How Mary’s standing up reveals the very dream of GOD

a Homily for Advent 4B  |  Text: Luke 1:26-38

 

Hi, “Mom”!

Last year, when Rose would pick up our daughter from school, Mrs. Randolph would address her (and other parents) as “Mom.”

“Hi, Mom! Don’t forget tomorrow is…”

A less formal version of what we assumed she meant

“Hello, mother of one of my students.”

Aside from sounding a bit weird–as in our kids call her “Mom,” but random adults don’t–calling someone “Mom” seems as if she is trying to be both direct and personal. I do not know you enough to use your name, but saying “Mrs. Downs” would be too formal. It’s like a doctor telling a patient to “eat more veggies” or a car salesperson saying to a prospective buyer “this car will make you go vroom vroom!” It doesn’t fit.

I don’t believe it is any more personal. Of course, I’m still struggling to learn everyone’s name, because I’m lousy with them, but could you imagine my greeting each of you with “Hi, Parishioner!”

There is more to us than these details. And there is more to us than a name. We are more than our names and our descriptors. We are people with aspirations and dreams and histories and futures.

That’s why I can honestly say the least important part of the gospel story is that Mary, the mother of GOD, is a mom and is a virgin. Or was a virgin. Or remained a virgin. She isn’t this singular aspect–this one thing about her. And she is more than a mother. And more than a saint.

GOD’s Favor

Last week, we explored how John the Baptizer was revealing GOD’s hope for us through the transformation of baptism. John was doing a new thing. A new thing with an old practice. A new kind of baptism and a new kind of purification. He was breaking the bonds to the Temple, to the royal priesthood, to blood sacrifice, and to the economic exploitation this whole practice was to the poor. Out there in the wild, on the other side of the river people could come, repent, and find a whole new life of grace.

Today, we get Mary, singled out, blessed among all people, to singularly participate in GOD’s coming to us in a new way. Joseph, despite all the Dad protectors out there, doesn’t get to honestly participate. GOD is bringing all of this to Mary.

The angel says

“Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.”

These words confuse her. These aren’t the Christian tropes as we are used to hearing them. The angel declares not only that she is favored, but that she is the favored one. You are the favored one. There are others, but they aren’t favored as you are. She hears.

Then she hears the angel say “The Lord is with you.” which to us is totally normal; we say that to each other all the time. But despite the promises to be with us, GOD’s promise was not understood as a promise to each of us on an individual basis. It wasn’t to each person separate from the community. It was to the community. She had no reason to believe that GOD would be there as in being in the room with her. And yet here is this angel claiming that very thing.

Notice also: she isn’t freaked out by the angel. She’s freaked out by how the angel is greeting her. What the angel is telling Mary about herself. And about GOD.

And the angel tells her what is to happen and how does she respond?

The line Isaiah used. The line Samuel used. Here am I.

Why Mary?

The story continues past what we read. Mary asks the angel the question any of us would ask in her shoes: why me? But the angel doesn’t really answer the question. It is what Mary does next that reveals why GOD has chosen Mary. Why she in particular is called to give birth to the incarnate GOD.

Mary runs to her cousin, Elizabeth. They are close, despite a huge age gap. The angel has told her that Elizabeth is involved in this, so Mary goes to her. And it is Elizabeth who is startled by Mary’s presence: Mary, you are the favored one! Why would the favored one come to me?

And Mary sings her reply. We sang it last week: Mary’s song, The Magnificat. It begins

‘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.

Mary does not sing of false humility, but ascribes her response to the very character of GOD. That her very soul reveals GOD, her spirit (not just her mind) rejoices, for GOD’s favor has come to the poor, not the powerful. She is proof of who GOD is and who GOD favors.

His mercy is for the fearful and his strength scatters the proud.
He lowers the powerful and raises the powerless.
The hungry are fed extravagantly and the nourished are to be emptied.
And GOD fulfils the promise made to the ancestors: to the line of David.

This is “Why Mary?”. This is why Mary is the favored one. It isn’t her name or her status. It isn’t her virginity. It is her. It is that her “soul magnifies the Lord and her spirit rejoices”. It is that she knows who GOD favors. Not that she is GOD’s great singled-out-one, but that GOD singles out the lowly for favor. That they are more than their station. That they are bigger and better than we who obscure the faceless poor and group them as a them: that we do not call them us. We who so consider the homeless a nuisance that we put spikes under the overpasses and arrest those who feed them.

Mary sees herself as one of these. And so does GOD. She is one whom GOD favors.

Standing Up

Mary shows us that she gets GOD. But not before she stands up and says “Here am I.” Not before she hears the angel tell her what GOD wants to do. Not before she is perplexed by a strange greeting from an angel.

Mary stands up and says I’ll go. Like Frodo to Mordor or Luke Skywalker to the Death Star, she stands up, despite the danger and personal challenge, she says “Here am I.”

Perhaps nothing is more central to the gospel than this simple idea: the favored stand up. The ones already closest to the ground, those making it their bed or those beaten down to it, get to their feet and say those three words. When invited to do something crazy for GOD, they say “Here am I.” When bad stuff is happening all around, they say “Here am I.” When their very lives are on the line, they say “Here am I.”

When Jesus asked some guys who were fishing do you want to do that with people? “Here am I,” they said.

When Jesus sent those same guys out in pairs to the seventy nations, what did they say? “Here am I.”

When Jesus was gone, and the disciples were all that was left, did they run away and hide? Well, actually, yes. But the women went to the tomb and they said “Here am I.”

When the Spirit showed up with all those tongues of fire and they started talking so everyone could understand them, did they sit down and clamp their mouths shut? Or did they stand up and say “Here am I”?

We don’t follow a Christ that wants us to be quiet. That wants us to sit on our hands or twiddle our thumbs. GOD wants us to stand up and say “Here am I.”

GOD wants us to see that Mary is more than the container we put her in. Her first name isn’t Blessed, and the middle isn’t Virgin. Her name is Mary. She is the favored one and she stood up. Even when that was the last thing she should have done by the world’s standards. She stood up and said

“Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”

And then she sang about a better world. GOD’s dream for the world.

A dream that still needs fulfilling. A dream that needs people to stand up. A dream that needs us.

May we see in Mary the very dream of GOD, may we see in her bravery the very nature of GOD, and may we, in the coming days, follow her lead, standing up in the midst of great injustice and personal struggle, and say

“Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”