a sermon based on Luke 1:26-56

December 16, 2007 at Palm Bay, FL

by Rev. Scott Elliott

Today marks the Third Sunday of Advent. Advent literally means “coming toward.” It has apparently in the past been a season of fasting and even penitence, but from the 19^th century onward it has been a time to mark the calender and look forward to the coming of Christmas Day, the coming of Christ.

It seems appropriate that traditionally the candles we light during Advent represent Peace, Hope, Joy and Love.

In my house we have almost always had one or more Advent calendars with little windows to open each day during Advent. Sometimes a relative provides an Advent calendar with real treats inside each window like chocolate, but usually the treat is a tiny picture of some sort. A bird. An instrument. A cake. And frankly sometimes I have not been able to figure out exactly what the picture is or why it relates to Christmas.

But all the little joyful pictures lead up to the last window to be opened which always has a picture of Mary and Joseph and Jesus in the manger. The whole Advent calendar creates hope and anticipation for Christmas Day.

I love Advent. It is a time of Hope and Peace and Joy and Love.

I know this is odd, but, in a way it reminds me of Paul Revere.

And it’s not because I like a Paul Revere and the Raiders Christmas Album. It is because for me Advent wakes us with news in the darkness of winter that “Christ is coming! Christ is coming!”

The news for me is not an immediate apocalyptic end-time arrival; rather it’s that as Advent arrives and continues in each day and week I can feel goodness and love beginning to permeate the air. Do you know what I mean?

It’s not really the Christmas decorations and beautiful lights. I love the lights and decorations, but that’s not what I mean. It’s that people smile more. Neighbors, store clerks and passersby actually greet you.

And folks all over begin to say things like “Enjoy the day,” “Happy Holidays,” “Merry Christmas” and even “Peace” – and they seem to really mean it.

Doors get opened. People think about gifts for friends and relatives. People want to give gifts to help neighbors, to help folks they do not even know, to help those in need.

These little changes in the dark of winter are the sparks of light of a great promise for humankind. They provide a glimpse of what a difference love cranked up a few notches can accomplish.

Our Scared texts tells us that “God is love.” All of this love floating around during the holidays, often called the Christmas Spirit is a real, REAL hint of what the reign of God looks like.

This holiday Love-fest we feast on for a month each year is a taste of the Shalom we are supposed to strive toward all year– the peace and love that is the promise of our Sacred texts; the promise of God that we know in our hearts and the depths of souls.

During the Christmas season humans act in ways that fashion a threshold that we step over and into an opening where God can be, and is, experienced. And our little steps into that opening change us in a way that most folks I know wish could last all year.

Why do these changes, these days of increased love, happen at Christmas? What’s different? Whether the secular world likes it or not, doesn’t our culture finally, finally take time to turn a lot more of our focus toward Love (that is God) at Christmas?

It’s not just the church or church-goers who are letting Love loose in our lives this time of year, but a goodly portion of everyone. Love is at the core of the holidays. All the commercialism and the glitter and barrage of gimmicks cannot dim the light nor lessen the warmth and Joy that our seasonal turning toward God brings.

We love more and we like it. It makes us feel good.

And it is good.

Look at the effects. We not only wish each other well and show love to our neighbors, but we feel better, ten times better during the Christmas season than we do the rest of the year.

Our love for one another, our caring and sharing love – that bit of Christ within us– “magnifies the Lord” – and our spirits’ rejoice.

The scripture reading today that the youth splendidly performed focuses on things that happen to Mary before the first Christmas.

Mary has heard that “Christ is coming.” Although it’s nine months away in the story she has the privilege of knowing that Christmas is on the way. And even while Jesus is in an embryonic stage within her Mary is already so full of enough of the goodness of God that her very voice causes the unborn John the Baptist to leap for joy in his mother’s womb.

In addition to John’s prenatal joy, Mary’s presence causes Elizabeth, John’s mother, to loudly proclaim that Mary herself is a blessing.

Mary, the bearer of Jesus before Christmas Day is to others a source of joy and the one who is a blessing. Mary, the human being filled with a small growing bit of God.

