Sermon, 4th Sunday In Advent: The Magnificat – Mary’s God

Luke 1:39-55

Introduction
When I was at Trinity
College, Bristol we had to go out on ‘preaching teams’, mostly to parish
churches. One member of the team would preach, the others would evaluate the
sermon and perhaps also take part in the service.

One Sunday we went to a very high Anglican church in Swindon. My friend John was to preach and we could just
about make him out at the front through the clouds of incense. I led the
intercessions and apparently later one of the church wardens complained about
me, because I didn’t pray for the Pope.

At the end of the service the leaders and the choir
processed out. The service was over, and we sat down. Or – we thought the
service had ended. Because just as we got settled, back came the vicar and a
few others. They stood in front of a plaster cast statue of Mary and began
singing to her. SingalongaMary, I irreverently called it.

And we have many reasons to be sceptical about the
specifically Catholic doctrines of Mary. The Immaculate Conception – that not
only was Mary a virgin she was also sinless has no warrant in Scripture.
Neither does the doctrine of her Assumption into Heaven. And nor does the
doctrine of her Perpetual Virginity, which makes it difficult to explain the
Gospel references to Jesus’ brothers and sisters without special pleading that they
weren’t siblings, they were cousins.

In Catholic worship we hear ‘Hail Mary, full of grace, the
Lord is with thee’ – the words of Gabriel when he came to announce her
miraculous pregnancy. They are coupled with the words by which Elizabeth addresses her in
today’s passage – ‘Blessèd art thou among women and blessèd is the fruit of thy
womb’. These seem to be used to elevate Mary, perhaps even to make her the
dispenser of grace rather than the recipient of grace.

Worse, she is even referred to as ‘co-redemptrix’ with
Christ, making her prayers efficacious for salvation alongside Jesus and his
Cross. Anything that says you need to add to the work of Christ on the Cross
needs to be treated with huge suspicion.

Have I got it in for Catholics today? Yet even if I am
extremely unhappy with their approach to Mary I have also to say that
Protestants have been guilty of underplaying her importance in reaction. On
more than one occasion in the New Testament Mary is the model disciple of her
Son.

Here as she sings the Magnificat (even if the text is a
later development from what she originally said) she is the model for praise
and worship. Why? Because her praise of God is not marked by the ups and downs
of her feelings, but by rendering praise based on the character of God, as
shown in his actions. Mary’s song is one that tells us about the God she adores
and serves. Who is Mary’s God, then?

1. He Is The God Of Blessing
Elizabeth
has called Mary ‘blessed’, because of the child she carries (verse 42) and
because she believed in the word spoken to her (verse 45). Mary agrees she is
blessed – but will not accept praise for herself. She turns the praise towards
the God who has blessed her:

And Mary said,
‘My soul magnifies the Lord,
   and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour,
for he has looked with favour on the lowliness of his servant.
   Surely, from now on all generations will call
me blessed;
for the Mighty One has done great things for me

  
and holy is his name.’
(verses 46-49)

She is a lowly
servant – as a betrothed young Jewish woman she is between twelve and thirteen
years old. How remarkable it would have been then and is now that God should
use such a person. She has had questions when Gabriel appeared with the news,
but she has accepted it – even though she risked disgrace and possibly worse
when it would be known that she had become pregnant before marrying Joseph.
Whatever the cost, she knows she is blessed to be chosen by God for his
magnificent purposes.

Other translations say ‘afflicted’ rather than ‘lowliness’,
but it is hard to see how Mary is ‘afflicted’. Except in this sense. Mary is
not just speaking for herself, she is identifying with her people, God’s
people. They truly are ‘afflicted’. They, if you like, ‘lack a child’, the
Messiah. But now God is dealing with that affliction. The promised child is
coming. God is blessing Mary and his people.

It is said sometimes that with the suffering of the Jewish
people down the centuries some Jews have prayed something like this: ‘O Lord, I
know we are supposed to be your chosen people, but couldn’t you choose some
other people just once in a while?’

And perhaps we too lose sight of that privilege of being
chosen – chosen by God for wonderful purposes. When we find those purposes set
us down in a place we would rather not live, alongside people with whom we
would not naturally want to associate, in work we do not find congenial, we do
not tend to think of ourselves as blessed. But if the calling is to such
restricted or unappealing circumstances then that is where the blessing will
come. Jonah didn’t like the thought of going to Nineveh. He thought he knew better than God
and headed for Tarshish. But Nineveh
was his destiny. Nineveh
was where God used his preaching, even if Jonah didn’t enjoy the results as he
should have done.

So I am not merely talking about the sort of blessing that
consists in listing the material benefits God has given us (just as he has done
to many who do not acknowledge him). I am talking about the blessing of
following in his calling, the blessing of knowing you are chosen. If you know
that it can be turned into praise, just as Mary did, even though accepting her
call was a dangerous challenge.

2. He Is The God Of Mercy
Verse 50:

His mercy is for those who fear him
   from generation to generation.

