1
A Sermon for DaySpring
by Eric Howell
“The Fourth Sunday of Advent”
Luke 1:39-55
December 20, 2015
There have been a lot of verbs in the grammar of Advent until this moment. Those
verbs have imperative: all the actions we are supposed to take. I’m going to go out
on a limb here and guess that the verbs of holy Advent are not the only verbs in your
life these days.
How’s your ‘to-do’ list coming? Is it long? Does it seem like it never gets done or
that you never get to the last thing on the list and cross it off? I suppose there’s
something good about that. We’re often glad to have something to do though it can
get overwhelming. Want to just tear that list up?
Remember the sisters in the gospels, Mary and Martha? This is another Mary, not
Mary, the mother of Jesus. We’ll come to her in a moment. This other Mary and her
sister, Martha, were split on the old to-do or not-to-do dilemma. Martha scurries
around making preparations, playing hostess, and serving, while sister Mary sits at
Jesus’ feet, listening to him teach. They snap at each other a little over this. Which is
the better way: action or contemplation, service or meditation, what you do for
Jesus or accepting what he does for you, to-do or not-to-do?
Jesus says Mary’s way is the better way, but Martha’s way has some virtue as well.
Ask an unemployed person if they’d like a to-do list for a job, and they’d take it.
Ask empty nesters if they wouldn’t mind a little more to do every once in a while
with the kids again (maybe just for a few hours).
And yet, this to-do business can swallow your life. Sun-up to way past sundown and
you never cross the last thing off the list. There must be hundreds of apps available
to help you manage your to-do list. But when do you ever get far enough down the
to-do list to have time to pick an app to organize the to-do list?
And then the calendar turns to December and this time of year ramps up the to-dos
for many people. We’re heard some poetry by Mary about God’s work. It’s
beautiful, elegant poetry. Our poetry sounds more like a clanging symbol or
throbbing headache: buy this, shop for that, order this, now you have to pay for
express shipping; every year you wait too long. Shop for these groceries, find that
recipe, invite them, clean that bedroom, wash those sheets. Make them feel like they
belong. Gas up the car. Drive to the airport. Find that show time. Buy the tickets.
Stand in line. Get the popcorn. With you, young one, the force is strong. Donate to
this. Get your check in before the end of the month. Study for this exam. Write this
paper. Grade this soon before time is gone. Worry if your team will have any
2
quarterbacks left to finish the bowl game. Wrap the presents. Wrap the pipes.
Stake the lights out in the lawn.
And then there are plenty of people: find more work, make a dollar, make it through
another day, pay the bill so the lights stay on.
Life itself makes you the subject of so many verbs. The holiday season ramps up the
to-do’s. And the Christian Advent provides no shelter. Have you noticed that so far?
Every Sunday in Advent until today . . . all these must-dos. Really important ones.
Transcendent imperatives.
It’s harder to cross these off a list: Be alert for the day of his coming. Prepare the
way of the Lord. Bear fruit worthy of repentance.
Those are imperatives we’ve been given so far in Advent. On top of everything else,
everything in the Christian year so far has been: Do this -- keep alert! Do this -prepare the way of the Lord. Do this -- bear fruit worthy of repentance. The action
is yours. The work is yours.
If all we had about Christianity was what we’ve had so far, the idea that we would
have is that Christianity is all about our work, what we do and must do and what is
yet to do in just the way that life has already trained us to make a list and cross it off
until maybe someday we’ll do enough.
Until now. Until today when we come this close to Christmas.
Today we hear mother Mary’s song about God’s marvelous and merciful acts. In this
song, there are no more imperatives. There are no assignments. There is no work
for you to do anywhere in this passage. You are not the subject of any verbs.
There is plenty of action. It all belongs to God. All the work is God’s; all the verbs
are God’s. And now the picture of Christianity begins to become fuller. We see that
our work is always in preparation for or in response to God’s acts. The very heart of
our faith is God who acts on behalf of those who need his mercy and justice. Always
God’s work is on behalf of those who need mercy.
