Untitled Sermon
Magnificat
is improbable. Yet, in the manner of the angel Gabriel, persons whose authority or neediness seems too poignant to decline often recruit individuals for perplexing or onerous duties. When an employee is proffered a daunting promotion, he or she, like Mary, is the “favored one,” having attained a privileged position laden with responsibility that may stir a sense of unworthiness or unreadiness. Congregants elected to leadership offices, although flattered by their fellow church members’ trust in them, confide insecurity, whispering, “Why was I chosen for this office? How can I possibly live up to everyone’s confidence? How can this be?” Sometimes opportunities are presented that convey seemingly unachievable expectations
The doctrine of Christian vocation offers clarity. Mary’s obedience is neither optional nor forced. Mary acts freely when she offers herself as a servant of the Lord. To embrace her identity as the Mother of God is the only choice that is true to her calling, because it is consistent with who she actually is.
As the story unfolds, Mary acts as creative partner and agent with God in the coming of the Christ child. One crucial place in which the “double agency” of Mary is affirmed is in the Chalcedonian Definition, adopted at the fourth ecumenical council in 451 CE. According to the Definition, still the standard of orthodoxy, “the very same one” who was, in relation to his deity, “born from the Father before the ages” was, in relation to his humanity, “born in the last days from the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God.”
In addition to inviting us to think about who we are and what we do in relation to God and God’s work, this passage challenges us to be reoriented by what the incarnation tells us about the character of God. Gabriel arrives at a particular time (“in the sixth month” of Elizabeth’s pregnancy), in a particular place (“a town in Galilee called Nazareth”) to a particular woman (“a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph”). Theologians speak of the “scandal of particularity”; they recognize that it can offend our sensibilities to ponder how the omnipotent, omniscient Creator of the universe entered into the particularities of historical existence. The fifth-century debates about Mary as Theotokos (“God-bearer”) reflect that the reality of God’s entry into the womb of the virgin Mary changes forever understandings of God that dismiss the divine vulnerability as inconsistent with the divine omnipotence.
The story calls for preachers who can enter into and express the joy, amazement, foolishness, and danger enacted in the encounter between Mary and Elizabeth. Here we preachers encounter God’s embarrassing and threatening “challenge to good order.” Here we come face to face with the upside-down world inaugurated by the incarnation of Jesus. The text is best interpreted not by serious academic commentaries or pious religiosity, but by the folk traditions and street theater of the Feast of Fools and Carnival, in which the social hierarchies of the day are lampooned and subverted, and the lowly are raised to places of honor (Harris, Carnival, 140). The church prepares this week for Jesus’ birth, not through serious theological reflection, but through subversive laughter, singing, and astonishment.
The scene is absurd. The coming of the Messiah who will redeem Israel is anticipated and proclaimed, not by archangels or high priests or emperors or even ordained preachers. Rather, two marginalized, pregnant women—one young, poor, and unwed, the other far beyond the age to conceive—meet in the hill country of Judea to celebrate (and possibly commiserate about) their miraculous pregnancies. A baby leaps in the womb. Blessings are shared. Astonishment is expressed. Songs are sung. By two pregnant women. The story is not only odd and joyful; it is fleshy, embodied, earthy, appropriate as a forerunner to the incarnation, which derives from the Latin root carn-(“flesh”), which is also the root of the word “carnival.” In the women’s actions, the world is indeed turned upside down. Hierarchies are subverted. The mighty are brought down. Two marginalized, pregnant women carry the future and proclaim the Messiah.