Look around us. Aren’t we all like Mary bearing Christ inside. By whatever name we might call it that a spark of God is in us all. And when we are spiritually nourished, that spark of God grows. For Christians that spark, that part of God, is named Christ.

As bearers of Christ within we are like Mary. We are blessed; and we too can bring joy to others.

In the scripture drama we saw Elizabeth tell Mary that she is blessed. Mary’s response to Elizabeth is praise for God, she sings what is known as The Magnificat. She sings it when Jesus is just beginning to grow inside her, before Christmas Day.

Here’s what she sings:

My soul magnifies the Lord.

And my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,

For he has looked with favor 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.

His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. 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 forever (Lk 1:46-55).

Mary rejoices because God has sided with her in all her humanness. God gives her the honor of carrying Christ – an honor she finds even in the darkness of having to literally run to the hills to hide as an unmarried pregnant girl, conditions that subjected her to being stoned to death as an adulteress for violating her betrothal to Joseph.

This poor peasant teenage girl in trouble is favored by God.

Mary’s also rejoices that God’s nature is to always be there on side of justice and righteousness, right there with the oppressed, and to remember God’s promise to bless all families on earth.

All families. Not just Christians. Not just Americans. All families on earth.

We all have our own darknesses and hide in one sense or another in the hills from one or more of them. But God favors us, God seeks us out and honors us with a conception of Christ inside of us.

God has looked, and still looks, with favor on all of us even in our lowliness. God has done great things for us. So like Mary we also have much to sing about even if to us the Christ within us feels small and embryonic.

I just finished reading The First Christmas: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus’s Birth, (New York: HarperOne, 2007) a new book by Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan. Here’s one cool fact I learned: the song that Mary sings, The Magnificat, is believed to have been an early Christian hymn or chant that predated Luke. It was originally a song on the lips of people like you and me and then placed by Luke on Mary’s lips in the story.

And this ancient song of our earliest bothers and sisters was modeled on earlier Jewish brothers’ and sisters’ songs and claims of praise. The Magnificat is based on Hannah’s song in 1 Samuel, but “echos phrases from other Old Testament passages” (1)

Listen to those echos:

And you know what? We do more of these things at Christmas then any other time of the year. We magnify love to our neighbors. We magnify giving of food to the hungry. We magnify giving drink to the thirsty. We magnify giving clothing to the naked. We magnify welcome to the stranger. We even magnify care of prisoners.

From now until Christmas Day the world out there will be doing more of what God wants for us, more of what Jesus taught us.

At Christmas time our souls truly magnify the Lord.

And as a consequence our spirits rejoice.

And those of us that are proud in our hearts most of the rest of the year have our pride scattered in the thoughts of our hearts. We tune into our hearts and we see how good it is to give and to love, and we take steps to act accordingly.

And the Christmas story, year-in and year-out as we retell it always, always, brings down the powerful as Herod is defeated in his quest to stop Christ’s Reign, And God always lifts up the lowly as Mary conceives Jesus and then Mary and Joseph and their infant son are glorified even as they huddle around the manger on the floor of a stable.

Through our acts at Christmas God fills the hungry with good things, and those who keep their riches to themselves, sadly are sent away empty and unfulfilled with the greatest of riches, the glory of the season, the one thing money cannot buy: Love; that is, the Christmas Spirit.

At Christmas God helps us, as God’s servants, to remember to mirror God’s mercy, to make come true the promise God made to Abraham to bless all families on earth.

Advent is a time for hope. It is a time for Peace. it is a time for Joy. It is a time of Love.

It is a time of miracles. Humans for all their ugly propensity for anger, violence, hate and war actually also prove they possess a glorious propensity for love and peace and shalom. Every year when Advent rolls around we prove that we can turn our focus toward God and move toward love and peace and shalom. It is possible. And, God, does it feel good.

Advent starts a season that is actually more than a hint of what the Reign of God might look like, it gives us tangible hope that God’s Reign is possible. During the Christmas season when we turn our focus toward God we act in ways that God can be, and is, experienced more fully. Christ permeates the air. Christmas changes us in a way that most folks I know wish could last all year.

And you know what?

Some day it will.

Amen.