The First Sunday of Christmas is one of my favorite Sundays of the church year. Like the conversation about prayer in the movie, Talladega Nights, the gospel reading on the First Sunday of Christmas serves as a reminder that Jesus didn't just jump from the manger to his baptism. Along the way, Jesus grew up, experiencing a fully human life along the way.
This year, Luke 2:22-40 gives us a glimpse of what Jesus experienced in childhood as we consider our faith and the faithfulness of God.
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Merry Christmas, everyone! Though Christmas day has come and gone, we still have some time to celebrate. In fact, there are twelve days in the season of Christmas, just like in the song, twelve days to intentionally celebrate the gift of God to the world.
The First Sunday of Christmas is one of my favorite Sundays. Unlike Christmas Day where we focus specifically on the stories of Jesus’ birth, the First Sunday of Christmas often has a story set sometime between his birth and the start of his ministry at his baptism by John. For me, this makes the stories we read on this Sunday even more important in some ways than the stories of Jesus’ birth.
At Christmas, we celebrate God's grace made known to us through the person of Jesus. Rather than give up on us as we have done so often to God and others, God comes into the world to be with us. God comes into the world to show us what love means. God comes into the world offering us freedom and salvation.
This Christmas, I draw on the stories about God's grace entering the world as found in Luke and John (see Luke 2:1-20 and John 1:1-17).
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“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness doesn’t extinguish the light” (John 1:5, CEB).
At times we all sit in darkness. Sometimes it is a physical darkness. Sometimes it is a metaphorical darkness.
We struggle with the darkness of depression, of fear, of the unknown. We struggle with the physical darkness of the season. We struggle with the darkness of social and political unrest and uncertainty. We struggle with the darkness of doubt.
On this final Sunday before Christmas, we turn to one of my favorite passages of Scripture. Whether you know it as the Magnificat, the Canticle of Mary, or simply Luke 1:46-55, this song is Mary's response to the confirmation of God's love for the world. It proves that she understood exactly what she was being asked to do and exactly who her son would be - for her, for her people, and for the world.
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I want us to ponder for a moment if we can what Mary must have been feeling. Scripture tells us that she is a maiden, a young, unwed woman. She has been promised in marriage to a man named Joseph, but they are not yet married. And she has just learned that she is pregnant.
Now I could spend some time here going into some of the context about why she might find this problematic. I could talk about the culture in which she lived where most women had little standing aside from their father or their husband. I could talk about the relatively few options available to a woman who had a child out of wedlock and who therefore is denied marriage. I could talk about the overarching fear of living under those conditions while also being prisoners in your own country with armed soldiers on patrol around you.
But instead, I want you to simply think about the world we live in today. When you hear of a young, unwed, pregnant woman, what is the first thing to go through your mind? If she told a story about being visited by an angel and getting pregnant by the Spirit of God, what would we think? Imagine she insisted her child was coming into the world to offer salvation for the downtrodden and oppressed?
I won’t ask you to share your answers. Just know that those are the thoughts of us in the supposedly enlightened age of today. The truth of her own time would perhaps have been much worse.
And yet.
Knowing what people would say, knowing what people would think, knowing how very wrong it could go...Mary said yes.
We didn’t read the first part of the story in worship today. We’ve all heard the story before; perhaps there are some here that could recite it by heart. But I encourage you to go back and read the first part of this story when you have a chance. Go back and start reading from verse 26.
Mary is sometimes portrayed as this rather meek and timid person who simply does what she is told. Instead, we find that Mary takes the time to consider the news that the angel brings to her. Mary questions the angel and, by extension, God. And, in the end, Mary consents. She gives her agreement to this news that she has heard, this request that has been made of her. She agrees knowing what it will mean for her personally.
Then she sets out to visit her relative, Elizabeth. The scripture tells us that Elizabeth was six months along in her own pregnancy, even though she is described as unable to have children. If she and Mary were close, perhaps Mary already knew that she was pregnant. Or perhaps Mary is checking up on the angels story. “Could my barren cousin really be pregnant, or was that just a lie to get me to agree?”
But Elizabeth greets her and confirms her pregnancy. Elizabeth says, “As soon as I heard your greeting, the baby in my womb jumped for joy” (Luke 1:44, CEB). Not only does Elizabeth confirm her own pregnancy, she confirms the rest of the angel’s message. Mary is pregnant with the savior of the world.
And Mary’s response? She sings the song we read this morning.
I must admit, this is one of my favorite passages of scripture. It is one that I have written or preached on during Advent for at least the last five years straight. But my love for this song goes back much further.
During seminary, I became involved in the Order of Saint Luke. This is a dispersed religious community founded in the Methodist church back in the 1960s, as I recall. The primary purpose of the Order of Saint Luke is to magnify the sacraments in the life of the church.
Like many religious orders, our life together involves praying the daily office. The daily office, for those that may not know, refers to a traditional highly structured and often highly liturgical cycle of daily prayers. At a minimum, prayers are done at morning and evening, though our prayer book included prayers for seven different prayer times a day. If any of you have a United Methodist Hymnal at home, you will actually find a form of morning and evening prayer near the back of the hymnal based on the practice of the Order of Saint Luke.
Now, I know this seems a bit of a tangent, but bear with me a moment longer. Historically, several of these times of prayers came to include canticles or songs from the early chapters of the Gospel of Luke. The Canticle of Zechariah from the end of this first chapter of Luke is traditionally sung as a part of morning prayers and the Song of Simeon from the second chapter of Luke has traditionally been sung at the end of the day before bed.
