Sermon for December 15, 2019 - The Rev'd Jeffrey W. Mello

Isaiah 35:1-10; Luke 1:47-55; James 5:7-10; Matthew 11:2-11

There is a line in a favorite hymn of mine that causes me to stumble a bit. The hymn “The Angel Gabriel from heaven came” tells the story of Mary’s discovery that she is to be God-bearer for the world.

But there’s that line “Then gentle Mary meekly bowed her head.’”  The problem? Mary has never struck me as anything meek or mild.  Even calling her a lady, as in “most highly favored lady” seemed, to me, to be the writing of men, taking this most radical and powerful of biblical characters and domesticating her, making her palatable and non-threatening -- to serve an example to the women in their own lives who they wished to be more palatable and non-threatening.

But, as we know, well-behaved women seldom make history.

And so I did some research, and what I found is what I often find when I take the time to unpack my knee-jerk reactions.

“Meek and mild” has nothing to do with being weak.  It is, in fact a showing of great power. Meek and mild means that she wasn’t reactionary.  She didn’t yell back at the Gabriel, and who would have blamed her if she did. The angel just gave her the news that her hard and marginalized life was about to become harder and more marginalized.

Instead, she took a deep breath.  She sat with God. She considered the task in front of her and then she agreed to partner with God in God’s work in the world, despite what it would mean for her life.  If you wonder, “Mary did you know?” the answer is, yes, she did.

She knew.  And she said yes anyway.  

She didn’t bargain or barter, she didn’t pass on the offer or come up with a million excuses why she was the wrong candidate, like so many of the male prophets do.  

Turns out, Mary’s meekness and mildness is an example for all of us and perhaps most especially for the men among us who are often quick to speak before thinking, those who listen only to respond, not to actually hear what the person is saying. Meek and mild is about strength and inner-control.

But Mary’s quiet demeanor doesn’t last very long.  In Luke, where the story of the Annunciation is told, Mary is visited by her cousin Elizabeth.  

I like to imagine the door shutting, Elizabeth now inside.  Mary closes the curtains and makes sure Joseph is out of earshot.  They share a knowing look that breaks into a grin and then great laughter.

And then, in the safety of Elizabeth’s company, Mary lets it rip.  And out of her mouth pours the Magnificat; The Song of Mary we heard this morning.

God has shown God’s strength in choosing her. God has scattered the proud in God’s choice of this poor peasant girl.  In choosing Mary, God has cast down the mighty, lifted up the lowly, filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away.  God has come to the help of God’s people in Mary, because God has remembered God’s promise of Mercy.

God has remembered.  And so has Mary.

Meek, mild, powerful and revolutionary.

This scene would make no sense to those who passed by on the streets outside Mary’s house.

How could she possibly see this as God’s triumph?  How could she see her pregnancy as a bringing about of God’s dream for the world and not a further punishment that would bring her grief and suffering.  

It would certainly put her further outside her community and make her the source of whispers in the public square and in the church for centuries.

How could she react the way she did? Because she knew.  Because her trust in God was solid. And it would be her faith in God that she would pass on to her son.  

Later in Luke, when Jesus is called to read from the scroll, he chooses to read the passage from Isaiah that announces,

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,

    because he has anointed me

    to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners

    and recovery of sight for the blind,

to set the oppressed free,

    to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’” (Luke 4: 17-21)NRSV

Sound familiar?

Like mother, like son.

For six weeks now, as we have been observing our extended Advent, we have, each week, sung two verses from the Canticle of the Turning, a setting of the Magnificat.

And though we have tried, as a church and a culture, to silence women’s voices, to edit them to make them less threatening, to doubt them to make them less trustworthy, or to shame them to make them less of God, Mary’s song tells the truth.  

Mary’s song puts the patriarchy on notice.  Mary’s song is the shot across the bow that the way things have always been are not the way they will be when God’s work is done on this earth.

Her reaction might not make any more sense to our modern ears than they did to her neighbors. Her response might seem foolish or naive.  

Dorothy Day once said, “you should live in a way that wouldn't make sense unless God exists.”

Perhaps she got that idea from Mary. 

None of what Mary proclaims makes any sense in her context, or in ours, unless God exists.  In which case, they make perfect sense.

I want you to imagine a young woman, no older than 15, who chooses to believe enough in the hope she has for the world that she makes a choice to do something that no one truly understands.

She has been ostracized and told by the world around her that, because of who she is, she would have nothing to offer the world.

But she turns all that upside down, and uses the very things that she is told are her greatest liabilities to do the turning.

Her courage frightens the powers that be, and those powers come after her, because that’s what challenging the status quo will get you.

I’m talking, of course, about Greta Thunberg.

Greta was just 15 years old when she started a school strike for climate change all by herself.

The image is quite something.  Just Greta and her sign.

So here she is.  A girl of 15 with Asperger’s Syndrome living in Sweden who believes enough in the capacity of the world to turn itself upside down to save the climate that she behaves in a way that makes no sense, unless you believe in the possibility of change as much as she does.

And as for her Asperger’s?  Her direct speech, ability to focus and courage to move forward are gifts she claims because of it.  

Thunberg writes, “I have Aspergers and that means I’m sometimes a bit different from the norm. And - given the right circumstances- being different is a superpower.”

It is, she says, her “superpower.”

And what about her age?  She’s now just 16 years old, has 3.6 million followers on twitter and was just named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year.

So, we can no longer believe that age has anything to do with the ability to get things done, to turn the world.

What some would call her liabilities are, in fact, her greatest strengths, because she believes she can make a difference in this world.

Mary’s “liabilities” were her superpowers, too.  

For who else could have believed in God’s promises of mercy more than someone whose life was completely dependent on them?

What,I wonder, do you think are your greatest liabilities?  Are you too young or too old? Are you differently abled? Do you learn differently?  Do you live with a mental health diagnosis?

Are you just the kind of person the world would walk by if you were sitting outside by yourself with a sign proclaiming God’s longing for the world?

Are you just the kind of person the world would write off as undesirable, unhireable, unimportant? 

Maybe, if we live our lives in ways that don’t make sense unless God exists, our courageous act of living might just bring God’s existence into view.

Maybe the very thing that we worry stands in our way, that makes us unfit, God knows is our greatest superpower.

The first hymn of Christmas are words spoken by a poor, unmarried pregnant middle-eastern teenager.  And they are revolutionary. They are the words of the oppressed set free. They announce that, through her, the world is about to turn.  And they are the truth of what it is we proclaim when we say “Emmanuel, God with us.”

What hymn will you sing to tell the world the very same thing? 

Let us live our lives in ways that only make sense if God exists.  

It is time to be meek.  It is time to be mild. And it is time to turn the world upside down.

AMEN.

© 2019  The Reverend Jeffrey W. Mello