Readings (click here for full text of the readings):
   Micah 5:2-4; Psalm 80; Hebrews 10:5-10; Luke 1:39-56

Not so fast – we’re almost there.  Three nights from now we’ll be back here, getting a little head-start on Christmas, on the coming of the Christ-child into the world. And between now and then we have decorations to put up, a few more cards to send out, and last minute shopping to do. For the theological procrastinators among us, we still have a few days to prepare for the real meaning of Christmas, when we finally get a second to catch our breath, and when everything else has been taken care of.

But even if we don’t get that spare moment, we still basically know what’s coming, right?  It’s not like any of this is new to us. We’ve gone through this many times before, and while this year will be a little bit different because the kids are older and the gifts are more expensive and the snow is deeper – it’s all pretty much the same, right?

That way of looking at things couldn’t be more wrong.  If you have any doubt about it, you have only to look to Scripture. A few weeks ago we started Year C, which is the last in the three-year cycle of our lectionary.  This year we’ll be working our way through the book of Luke.  Big deal, you might say.  Four gospels, same basic story of Jesus.  That may be true, but especially when it comes to the beginning of Jesus’s life, the gospels are very, very different.

First of all, Mark and John don’t even deal with Jesus’s birth.  They hit the ground running with John the Baptist prophesying about the coming of the messiah.  Only Matthew and Luke describe the birth of Jesus, and they do so in very different ways.  Let’s begin with Matthew, who starts off by listing the ancestors of Jesus going all the way back to Abraham.  “Abraham was the father of Isaac,” Matthew writes, “and Isaac the father of Jacob,” and on and on through forty-two generations. In fact, Matthew uses the word “father” 39 times in the first chapter alone.

He then moves on to the story of Mary and Joseph, only Mary doesn’t get much play. After introducing Mary as the woman engaged to Joseph, Matthew basically forgets about her.  In fact, he only mentions Mary eight times in his entire gospel, and three of those come after Jesus has been crucified.  For Matthew, Mary is pretty much defined in terms of Joseph, and so the angel of the Lord appears to Joseph in a dream, predicting the birth of Jesus. 

Matthew doesn’t describe the actual birth of Jesus, instead moving right from Joseph’s dream to the visit of the wise men. After they pay homage to the baby Jesus, the angel again comes to Joseph in a dream, telling him to flee, because evil King Herod was trying to kill all the baby boys in the land.

You might be detecting a trend here. 42 generations of fathers and sons.  The angel coming to Joseph twice, but saying not a word to Mary. Three wise men.  One evil king who was looking for all the boy babies.  No description of the actual birth. Barely a mention of Mary.

Matthew is a man’s book. It’s all business. First, prove that Jesus is a legitimate descendant of Abraham. Then have God talk to the man of the house and tell him not to get all proud and haughty about his fiancée having a baby – that was God’s doing.  Gloss over the birth itself – not a big deal, women’s work.  Then after the wise men do their gold, frankincense, and myrrh thing, have the angel tell Joseph where to take his wife and son.  And then send Joseph off in the middle of the night to Egypt, a foreign land, and you don’t have to worry about him getting lost, because God was leading him to safety, which was just as well, because Joseph was a guy, after all, and he wasn’t about to ask for directions. 

That’s Matthew.  What about Luke, the other story of Jesus’s birth?  It starts off in much the same way, with King Herod ruling the nation with an iron fist, and the angel of the Lord coming to a man to tell him that his wife was going to have a baby, even though that seemed impossible. This time it wasn’t because she was a virgin, but rather because she was old, and thought to be barren.  But Zechariah, like Joseph, listens to the angel, and believes that Elizabeth would bear a son, whose name would be John. And so it was.

But then Luke takes us in a very different direction.  The angel foretells the birth of Jesus, just like in Matthew, but this time the angel appears to Mary, not Joseph.  And instead of Joseph’s “just the facts” dream in the book of Matthew, this time the angel gives a real proclamation that has as much to do with Mary as it does with Jesus. “Mary, you have found favor with God,” the angel says.  “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.” And Mary hears the angel, and obeys. “Here am I,” she says, “the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”

And what does Mary do then?  She heads straight to Elizabeth’s house to share the good news. And so the two cousins – one young and a virgin, the other old and childless – spend three months together, rejoicing at the children growing inside of them, who will preach repentance and bring salvation to the world.  And along the way they probably share home remedies for morning sickness, and wait on each other when they get so tired they just can’t work any longer, and wonder aloud if their bodies are too young, or too old, to do what’s asked of them.  And probably, too, at the end of the day, they watch the sun set over the hills of Judea, and count themselves another day closer to the fulfillment of the angel’s promise, and to the longing of their hearts.

