after hearing from her relative Elizabeth that the child in her womb is really as amazing as the Angel who had foretold their birth said they would be, begins to sing. The song she sings is a promise to all generations that God is abundantly good, that God is always reaching out to restore those in need, and that God prioritizes the hungry over the full. The work of the Church flows from the promise and mission which begins in Christ’s incarnation – God is with us, and God is always asking us to turn away from the heights of beautiful, worldly abundance, and to look directly into the eyes of want and brokenness.

For Mary, her Child was themselves a sign of God’s favor. For her to become a vessel of God’s redemption was something that she saw as a sign of God’s care for those in need. Though she was born into a poor family, scarcely able to offer anything at the Temple when times of sacrifice came, she was going to be the one who brought God physically into the world. She, an unmarried, poor, pregnant woman was going to be the beginning of a universal shift, the rewriting of the history of the world to be centered on grace, mercy, love, and compassion.

Mary’s Song is uncompromising in its approach to God’s glorious work. God topples the powerful from their thrones, removing empires that threaten the good of all people. God feeds the needy and turns away the ones that stole food from them in the first place. God scatters the proud and ends their works, all so that the meek can inherit the world that was always meant for them. When Mary praises God, she praises a God who is willing to get into the messy parts of life and work to change the systems and circumstances that keep people suffering. God is inherently political in God’s work on earth, the politics are just not what we are used to. God is not a partisan player, but a principled ruler, one that promotes the good of all over the desires of the rich and the few.

God’s Justice does not have a definite start date. From the moment the consequence entered the world, when Cain killed Abel, God was working justice. His expulsion of Cain, and even his protection of the world’s first murderer, were both acts of justice. We often discuss Justice and Mercy as opposing forces, but one naturally births the other. There is a unity of the virtues that cannot be undone. In tending to the Children of Abraham, in welcoming Ruth and protecting Esther, in all places and all times, God maintained a justice that always kept the scales even through the promotion of those that the world had so long pushed to the bottom of the pile.

Yet, as Christians, we see in Christ the culmination of God’s work. Everything that happened in creation up to Christ’s birth was prelude. When Christ entered the world, the entirety of Creation had reached its vertex, and now it was ready to expand out infinitely once again. Our duty, in Christmas and in everything, is to proclaim the goodness of our God, and to reflect that goodness in what we do. Across Advent, in each proclamation of Hope and Peace, Joy and Love, we have come back again and again to that truth. Perhaps it seems redundant, but I would say that more than that we are forgetful. It is easy to lose track in the hustle and bustle of life of this singular truth – our life belongs to God, and God asks us to live our life for other people.

The first person to embody this, in our modern Christological age, was Mary. She who received Christ within herself, who carried Christ into the world, and offered Christ up to a life and death that redeemed the world. We too are bearers of Christ, we too carry redemption into the world. God is the savior, God does the work, but we are asked to step up or step aside as we are called to. We, the people of God, must embrace an attitude like Mary’s. We must proclaim a world that is topsy turvy to the expectations of the status quo. We must be bearers of Christ, that Justice may reign in our kingdom of peace.  – Amen.