Sunday, December 23, 2007

Luke 1:39-56 - Mary: Woman of Justice

As the choir sang about this morning, the shepherds witnessed something miraculous and marvelous that Christmas night. Angels appeared before them and glory shone round about them. And the angels sang praise to God and offered peace on earth. Every Christmas people dream of peace on earth. And every Christmas we realize that we have a long way to go to get there.

Peace between nations is far off. Back in the eighties we saw the end of the cold war and we thought this might be a coming peace. But since that time we have not known peace at all. And once again, this year, we have troops on the other side of the world, celebrating Christmas away from their families and their loved ones. I am sure that they are praying for peace on earth this Christmas, just as they are trying to bring peace to Iraq themselves.

Peace between individuals is far away also. We have broken homes and broken relationships all around us. People are hurting and suffering alone and the pretend at peace, but it is really not there.

But the angels talked of peace on earth and I wish it were something that we could find in this world. I look around and it seems forever distant. And yet it was sung of that Christmas night. Jesus was meant to bring peace to this world, even though we don’t see it. To understand the peace that Jesus brings we need to look a little earlier in the Christmas story than the nativity or the shepherds. We need to look back at Mary’s song and the justice that she knew God would bring.

I. Banned

The song of Mary which we read this morning is often known as the Magnificat. This is the first word in the song in Latin. The Magnificat plays an important role in more liturgical churches, particularly the Catholic Church. It gets sung regularly in worship as it is the first real song of praise to God that we find in the New Testament. And it is a song written by Mary. Obviously the Catholics are going to like it. And yet, I was shocked to find out that in the 80s, in Guatemala, a country that at the time was between 75 and 80 percent Catholic, it was illegal to speak the Magnificat in public. That’s right; the government of Guatemala found gentle Mary’s song so subversive, so dangerous, that they banned it.

Now I must admit, I expect this kind of thing in certain governments. Governments that are autocratic, governments that try to reduce freedom will often try to take people’s religion from them. In some Islamic countries in the Middle East and in Africa it is illegal to convert from Islam to Christianity. Communist Russia outlawed Christianity in all forms and Communist China has a husk of Christianity allowed so they can say that they support religious freedom though it is clear through their practices that they don’t. The government of Guatemala was in the midst of revolution in the 80s and has never been a stable government. So maybe it makes sense for them to try to take people’s faith away from them.

But it wasn’t people’s faith that the Guatemalan government was trying to steal from them. They were allowed to remain whatever religion they wanted. They didn’t have their Bibles removed from them, they weren’t told they couldn’t worship, they were just not allowed to recite the Magnificat, the song of Mary in public.

The government of Guatemala found something dangerous in Mary’s song. They found something powerful in the way that the people were responding to it. And they were scared of it.

As we continue our Advent look at Mary, Jesus’ mother, we will look at her song this morning. What do we find revolutionary in it? Does it have the power in it that the government of Guatemala was so scared of? Or is it just a nice song written by a young woman who was praising God for what he was going to do?

II. Mary’s World

Mary’s song and the danger seen in it by the wicked and the rulers becomes clear, once again, when we look at it in the context of Mary’s world. Mary and her people lived lives of subjugation. They were ruled over by people whom they didn’t want ruling over them. Rome controlled the world. It is because of Roman rule that Mary ended up not being able to give birth at home, but rather in Bethlehem, because of a census. Because of the rule of the Romans, Mary and all of her people felt helpless and week. They could not live the way they wanted. Their worship had to conform to the expectations of their Roman masters. And Rome had placed King Herod in charge of the area that Mary lived in. King Herod was not a kind ruler. When Mary sings that the Lord “has brought down rulers from their thrones”, anybody hearing this would know what rulers she was talking about. She was talking about Herod the great. And here was a teen aged, unwed pregnant girl singing a song that proclaimed the end of Herod’s reign. This takes courage. It takes willpower. It takes a great faith in the power of God to bring about his will.

Think forward a little bit in the Christmas story for a moment, if you will. The Magi come from the east, to King Herod the Great, and tell him of a great king that they see coming to Israel. What is Herod’s response? It is to murder children around the country, to protect his throne. This is the kind of ruler that Herod is. He will do anything to retain his power. He even killed his own family to make sure that he would remain king. He was ruthless and hard. And Mary, a young girl, stands up to him, through song, as she acknowledges what it is that she believes God is going to do through her son, Jesus. Scot McKnight puts it so well in his book, The Real Mary:

If you were a first-century poor woman, if you were hungry and oppressed, if you had experienced the injustices of Herod the Great, and if you stood up in Jerusalem and announced that the proud and rulers and the rich would be yanked down from their high places, it is likely you’d be tried for treason and put to death for disturbing the “peace.”

