“Dangerous Song”
A Sermon by the Rev. Dr. Hilary J. Barrett for Advent 4
Preached at Pleasantville UCC, December 20, 2009
Micah 5:1-6; Luke 1:39-45 and Luke 1:46-55

“He has shown strength with his arm,
he has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts,
he has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted those of low degree;
he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent empty away.”
(Luke 1:51-53, RSV)

No one knows why Mary set out on a long trip to see her cousin Elizabeth right after that surprising encounter with the Angel, Gabriel.  Gabriel announces that Mary will bear the Son of God and the very first thing Mary does is head for the hills – or, as Luke describes it, she heads for “the hill country” where her cousin Elizabeth lives.  Maybe she goes there because Elizabeth is also mentioned in Gabriel’s prophecy: “And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren.  For nothing will be impossible with God.” 

Maybe because Elizabeth has also experienced a miraculous pregnancy, Mary thinks that she of all people will understand.  And Elizabeth does seem to understand, because the moment Mary enters Elizabeth’s home, the babe inside Elizabeth leaps in her womb and Elizabeth speaks words that have become among the most sacred in all of Christendom.  Elizabeth’s words of greeting form the core scriptural verses that make up the Catholic rosary: “Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb.” 

Two pregnant women -- one too young to be pregnant, the other too old – both of whose lives would demonstrate that nothing will be impossible with God.  Two women filled with the Holy Spirit – in a world where a woman’s spiritual power was hardly the subject of great interest.  Two women gifted with vision to see the possibilities that God had in store for their lives.  We have made it this far.  We have journeyed through the season of Advent.  We are within site of the holy Manger of Bethlehem, and here, just days away from Christmas, we encounter yet another wonderful story that reveals even more about this surprising Savior upon whom we wait. 

The greatest Christmas carol in history was sung there in the hill country in Elizabeth’s home, when – filled with the Holy Spirit – Mary proclaims: "My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior…”  And were she to have stopped right there, everything would have been fine.  Were Mary to have stopped her spirit-filled singing right there, we would just have remembered how grateful she was, and how full of the love of the Lord she was, and how aware of her blessings she was as the mother of God’s only begotten Son.  But that darn Mary, she just wouldn’t stop.  She just kept singing.  And the song she sang was one of the most dangerous songs every heard; a song so dangerous that even in modern times, it was considered too dangerous to be heard.

I’m not making this up.  In the 1980’s, the government of Guatemala banned the song that Mary sings, they banned the scriptural words known as The Magnificat, because it was considered subversive and politically dangerous.  Authorities worried that the song that Mary sang when she stood in Elizabeth’s house that day might incite the oppressed people to riot.[1]

Let’s listen, again, to what Mary sang:

"My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has regarded the low estate of his handmaiden.
For behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed;
for he who is mighty has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.
And his mercy is on 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 put down the mighty from their thrones,
and exalted those of low degree;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent empty away.
He has helped his servant Israel,
in remembrance of his mercy,
as he spoke to our fathers,
to Abraham and to his posterity for ever."

Mary’s song begins with words of praise and gratitude, but then she goes on to sing about how God has brought down rulers from their thrones.  She goes on and on about how God delights in overturning the things of this world: how the rich are brought low and the poor are raised up.  How the proud are scattered “in the imagination of their hearts.”  God is reversing everything: who’s in, who’s out; who’s up, who’s down; who the winners are; who the losers are.  Mary seems to charge the world with having gotten things pretty much exactly wrong.[2]  It was a dangerous song to sing when Herod was the ruler.  It was a song that put Mary’s life, and the life of the child within her, in direct conflict with Herod the Great, who – up until now – had been the only one known as “King of the Jews.”  And it was a song so dangerous that two thousand years later, those who ruled in Guatemala decided it needed to be silenced.

There are a lot of odd and surprising stories along the highway of our God which is cleared during the season of Advent.  There is the crazy character we know as John the Baptist – the one who lives in the desert, dresses in camel hair, wears a big leather belt, and eats locusts and wild honey.  John the Baptist, who scares the living daylights out of people and gets them to repent of their sins and beg to be baptized in the cleansing waters of the Jordan River.  There’s Zechariah – the old priest – who cannot believe the promises of God and is given 9 months of imposed silence as an opportunity to think it over.  There’s Joseph, a man who stands by his beloved when she turns up mysteriously pregnant, and trusts the murmurings of God in his dreams.  And then there’s Mary, a teenager, really, who opens her mouth and sings a song that will make dictators shudder with fear.

It is a great curiosity that our modern day celebrations of Christmas can stray so far away from the biblical narrative.  The only thing we seem to have retained from the story is the gifts which are brought to celebrate the Savior’s birth.  But what of the story of a child who brings a new world order?  What of the child who announces that the world as we know it will be overturned?  What about the promise that the proud will be brought low and the poor will be raised up; and that those who are great and mighty in their own imaginations will be scattered to the winds of obscurity?  It’s a message that Hallmark has yet to capture.

Here, near the end of the season of Advent, Mary sings a song that tells us to prepare ourselves for a world in which the things we have come to know and expect will be overturned, and a new reality will come into view.

It’s a challenging message in a world where the leaders of nations can barely sit together in order to discuss matters such as global warming and the survival of the planet.

It’s hard to believe in a world where millions of stomachs are empty and so many of us in this country go to bed uncomfortably full.

What will the world look like when God is done turning it over?  What does the world look like when it is shaped by the hand of God? 

The last two Sundays after worship, Pleasantville has been holding its yearly alternative market.  The “Alternative Market” is held in our Lentz Fellowship Hall and when we support the Market all the proceeds go to support people in need beyond the walls of Pleasantville Church.  At the Alternative Market you can buy an animal from Heifer Project International in honor of a loved one.  You can place socks and underwear under the Christmas tree for the shelter guests of Old First Reformed Church.  You can put together a sumptuous feast for the residents of one of the apartments at the Doylestown Shelter. 

The Alternative Market doesn’t change the reality that this is a world in which many things need to be overturned – things like domestic violence, child hunger, poverty and unemployment.  But when we join together to break away from the patterns of consumption that this world promotes in order to support brothers and sisters in need all around the world, then we are beginning to see a world which is turning over.

Mary sings, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God, my Savior.”  There is so much in this season which seems to magnify the glory of the Lord.  The snow is magical, despite its inconveniences.  The opportunity to spend time with treasured family and friends can make the ordinary days of our lives shimmer with holy brilliance.  And soon we will join in worship on that holy night, to welcome the birth of our savior – praying always that he be born anew in our hearts.

Mary’s song reminds us that One who comes in the name of the Lord will come into our world with the intent of overturning all that is wrong, unjust, and sinful in this world.  May we continue to prepare our hearts for the kind of overturning that will be the beginning of our salvation.

May it be so.  Amen.