Sermon on Luke 1:39-55
Pastor Jennifer Garcia
Our Advent theme this year is A Weary World Rejoices, a line from the beloved Christmas carol “O Holy Night,” because there’s a lot of weariness in the world, even after almost a full year of focusing on Sabbath in this congregation.
Each week, we’ve been pondering one of God’s promises.This final week of Advent is the promise of justice.
It might be surprising that Mary was singing for joy, since the unexpected pregnancy upended her life, threatened her betrothal, and opened her to scorn and shame and potentially even violence.
But it’s not surprising that she sang of her deepest wish: God’s justice.
She was living on land occupied by the Roman Empire. They were known for pax Romana, or Roman peace, but it wasn’t true peace. It was enforced by violence.
Taxes were heavy, not to mention the tax collectors who took their unfair share on top of the going rate, and most of the population was living at subsistence level or below.
Life was really hard for almost everyone.
And this was the time that God chose to become human, to enter into our human messiness and struggle.
In the divine messenger’s visit, Mary understood what God was promising. This was not just an unexpected child; this was the child, the Messiah. This child would sit on “the throne of his ancestor David.He [would] reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there [would] be no end.”[1]
This was no ordinary child. This child was “the Son of the Most High.” This child would fulfill God’s promise to David—the promise that seemed to have been broken when God’s people were taken into exile, but which Jeremiah had prophesied would be fulfilled one day.
Mary, along with all her people, had been waiting for that prophecy to come true—for the Messiahto come and usher in the Day of the Lord, when God’s justice and mercy would be complete.
God didn’t wait for a time of peace, prosperity, comfort, and ease to become one of us. And when God chose to be born,it was not to an earthly king or warlord amid riches and power, but to a poor girlin an inconsequential town in occupied land in a time of violence and fear. God showed Godself in the margins of society.
God entered fully into the human experience when things were not as they should be.
And things are never as they should be, are they?
Many of our problems are different than in the first century. I wouldn’t want to trade modern medicine or indoor plumbing for first century living.
But today there’s still poverty. There’s still injustice.
For all our modern conveniences, there are still
1. children who go to bed hungry,
2. elders who are lonely and isolated,
3. innocent people on death row,
4. families torn apart by war and violence,
5. dozens upon dozens of people who are in need of our pantry and hot meal each week,
6. and around 400 unhoused people who died in Orange County just this year.
Our world is not as it should be. God’s justice and mercy still seem far away all too often.
That’s why we still observe Advent. We’re still waiting.
It’s why we need Mary’s song, which has become known as the Magnificat, because it magnifies God’s glory. So many people have been inspired by it and have put it to their own music—we’re singing some versions today.
We need the song of a brave, hopeful girl living in poverty who trusted in God’s promises and experienced God’s faithfulness.
She sang of the justice that was coming, the world God was creating despite the violence and evil that surrounded her.
She knew that God fulfills God’s promises.
God was entering into the human experience when things were not as they should be.
God wasn’t raining fire or smiting wicked people with lightning.
God was entering our world peacefully—so unlike our world where we try to dominate each other.
Mary sang of the truth that God was restoring the world and compassionately bringing justice.
This Advent, we too are remembering God’s promises of truth, compassion, restoration, and justice.
Advent ushers in a gentle revolution of justice through God’s love and mercy.
We sing Mary’s words today, remembering the way God turns the world upside down to bring justice and mercy into our world.
We don’t see the fullness of God’s Reign yet, but we will.
We look to Mary’s Child to see God in the flesh.
And while we wait for his return, we live in his example—a life lived in the pattern of Mary’s song—perhaps a lullaby she sang him at night.
God’s gentle revolution of justice doesn’t mean that we sit idly by, waiting passively for Jesus’ return and ignoring the need of our neighbors today—by no means!
Even as we try to love God and our neighbors every day, God is teaching us to live in ways that surprise and confuse the world around us.
1. We live in service, not vying for power.
2. We love people instead of using them.
3. We feed people body and soul
4. We care for creation instead of carelessly using up its resources.
5. We pay attention to whose voices aren’t being listened to.
6. We remember that in Sabbath God invites us to rest instead of hustling every minute.
God brings about a gentle revolution of justice in us as we strive for human dignity, the preservation of creation, and for every person to feel loved and connected as the image of God that they are.
God is bringing about that gentle revolution of justice, and it will be complete someday, and in the meantime, God empowers us to work for that justice in the here and now, inspired by Mary’s song and Jesus’ example.
Receive this “Blessing for the Coming of Justice” from Kate Bowler:
Blessed are we,
starting to see the height and depth and breadth
of God’s love that includes all of us,
even the not-so-perfect.
Blessed are you, Mary, for saying yes to the big risk
of being God’s dwelling place.
Blessed are we, like Mary,
starting to sing our own songs of joy
at the thought that maybe this
Advent we too can start to trust it,
to risk it, to live it out,
the love that decides to love first,
before it is earned or deserved,
the love that your incarnation
embodies to the full.
Blessed are we,
breathing in the truth that we belong,
and so does everybody else.
[1] Luke 1:32-33