If you were Herod or one of his twelve wives or one of his many sons with hopes of the throne, you would have heard these words as an act of protest, if not revolution or rebellion. Even if you, as Mary, were to argue with your accusers that these are words straight out of the Bible, you’d be accused of subversion, of wanting your son to become the next king. You just might end up crucified. (McKnight, 23)

But Mary’s subversion is not an earthly subversion. Her treasonous words weren’t to round up people to revolt. No, Mary saw God as the worker in these things. She saw God as someone who was on the side of justice. She saw God as the one acting to bring about this reversal in fortunes. She sees God as the one who will give food to the hungry, and she understands this because she herself is hungry. She sees God as the one who will put an end to the current problems in the world, the current injustices, the current pains.

But Mary didn’t understand all the details. We need to realize that, along with most of God’s people, she didn’t get what God was doing initially. Mary didn’t know at the beginning that God was sending his Son to die on a cross. She believed that her son would probably be an earthly king. She believed that God was going to put an end to the reign of Herod and begin the reign of Jesus. She didn’t know how God was going to change the world through her son, she just knew that he was. And she believed that this offered hope to the weak and the downtrodden and the poor. She believed this because God was using a poor young girl to bring about his coming kingdom. She believed this because she truly believed in the justice of God.

III. God of Justice

You see, both sides of the political stream get this wrong. The conservatives believe that it is the individual’s role to give food to themselves. They believe that everybody has the opportunity to make it and those who have failed have only themselves to blame. They’re wrong. It is not the individual who is responsible for taking care of themselves, it is God who reaches down to care for them.

The liberal believes that it is the government’s role to help the hungry. Actually, they’re closer to the truth in this area than the conservative. For, again and again, throughout the Old Testament prophets and even here, God is promising to come in and make right the things that the government has failed at. But, though they may be more on the right path, here, they still have it wrong. For, once again, Mary says it so clearly, it is God who will bring justice to this world. God is the only one capable of it. God is the only one who will not let self-interest get in the way of justice.

Mary was a woman of justice in that she pointed the way to a God of justice. Mary believed that God was going to do great things through her coming son. She had hope that God would bring an end to the suffering of her people. She had faith that God would stay true to his promises. And so she sang a song and prayed a prayer praising God for something that he had not yet done.

But here we are, two thousand years later, and the poor are still poor and there are still hopeless people out there. Was Mary’s song of justice just a fleeting hope, or is it more than that? Well, I believe that the fact that the song was banned in the 80s in Guatemala shows that it is more than just a fleeting hope.

There is power in Mary’s song. It is the power of speaking something into existence. Justice is still needed in places around this world. Sometimes, justice is needed even here in America. And we believe that Jesus can bring it. But how?

Are we willing to wait for Jesus’ second coming? Are we willing to accept that justice will never be on this earth until he comes again? I’m not willing to admit that. Oh, deep down I know that in a way it is true. As long as sin is in this world we will never know justice completely. The powerful will always lord it over the weak. Those who have will always take advantage of those who don’t.

But we do believe that Jesus came to this earth 2000 years ago and his coming made a difference. We believe that he came to save us from our sins and give us eternal life, but he must have come to save us from the earthly results of sin as well. I think he did. And he did in this way. We are told in scripture that we are the body of Christ. As the church, God is using us to work his will in this world. We are God’s hands, feet and voice. God is still a God of justice, but he has a new way to bring it. We, like Mary in her day, are called as the people of God to bring justice to the world around us. It’s an overwhelming job that God’s given us. But he’s given us the resources to do. We are told that he has given us his Holy Spirit to empower us and to move us forward in our faith.

People talk a lot at Christmastime about peace on earth. It’s in a lot of songs and on many banners. It’s something that is worthwhile to focus on each and every Christmas. It was proclaimed by the angels on that first Christmas night. How will we ever find peace on earth? When justice reigns. So, this Christmas, take a cue from Mary and do what you can to bring justice to your world; in song, in word, or in deed. God is ready to work justice through you as he did through Mary.

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