(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Sunday Worship on Dec 20, 2015, Advent IV)
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Finally, the Birth Story…
Finally! For the first time this Advent, we get to the birth story itself. The last few weeks have led us on such a strange and roundabout journey through scripture, you’d be forgiven for wondering if the church leaders had had a bit too much eggnog before they sat down to pick out our Advent texts. On the first Sunday of Advent, we had a grown Jesus talking about the end of the world as we know it. On the next two Sundays, we went to the wilderness and listened to John’s wild words about forgiveness and repentance. And each story in its own way has been preparing us for the birth of Christ. Each has stripped the excessive sparkle and glitter of our festivities, reminding us that when God comes, God comes neither into a perfectly prepared palace nor by way of a poised, princely step. God comes unceremoniously into the dirt and darkness of our unprepared world. And God comes bringing change.
In today’s scripture, finally, we can sense God’s coming. Finally we get to something resembling the nativities that we set up weeks ago, the gentle scenes that have been waiting ever so patiently on our tables. Finally we can feel the baby kicking. Like Elizabeth, we can feel life leaping for joy deep within us (1:44). The birth is only a few days away.
A Hero’s Birth Story
And if the events leading up to this birth are to be believed, then this child is indeed worth singing about, as Mary does in today’s scripture. Angels, an unlikely mother, a miraculous conception. All the key ingredients of a hero’s birth story. Mary herself could have recited similar stories from ancient tradition: Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Samuel. These heroes of the Jewish faith all entered the world through a magnificent yet unlikely birth, where a barren mother conceived or the baby escaped certain death. A miraculous birth indicated that the child was destined for a miraculous life. It marked the child for greatness, imprinting upon him the stamp of divine approval.
And it is a striking coincidence—or perhaps more than coincidence—that such a miraculous birth story accompanies not only Jesus, but also the emperor who ruled at the time of his birth. Ancient Roman tradition tells us that Augustus was conceived miraculously one night by the god Apollo.[1] In time, Augustus would become emperor and would receive titles like “divine,” “son of god,” “lord,” “redeemer,” “savior of the world.”[2] Sound like anyone else you know?
Declaring God Great? Or Making God Great?
All of the sudden, then, Mary’s song loses the innocent tones that we may have been hearing of a gentle and grateful mother’s lullaby, and assumes instead a more dangerous, insurrectionary melody. “My soul magnifies the Lord,” she begins. But she is not magnifying lord Augustus. She is not proclaiming the emperor to be the “son of God” or the “savior” of the world (cf. 1:36; 2:11).[3]
Mary’s song is less of a lullaby, more of a march. If the ancient world had been in the habit of composing national anthems, Mary’s song would have been a perfect candidate for the people of Judea. In a world that proclaimed the greatness of the Roman emperor, Mary dared proclaim the greatness of God. It would have raised eyebrows among the Roman citizens of Mary’s day, in the same way that a refusal to pledge allegiance to the flag would raise eyebrows today. Mary’s song is the stuff of revolution; her ecstatic vision of the proud and powerful and prosperous being brought low and the poor and hungry being raised up would be enough to scare any government. It’s no coincidence that Mary’s song has been banned on numerous occasions—even in the last century, when British colonial rule outlawed the song from being sung in Indian churches, or when the military states of Guatemala and Argentina prohibited its public recitation.[4]
As a declaration of God’s greatness over against the powerful, Mary’s song is revolutionary enough as it is. But if we listen closely, there are revolutionary overtones in her song that go far beyond a challenge to empire. And it all begins in the first word of the song, megalynei, which can mean either “to declare great” or “to make great.”
God Needs Us
(To Make God Great)
To “declare” God’s greatness would have been treason against the Roman Empire. But for many of the pious who pontificate from raised platforms, it would be an even higher heresy to even entertain the idea of “making” God great. “Make God great? God is already great. God doesn’t need you one bit to be great. A needy god would be an inferior god.”
Which is all true—according to the gods of our world, the gods of the Roman empire or any world power today, the gods for whom the most important attributes are power, command, and control. But the birth story that we celebrate this Advent, the strange and wonderful tale of Mary, does not celebrate a god of power, a god-above-us. It bows not at the altar of omnipotence but at a rustic crib in a lowly manger. It celebrates a God as powerless as a baby in Bethlehem; it magnifies a God who scatters the proud and brings down the powerful not by an iron first but by the powerless invitation of love extended by an infant with an infant’s needs, by a man with the same flesh and bones as you and me; it glorifies God-among-us, the God-within-us, the God who is seeking to become a part of our world.
The message of today’s birth story is so simple, it’s easy to take for granted: being born in human flesh is the way of God in our world. God needs people like Mary, people like Abraham and Sarah, people like the Hebrew midwives in Egypt, people who say, “Yes” to God’s plan for new life. God needs the flesh and blood of a baby Jesus, a teenager Jesus, a grown Jesus—all of whom embody the beauty of God’s love.
God is needy. Not in a possessive or clingy or neurotic sense. Rather, God needs us like the sun and the rain need flowers. Which is to say, God doesn’t need us at all. Just like sun and rain don’t need flowers in order to be sun and rain. But how would we ever experience the real beauty of the sun and the rain, if there were no flowers to soak up ray and water? And how would the world ever experience the real beauty of God, if there were no people who gave flesh and bones to God’s love?
God is great. But God’s greatness is not known or experienced unless we embody it. God needs us not merely to declare God great but to make God great in the world. God’s love needs hands that give, hearts that care, lips that kiss. God’s forgiveness needs heads that turn the other cheek. God’s hope needs dreamers and storytellers and artists that open us up to the impossible.
Mary’s revolution goes far beyond defying the Roman emperor and proclaiming the greatness of God. She makes the greatness of God, because she says, “Yes.” God is waiting, needing to be birthed into our world. Literally, in the case of Mary. But for us too. Just as love found its way into the world in the tiny town of Bethlehem, so love is looking for a way into the world today in our little corner of Richmond.
Prayer
God whose love can topple the powerful and lift up the lowly, in ways that no earthly authority or army ever can, we confess our need for You. Open our ears, that we might hear Your prayers to us, that we might hear angels dreaming the impossible and inviting our help. May our hearts be ready to receive You, to meet your needs, so that the beauty of your vulnerable, trusting love might grow and be known among us—so that it might save the world. Amen.
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[1] John Dominic Crossan, God and Empire: Jesus Against Rome, Then and Now (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2007), 105.
[2] Crossan, God and Empire, 28.
[3] Crossan, God and Empire, 117: “Caesar’s coins said he was DIVI F…SON OF GOD.”
[4] Jason Porterfield, “The Subversive Magnificat: What Mary Expected the Messiah to Be Like,” accessed Dec 19, 2015.
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