And what was Joseph doing all this time? Luke doesn’t say a word about it.  In fact, Luke only mentions Joseph five times in his entire gospel. But I have some suspicion of what he was doing, seeing as I went through something similar last year as we were expecting Catie’s arrival.  Joseph was probably engaging in some major problem-solving, just like I was when I learned Pam was pregnant.  There she was, with tears in her eyes, wanting to share a tender hug, and I was already looking up the number of an obstetrician friend of mine in the phone book. And when the time of the birth came, Joseph was probably freaking out, if he was anything like me. Because I can’t be the only expectant father who had to be calmed down by his wife who happened to be in active labor at the time, even as she calmly baked our daughter-to-be a birthday cake while I fretted over whether we’d make it to the hospital in time.

It makes sense that Mary would want to spend three months with Elizabeth – that way she’d have a kindred spirit to live with, and wouldn’t have to bother Joseph with the fact that the whole birth-of-the-Messiah thing had a lot more to do with her than with him, at least according to Luke. And Luke keeps up that positive emphasis on women throughout his gospel, as we’ll see this year, such as by pairing most male characters with female counterparts. But at the center of it all, for Luke, is Mary. From her lips we hear the Magnificat, the Song of Mary, where she speaks of God showing favor to her, a lowly servant. She speaks of the historic faithfulness of God – of how He scattered the proud, brought down the powerful, and lifted up the lowly. He filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.

But Mary is not only speaking of the past – she’s also speaking of the present.  She’s talking about herself. She is the lowly servant whom God has lifted up. She is the hungry person whom God has filled, and to whom He shows mercy. And the rich and powerful – like King Herod and his cronies – they will be scattered and brought down by the coming of the lowly Messiah, born in poverty, in a barn, to two scared kids who had only the promises of the angel to hold onto.

And Mary is also speaking of the future, because God keeps his promises – always has, always will.  Just as God helped the nation of Israel, just as God lifts up the lowly virgin girl, so God will reach out to all who fear Him. He will clothe the naked, and feed the hungry, visit the imprisoned, house the homeless.  And He asks us to do the same.  More than asks – He demands that we do. 

What we have to take away from the Song of Mary is not only an eager anticipation for the next chapter in the story – the birth of Jesus – but also the inspiration to live out those words in our world. Who are the lowly of our world, whom God is calling to proclaim the Gospel to the deaf and powerful?  Who will God bring down from their thrones? Certainly we might think of Saddam Hussein, who has gone from cruel dictator to tragic prisoner. But what other people in our world – who aren’t as clearly evil – still use their power and wealth to keep things the way they are; to keep the lowly subdued while they live in comfort? 

And how are we to live out God’s calling in this world?  Should we take a traditionally masculine approach to problem-solving, like Joseph did?  Do we become offended when we sense that our honor has been questioned?  Do we overlook the miraculous and messy birth of a child, in favor of gifts from wise men and eluding an evil king? Are we more concerned with the bottom line of the angel’s message, or with the beautiful, liberating words, worthy to be repeated over and over again?

Or should we follow Mary, and take a traditionally feminine approach?  Are we willing to trust God, even when what He promises makes absolutely no sense? Do we dare spend months rejoicing, when all we have to count on is the word of God?  Are we humble enough to take no offense when God calls us lowly, but rather cast ourselves entirely on God’s mercy, knowing in the deepest recesses of our hearts that God will never leave us?

If we limit the Song of Mary to a nice Christmas sentiment, then we commit the same sin that it condemns, and we risk being sent away empty. That was certainly the experience of a friend of mine from seminary, who in our first year went home to her very traditional family in North Carolina for Christmas vacation. One night they asked her to read a favorite passage from the Bible, and she read the Song of Mary.  “He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly,” she read.  “He has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.”

Then her grandfather exploded. “That’s not in the Bible!” he yelled.  “Nothing like that would be in the Bible!”

What he meant was that he didn’t want to consider the possibility that those words might be in the Bible. He chose not to hear them, and certainly not to live them. He wanted the Bible to be as polite and unthreatening and heartwarming as a cozy little fire in the fireplace on Christmas Eve.

But the gospel of Jesus Christ is no such thing. It’s an inferno that rages out of control, threatening to destroy anything that stands in its path. It promises to turn the world upside down – the first will be last, the rich will be poor. But to those who are last in this world, those who hunger and thirst and scrape by from day to day; those who fall before the feet of God and say what Mary said – “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word” – to them God will say, Welcome. Blessed are you. You have found favor with me.  Let me fill you, and lift you up.  For I will never leave you, and you will never want for anything again.

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