Sermon December 21 2014

2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16

Luke 1:46b-55

Romans 16:25-27

Luke 1:26-38

“Great Reversals”

Life-giving God, fill us with your grace. May we, who hear the announcement of Jesus’ coming, give birth to your good news. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

The season of Advent reminds us every year that we are all waiting for something. We anticipate some event, sometimes with fear and anxiety, sometimes with happiness and barely contained excitement and sometimes a mixture of both. We may be waiting on a person to enter our lives or know that a time of departure is nearing—and we may not desire either one. We may be waiting for good news, bad news, or any news at all. We may be waiting for the other shoe to drop—for the world to end—for our lives to begin . . . for someone, something, somewhere . . .

The season of Advent reminds us that even as we prepare what we are awaiting has come. We are waiting for the light of the world—even as the sky in our part of the world gets darker and darker. Tonight, on the longest night of the year, we celebrate the light, grace, peace—and love that is already in our lives. We know that Jesus is born—so long ago—and still we wait, every year, preparing for Christ to come into our lives, preparing for Christ to gather us all into Christ’s life, forever and eternally.

The season of Advent and this fourth Sunday of Advent, again, reminds us that though what we are awaiting, the birth of Jesus into the world, the salvation of Christ in the world, the presence and grace of God in the world are already here. We still are waiting for the fulfillment of God’s kindom in the world that surrounds us—and in our own lives. Jesus is here; God is here and God is still building something—a kindom, a family, a realm, and we are part of that act of building. Or at least we can be a part of it, if we choose to say yes.

In the text from 2 Samuel, we get a glimpse into the life of David, the king of Israel, after he’s come to a time of respite from the wars that put him onto the throne. He has a home, a house of cedar, he said, and he thinks that God might want a house, too, to live in. God’s word to Nathan, the royal prophet, denies God’s desire for a house built by human hands.  Instead God proclaims that God will build. God will build David a legacy, a throne, a kindom that lasts forever—instead, I think, God makes a claim on the life of David’s legacy, revealing God’s plan, not David’s plan.

David wanted to house God. God wants to build a legacy, create possibilities for revelation. God wants to be God for the people, not simply a place for the people to worship. And God wants it to last—houses don’t last, temples don’t remain, churches don’t live forever—God’s kindom, that’s eternal. God’s love, it’s steadfast and everlasting.

So we enter the story of Jesus in Luke’s gospel this morning knowing that this is God’s intention. For people who want to follow Christ, God’s intentions lead us here, to Jesus, to Mary, to the messenger God sent to give Mary some news.

The world into which the messenger brings news to Mary was a world very different from our own in many ways. As you know, the Romans occupied Galilee where Mary lived in the town of Nazareth. Galilee was a part of the land that had been Israel, but the Israel of King David hadn’t existed for a long time—about 1,000 years. Mary lived in a land occupied at various times by whatever empire ruled at the time. The Romans ruled her world and before that the Greeks, the Persians, Babylon or Chaldea, Aram, and Syria and before that, the two kingdoms that split from David and Solomon’s one kingdom. It had been a long time since God spoke with Nathan, the prophet, and promised a reign that would last forever. And because it had been so long, the promise God had begun to be seen differently. The throne of God, given by God, wasn’t one for kings, this throne was  . . . well, this throne was for Mary’s—not yet born, not yet conceived—son.

Mary’s world was very different than our own, but there are still similarities. The hungry and the sated are still with us, the poor and the rich, the servants and the rulers (one way or another) and God’s people are still waiting. In Mary’s world and in our own, some people have everything and more and some people not enough to live.

Mary heard the messenger’s word to her in a world occupied by empire and characterized by inequality, a world more our own than it would seem. And she heard the message in a world, like our own, that was waiting for answers, waiting for a long time.

In spite of the time that had passed, with no hesitation other than her confusion at her unmarried, uncoupled state, Mary accepts the news of the messenger, Gabriel. She would have a son, the Son of God. She would name him, Jesus, which means Savior. And somehow, he would inherit the throne of David, unoccupied, nonexistent, really, for many, many years.

So what does it mean that her son, the Son of God, the Son of the Most High was to be born? In that day? In that world?

As Luke tells the story, Mary’s reaction, her emotive and rational, theological response to actually understanding what God has done comes after she meets her relative, Elizabeth. When Elizabeth announces her baby’s reaction to meeting Mary, it is only then that Mary sings her song—her glorious Magnificat.

And she sings or tells of God’s action in the person Jesus will become.

She sings of God’s salvation revealed by her son not only in her own life, but in the fullness of all God’s people. Her words well up and name the justice of God.

God is merciful. God is strong and scatters the proud—the arrogant?

God brings power down from thrones and lift up those seen as lowly.

God fills the hungry. God sends away those who have all they need—and more.

God helps Israel, fulfilling God’s steadfast love.

God fulfills all the promises God has ever made—all of them.

Her child, but more than her child, will overturn all the world.

God was arriving, is arriving, always arriving, to reverse the way that we live with one another. God comes to turn us away from pride, from wealth, from gluttony and greed, from the power we have over one another—God comes in Jesus, born to a very young woman, into not a wealthy or powerful family, to save the world.

God comes into our lives this day to do the very same thing. Human beings, it seems, tend to wander into the same sins today as they did then. Then the rich and powerful, symbolized by Rome’s empire, kept people from realizing who God fully intended them to be—and God’s son’s life of healing, hope, humility, peace, grace, joy, and love overturned what a ruling power could be. And though it may look different, we still somehow live as if the world would be perfect if only the right set of people had enough power, like Rome. But with Mary, we sing, declaring that in us now already, God has accomplished a great reversal. Amid the disorder and evil of our day, we now sing the great reversal sung by Mary. We are not afraid. God is yet at work liberating and setting things right. The wrong is judged to be empty, and the right judged to be blessed. Within us, the empire has no hold; it has collapsed even as we contend with it daily.

With Mary’s son, the Son of the Most High, we can say, with Mary, “Let it be with me, according to your word.” Amen.