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4 Advent C
Micah 5:2-4
“And blessed is she who
believed that there would be a fulfillment Advent is almost over. Have you enjoyed it as much as I have? As we have set the stage for Christmas with the four Sundays of Advent, we have seen quite a cast of characters. On the first Sunday we heard about the Second Coming of Jesus Christ and what that will mean for our world. On the second Sunday we heard the names of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate and the two Herods. We met John the Baptizer, and since he was quoting Isaiah, we listened to the first person to be a Prophet in Israel in four hundred years. The third Sunday of Advent we heard John’s message about repentance. John did not hold back, but spoke to everyone who would listen – lovingly mentioned in the Gospels as “the multitudes.” Somewhere in the back of our minds we have known that Mary was standing in the wings. She has been waiting to make her entrance onto the Advent stage. We have waited for the star and here she is. But Mary is an unlikely star on this stage where the cast of characters includes the high and mighty rulers of her time. Let’s see . . . what were their names again? Oh yes . . . there was someone named Caesar, and Herod, and Caiaphas, but their lives serve as the backdrop for the big event. The One who was to come is almost here. Mary doesn’t try to get our attention. On the contrary, she leads a quiet, contemplative life. She lives a life of service. Mary comes from the obscure town of Nazareth in the hill country. Her home town did not enjoy a hearty reputation, because later Philip would ask, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Mary doesn’t try to get our attention, but we can’t take our eyes off her. Her figure fills out a little more each day, and her cheeks are rosy with the delight of impending motherhood. But it’s supposed to be a secret that Mary is the one who is pregnant with the Savior and Redeemer of the World. She is carrying the One who was present at creation – the one in whom all things hold together. How does Mary behave and handle this responsibility, and what is it that we can learn from her? First, Mary was accustomed to giving rather than taking. When the Angel Gabriel appeared to Mary and told her that she would give birth to the Savior of the world, Gabriel mentioned, almost as an aside, that Mary’s cousin Elizabeth was also pregnant and was in her sixth month. It is at this point that Mary makes her entrance onto our 2006 Advent stage. Our Gospel text for today says, “In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth.” Mary did not wait to be asked. She knew what needed to be done. Her cousin Elizabeth needed help. There were diapers to make, and little booties and caps to knit. That new baby would need some quilts and blankets, and maybe even a sock monkey or a gourd rattle for entertainment and stimulation. Mary could help do these things. Is there someone in need that we could help? We don’t have to make a big splash to lend a helping hand. It will come naturally if we are focused on loving and giving. Second, Mary was so full of God that her very presence called forth the presence of God in others. All Mary had to do was say hello and John the Baptizer started kicking in Elizabeth’s womb. This in itself was good news for Elizabeth. She was way past being too old to have a child and the quickening of the life within her reassured her that the baby was alive and well. Mary seemed to call forth the best in other people. And she did so without any apparent effort. Mary was just being herself. She was doing what she would ordinarily do. She wasn’t preaching or bragging about being the Mother of Our Lord. She was there to serve. Thomas Keating says the lesson we can learn from Mary in this instance is that “When the love of Christ is the principal motivation, ordinary actions transmit divine love. This is the fundamental Christian witness; this is evangelization in its primary form.”[1] The biggest lesson we have from Mary is that she gave her whole person over to God’s will. The Old Testament prophets who knew God most intimately only caught glimpses of his glory. Moses got to see God’s back, although the Book of Deuteronomy says that the Lord knew Moses face to face. Isaiah saw the Lord high and lifted up, and volunteered for service right on the spot. But Mary was allowed to let Jesus Christ share her body for nine months, and then she got to rock his cradle and watch him grow to manhood. She made room for Jesus to come in to her life, into Joseph’s life, and into our lives because she gave Jesus his human body. Mary made available her own body so that Jesus could become flesh and dwell among us. The only way that God could really communicate with us on our level was to become a human being in flesh and blood. This was risky, because there are also temptations in this human body that Jesus would also have to face. Jesus could not have been “tempted in all things such as we are, yet without sin” without being human. But somehow he thought that we are worth his risk of becoming fully human while remaining fully divine. Jesus would later tell the Samaritan Woman, “God is Spirit, and those who worship God must worship him in spirit and in truth.” There was a medieval theological discussion that went like this: “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” After much debate, the answer is: An infinite number of angels can dance on the head of a pin, because they do not have bodies. They are ministering spirits, sent by God to do his bidding. We are not accustomed to seeing angels, either. But we are accustomed to seeing human beings, because we have flesh and blood bodies with eyes to see and ears to hear. Jesus could not have set an example for us to see without a human body. Jesus could not have died for our sins and been raised from the dead without a human body. With Mary’s cooperation, Jesus had a body in which he was fully human and fully divine. Mary the Mother of our Lord was called “blessed” because she believed and joyfully accepted her role in bringing about the salvation of the world. We can join her in this mission by allowing our hearts and minds and habits to be consumed with the doing of God’s will. As we look to her sterling example, we still call her blessed. Amen. [1] Keating, Thomas, The Mystery of Christ (New York: Continuum, 1999), 25
On the grounds of Honey Creek
The Rev. Linda McCloud, Pastor |