These are dramatic acts of grace and power that underscore the decisive work of
God who is dramatically and unmistakably in control:
He has shown strength with his arm.
He has scattered the proud.
He has brought down the mighty.
He has exalted those of humble estate.
He has filled the hungry.
He has sent the rich empty away.
He has helped his servant Israel.
3
As the advent of God’s peaceful, just kingdom is realized, this is Mary’s song, and
Mary knows well that what is happening is God’s work, God’s word, God’s intent and
action. “Let it be to me according to your will.” That was her first response to God’s
initiative and now her instinct is that everything is God’s work and word and will.
All of it . . .all that is happening in me.
You notice it is past tense verbs, which is a strange way of talking if what she’s
talking about is what’s going to happen with her son’s coming. Greek scholars tell
us it’s not past tense here, but the aorist tense. And when we look at them like
“what’s an aorist,” they stumble over their words because there’s nothing quite like
it in English. So, we stare blankly at them and say . . .so you mean past tense? And
they then say grudgingly, “Ya, pretty much. But there is this one thing. It’s not past
tense like it happened once. It’s more like past tense in remembering how
something has been before and could be again.”
There may be more precise ways to say it than this, but in light of who’s saying this
prayer and when she’s saying it: the aorist is past tense pregnant with possibility.
Mary is an historian, telling in a few lines all that God has done to rescue Israel in the
past over and over by showing strength, scattering the proud, bringing down the
mighty, rescuing them from slavery, exile, tyranny. When Israel suffered at the
hands of her oppressors, God rescued them. The songs of Moses and Miriam,
Deborah and David and Hannah all tell the stories.
And when Israel herself became the oppressor of the poor and powerless, God
condemned them. The prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah, Amos and Hosea and Micah
tell those stories. God has acted in the past. That’s history. And now God is acting
again. That’s the pregnant possibility Mary knew was growing within her.
Surely Mary didn’t know everything about what would happen in and through her
son. She knew enough to know that this was no small thing happening. His coming
would change far more than one little family.
God’s not past tense. And God’s not done yet.
When we sing today, our songs have the notes. God is not past tense. And God’s not
done yet. The advent of his coming is the remembrance of what has been and the
belief that God is still working, still active, still redeeming, and still God of all.
That brings us back to what prompted this song in the first place. It was the two
blessings given her by Mary’s cousin Elizabeth. Wise, elder Elizabeth is married to a
priest and now takes the priestly role herself, blessing her cousin Mary, blessing
Mary’s son, and blessing all of us who remember and retell the stories and have faith
ourselves. “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.”
4
Elizabeth’s first blessing was only for Mary, and for who she was and who her son
was singularly and uniquely. We join Elizabeth in blessing Mary.
Then we join Mary in being blessed by Elizabeth. Elizabeth’s second blessing is for
Mary and for all of us. “Blessed is she who believed there would be a fulfillment of
what was spoken to her by the Lord.” With this second blessing, priest-like
Elizabeth spreads out her hands to the whole world, “Blessed are those who believe
there will be a fulfillment of what is spoken by the Lord.”
Being so blessed, we live in a world now still in the afterglow of the son’s coming.
Mary’s song echoes through the ages, though all is not resolved. And we wonder, ok
now, where is God’s strength when we need him. When are the proud scattered;
when are the mighty brought down from their thrones; when are the humble
exalted; when are the hungry filled; when are the rich sent away? And which side of
that will I be on when it happens?
Yet still, the words ring down, blessed are you who believe there will be a
fulfillment of what the Lord has spoken.
We’re off the list of to-dos now. We’re on the altar of trust and hope and faith. As
we come closer to his coming, trust in him and hope in him will draw us into the life
he lives and the world he is divinely bringing into being around us, in spite of us
sometimes, through us we pray.
In all we do, in the work of our hands and minds, may we decrease and he increase
that we may do our Lord’s will in all we do and have the grace of trusting in him in
all we do and all that lies far beyond our doing.
Copyright by Eric Howell, 2015