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Text: Luke 1:26-56 “The Magnifcat” (from the Latin for “magnify’) ● This story has never satisfied me ‘intellectually’, but it was never meant to. In fact, it almost seems as if the story was meant to frustrate the intellect. Christmas is complex; it’s mysterious! Mystery--- … that which can be explained, but never fully understood, … that which can never be defined, only experienced (like love), … that which keeps us curious, but never satisfies our curiosity (always more to search), … always expands our definition of what’s “possible”, Mystery… what’s left when you run out of explanations! ● I think God knew how utterly ridiculous such a proposal would sound: God coming to us as a fetus, developing in the womb of a teenage girl from some jerk-water little town, suspected of sexual misconduct amidst talk of angelic visitations and God as the baby’s father! [1 Cor.1:18-21] That’s a good one, God! ● Isn’t it interesting that (2) of Christianity’s most defining-moments hinge upon the miraculous: the virgin birth (incarnation) and the resurrection? We are reminded how captive we are to modern demands for proof and irrefutable evidence [Isaiah 9:6 predicted that Messiah would be ‘wonderful’--- literally “beyond comprehension”. ● With God, for things to become possible, we don’t need to understand--- we need to believe; but that seems naïve or irresponsible [admittedly, there’s a big chunk of what I have chosen to believe that I don’t understand]. There’s a dynamic of faith which seems to ‘subvert’ our demands for understand before we will believe. The scriptures are replete with admonitions to ‘ask, knock’, pursue,’--- which leads to understanding. ● God has accepted our inability to ‘get it’ as inescapable component of dealing with us [‘if God would just tell me… or show me… you still wouldn’t get it] ● It’s this ability to believe before we fully understand that makes us feel so vulnerable; like faith is too risky. But, the real vulnerability lies with God: this all-encompassing, mysterious God attempting to find ways to relate to us that wouldn’t leave us in sheer terror; this God, determined to partner with us in his dream of restoring the world, faced with finding ways to keep us involved in the process in spite of our persistent bouts with doubt and defiant unbelief; a God who desires to be known, offering himself to a people who are so easily distracted--- “he came into that which was his own, but his own did not receive him” [John 1:11]. Who is the vulnerable one? ● The incarnation typifies how just how God intends on accomplishing his desire for creation: both divinely and humanly. It’s “so God” to invite us into the work he is doing and yet to keep its realization and fulfillment somehow ‘just out of our reach’ [which seems to point us to the ‘messianic’ nature of the story]. ● Luke shapes the story in the context of Zechariah and Elizabeth, with the emphasis being on Elizabeth’s inability to bear children: “barrenness”… “lifelessness”, “hopelessness”--- a dead end. Historically, God has done some of his most profound work in people who were clueless and powerless and often marginalized by society. ● God intends to draw Mary into what he is doing. This is obviously the kind of stuff you are ‘drawn into’ because it’s anything but ‘safe’. You don’t’ walk into ‘assured’, but ‘confused and disturbed’; not with ‘clarity’, but ‘humility and faith’. Sometimes we wonder whether this was an invitation or an announcement--- was, “Let it be”, the only possible response? ● Mary and Elizabeth share the ancient dream of Israel: that one day their God would be King (a new David) and that his kingdom would be characterized by justice, which would result in peace. Best of all, it would never end! It was not that the Israelites had not experienced times of blessing and glimpses of what could be, but they didn’t seem to last very long--- always derailed by their unfaithfulness and inability to sustain obedience. ● They lived in a chaotic time: Even as her song was ending, nothing had changed, and there were no indicators that change was imminent--- at least not in ‘concrete ways’. Her country was still occupied; peace was still little more than conformity due to intimidation. The religious leaders had co-opted with the empire while the revolutionaries were seeking recruits among the young poor and disenfranchised in Nazareth; meanwhile, the Pharisees, while well-intentioned, could only offer a distorted brand of righteousness which was not only self-deceptive, but exclusionary--- making impossible demands of people and minimizing their chances of entering the kingdom. ● It’s interesting how our desire for peace is not only frustrated, but accentuated by all that’s chaotic and broken about our lives. The question, “How can this be?” reverberates in our lives in a thousand different ways, reminding us not only of the simplicity of faith, but the demands of faith; a willingness to admit how much remains hidden from us; a mystery--- how much of our life of faith remains inaccessible to the (5) senses. ● Mary does something seemingly “irrational”--- she says “yes”. She’s not afraid to admit that she doesn’t understand, but she refuses to allow the limitations of her understanding to prevent her from experiencing the favor (grace; movement) of God in her life. It’s a ‘yes’ with an enormously high risk involved; a yes with social, political and religious stigma, not only for herself and Joseph, but for her son as well. ● And then, she sings. It’s not a nervous response like the way we sing when we’re walking out to the car in a darkened parking lot, but it is a ‘fearful’ one. And, you can get away with saying a lot of stuff by singing it, rather than just saying it (song comes from the heart). In song, she ‘magnifies’ God: magnification results in what appeared small becoming big—more clear, and, something that seems far away, brought so close you could almost touch it! ● Mary’s response was so impassioned because of her desire for shalom; it’s what she had been dreaming of ---she is ready to believe! (well, desperate people are willing to believe anything, you know! Maybe not “anything”, but at the very least, “something else”!) ● Mary’s song declares that the waiting is over. Imagine the exhilaration she felt: like the first sounds of the helicopter for those lost in the blizzard; the first tones of “Daddy, it’s me”, from the one presumed lost for good; the sounds of the breaking of the seal on the door as the one who defiantly walked out returns home. ● Incarnation says “we can stop looking for something else”; we can stop wasting our time and energy pursuing that which will never satisfy us. We can allow our hearts to rest even as we watch him go again. This time, it’s a different sort of waiting. It’s not an anxious, fear of abandonment, but a hopeful expectation of return--- it’s like he never left us (deposited something of himself in us to provide comfort; a guarantee that he’d be back and a confirmation that all we had risked believing was really true!) ‘Here I am’… words that changed everything. Words that signaled Mary’s welcome of this new thing that God was doing in her and in his world. Elizabeth hones in on the central quality of favor--- “You are blessed because you believed that the Lord would do what he said”. ● We love this song because it makes us want to sing too! It’s a song of justice; it’s a song about imbalances being eliminated. But, it’s not just a song about the reversal of power and fortunes, but about the dream of a world where such struggles no longer exist because we are introduced to more mutually-beneficial ways of being together: we are actually transformed into who we were always meant to be! It’s not just taking from the rich to give to the poor, but the creation of a society where no one pridefully trusts in riches and where no one goes without--- where generosity (grace) is the norm. ● I imagine people dealt with the announcement much in the same way we do today. Some will celebrate and welcome the announcement of peace and attempt to reorder their lives to experience it; most will sentimentally join our celebration, but not be naïve enough to think that peace will ever really characterize the ‘real world’. ● We’re left, as Mary, to “ponder”… The word denotes making observations and then attempting to interpret them accordingly. Pondering is a deliberate approach to life that challenges us to observe and interpret how God’s plan is now at work and how we are to live in response to it. ● True mysteries don’t get solved--- they get pondered. You “chew on them”; you “mull them over”--- convinced that there’s more there; something you have yet to see. Keep looking for ways to “make the song your own”! To live peaceably, to live intentionally, to live graciously!
We ‘enter’ mystery, not for
the purpose of figuring it out, but for experiencing the wonder; because once
the wonder is gone, all that’s left are facts and facts alone are never
compelling; they come in handy for a good argument, but they leave my faith
feeling cold and calculating. |