Afflicted and lowly people need mercy. That is what God is
giving me and my people through the child I am to bear, says Mary: mercy. It
might not have been what they first thought they needed: mercy is a gift to
those who are in the wrong. The convicted and condemned plead for mercy. That
is certainly not how the People of God saw themselves at this time.

But Mary brings us back to the age-old theme of God’s mercy.
It is ‘for those who fear him from generation to generation’. And it is the
reminder we need. We can forget our need of mercy. We can become self-righteous
– and with it, rather ugly people. Mary brings us back to our roots: mercy is
what brings us into the presence of God, nothing less. We do not swan into his
presence because we are decent people, we can only come because he has brought
us here.

On one occasion when I was in hospital there was another
Christian on the ward with me. Naturally we had a number of conversations. Just
before whichever one of us was going to be discharged first (I don’t remember
which of us it was) he gave me his card. After his name were the letters
‘SSBG’. I couldn’t think what university degree of professional qualification
that could be, so I asked him. ‘Sinner Saved By Grace’, he replied. It was his
constant reminder of who he was and where he had come from.

Similarly, another story from my time at Trinity College,
Bristol: I once
asked one of the lecturers about something that seemed to be an anomaly in the
Anglican Holy Communion service. The confession of sins was followed by the
‘absolution’ (assurance of God’s forgiveness) but then the next part of the
liturgy was the Gloria. That seemed fine at first – burst into praise after being
assured of forgiveness. But the Gloria asks Jesus to ‘have mercy on us’. So my
question was, why were we asking for mercy again immediately after we had been
assured of forgiveness? The lecturer replied, ‘Because we always need mercy.’

Mary reminds us that we should always be conscious of God’s
mercy. When we do, we praise him more fittingly – more humbly.

3. He Is The God Of Holy Power
Verses 51 to 55:

He has shown strength with
his arm;
   he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
   and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
   and sent the rich away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel,
   in remembrance of his mercy,
according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
   to Abraham and to his descendants for ever.

Ah, Christmas! Warm, gooey feelings, a newborn baby to cluck
over, a proud young mother and her loyal husband. Cute, isn’t it?

But what if that expectant mother says that the event is political?
Knowing that she is bringing the Messiah into the world she looks back at God’s
previous deeds of holy power. He has raised up his lowly and hungry servant
people and overthrown the rich and powerful. And why would she reflect on this
unless she had a prophetic expectation that her son would do the same and more?

In Mary’s day that would have been easy to interpret in
terms of Israel’s
national hopes under the oppression of the Romans. But by the time Luke wrote
his Gospel these hopes had been crushed. Instead I think he wants us to see
Mary’s worship of this God of holy power, this God who works in history on
behalf of the poor and oppressed, in terms of Jesus’ adult ministry.

The Christmas message, then, is one about a God of justice
who has not ignored the evil in the world. He does not remain aloof and
unconcerned in heaven. He has done something about it. The difference is, he
does not fight wickedness with the conventional weapons of force and
destruction. It is holy power, not
unholy power.  He knows that only a more
costly and sacrificial way will conquer sin. It is the way of humility and
suffering. In God’s kingdom, evil is toppled in the most surprising ways. Let
us remember that as we pray, campaign and act.

4. He Is The God Of Salvation
This is the reverse side of what I have just said. Not only
does God act in holy power to bring down wickedness, he also acts to save his
downtrodden people. He hears the cries of his faithful followers down the ages
as they join in the chorus, ‘How long, O Lord?’ In response to prayer he brings
down empires and dismantles Iron Curtains.

During the hard times he gives his suffering people
sustenance as they wait for their day of salvation. It may be through biblical
books like Revelation, which was written for persecuted Christians, through
courageous leaders and through support from brother and sister believers living
under less restricted circumstances.

Today, I believe, he hears the cries of Christians in the
Middle East who are suffering
persecution because of the US and UK policy in Iraq. They are being
targeted by Muslim extremists as supporters of Western policies. Right now it
is happening in Iraq and in Bethlehem.

Within Chelmsford,
talk to my old college friend the Revd Mones Farah, the Anglican priest in
charge at the Meadgate Church
Centre in Great Baddow. I first met Mones twenty years ago. He is a
Palestinian Christian from a small town you may just have heard of – Nazareth. He talked about
his experiences in college chapel once. He said that to be a Palestinian
Christian in Israel
was to be a third class citizen: as an Arab you were second class compared with
Jewish citizens, and within the Arab community you were inferior to the
Muslims. That was how he felt in the 1980s; just imagine how it must be now
with an Israeli wall, the election of Hamas and naïve Western imperial
assumptions that Arab culture will welcome liberal democracy with open arms
when soldiers land. No wonder there has been a Christian exodus from the Holy Land
and Iraq.

But even if Bush and Blair are not listening, Mary’s God is.
He hears the cries of Arab Christians, just as he saw the tears of Christians
under Soviet communism. And he is the God of salvation. He will act. But he
calls us into partnership with him in prayer, lobbying, advocacy, support and
action. If we believe in the God whom Mary praised, then surely such
partnership with the God of salvation will be part of our worship.

Why is why, after the next hymn, we shall turn to prayer.

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