However, the Canticle of Mary which we read today has long been a part of evening prayer. For centuries, Christians around the world have sung this song as a part of their prayers at the end of the working day. While I was in seminary, I sang this song once a week while gathered with others and several nights a week on my own. It is a song, a prayer, a statement, that I return to often.
This song is Mary’s response of confirmation that all these things are true. This song is Mary’s song of hope and joy and love, not just for her child but for all her child would mean for the world. This song is everything that Advent represents, all rolled up into one relatively brief passage. It is a song of peace, of hope, of joy, of love.
As we think about the gift of love this Sunday, we see in this song Mary’s knowledge of the love that God has offered, both to her specifically and to all people.
God has looked with favor on the lowly. Mary is speaking specifically about herself when she says this, but it highlights an interesting point. God does not come into the world as any of us expect it to happen. God does not come with great fanfare. God does not appear in a palace or other halls of power. Nor does God show up in the Temple or other religious arena.
God comes into the world through a woman who, by her own admission, is one of low status. God’s love is not contingent on status or limited to those of means. God comes into the world in the form of the least expected.
God lifts up the lowly. God fills the hungry. God has mercy.
These are expressions of love for the people of the world. They are expressions of love for anyone who has ever hungered or felt lonely or experienced the need for mercy. They are expressions of love felt most keenly by the people who struggle to survive, the people who are lost, the people on the margins. They are expressions of love that tell them God has not forgotten or forsaken them.
These are God’s gifts of love for us, even as they may not be the actions we normally associate with the powerful.
In this song about God’s love and what that love will accomplish in the world, Mary includes her own expressions of love. In the translation we read today, the passage begins, “With all my heart I glorify the Lord! In the depths of who I am I rejoice...” (Luke 1:46b-47, CEB). Perhaps we are more familiar with the language, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices…” (Luke 1:46b-47, NRSV). Mary says that with every fiber of her being, she wants to sing praises to God. Perhaps some of you can relate to the sensation of love expressed here.
She might as well say, “My heart can’t stop singing and my mouth will not be silent.”
This opening statement flavors everything else that Mary says here. She starts by expressing her deep and abiding love for God with all that she is and then continues by expressing the ways in which God loves us.
When I read or sing these words of Mary, I am reminded of how truly subversive this story is. It was subversive when it was written, centering a young, unwed woman of low status as the Mother of God. This story gives her agency, wisdom, voice.
It has been subversive through the centuries as it speaks of lifting up the lowly and feeding the hungry, of tearing down tyrants and leaving the rich empty-handed.
It is subversive today, as we continue to sing of God’s love and the mercy offered to people that some would claim do not deserve it. Though I have to ask, how many of us think that we do deserve it?
But I also see in this song a parallel to Jesus’ own teachings. I see here a mirror to Jesus’ teachings in the Sermon on the Mount. And I see similarities here to the Great Commandment that Jesus would highlight later in his own ministry. Kind of makes us wonder where Jesus got these ideas.
Mary expresses her great love for God.
Then, as she sings about God’s love for us, she is also highlighting what it is God would have us do for our neighbor.
Jesus taught us to lift up the lowly.
Jesus taught us to feed the hungry.
Jesus taught us to show mercy.
When I used to pray the daily office more regularly, I got in the habit of singing Mary’s song rather than just reading it. There are a couple of settings in the United Methodist Hymnal that are fairly easy to sing. I actually have a little half sheet of card stock somewhere that has the standard prayers offered throughout the day with the three Canticles on it for morning, evening, and night. The three canticles are written in such a way that they can all be sung to the same tune.
Even so, there is a relatively recent version of Mary’s song that has become my favorite. Set to a traditional Irish melody, the “Canticle of the Turning” helps us remember that Mary’s song is about love and it is about change. Mary knew that her son was coming into the world because God loves the world. She also knew that her son coming into the world would change the world.
The world is turning. God’s love is coming into the world, and the world will never be the same. With Mary, let us sing of God's love and go forth to share that same gift of love with all we may meet.
On this Third Sunday of Advent, we celebrate the gift of joy. While the themes of the various Sundays of Advent are somewhat flexible, with hope and peace in particular floating around the season, the Third Sunday of Advent has long been a celebration of joy. This is reflected in the readings appointed for the day and in the traditional opening words of worship for this day.
Today our reading comes from 1 Thessalonians 5 (see 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24) as we consider the why we have joy and how we can offer joy to others.
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In the Catholic tradition, the mass on this Sunday opens with the words, “Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I say, rejoice.” In Latin, the opening words are “Gaudete in Domino semper,” leading to the name Gaudete Sunday which some of you may have heard before.
As the season of Advent developed in the history of the Church, it sometimes takes the form of a little Lent. During the season we celebrate before Easter, our focus is on penitence and a recognition of our own shortcomings. As Advent developed, there was a similar feel of penitence as we prepare for the coming of the Lord. The season had something of a somber tone overall.
This Third Sunday serves as a small break from that. It is a Sunday for rejoicing, for remembering all that we have been given and giving thanks. It is a Sunday to step out of the sorrow and guilt that can overwhelm us in seasons of penitence and celebrate what is good in our lives and our world.
This week, we continue to explore the gifts of Advent. The second week of Advent is often about Peace. In the time of Jesus, the Hebrew people were struggling under Roman rule and looking for peace in their lives. Into that world first came John the Baptist, calling the people to repentance and reminding them that God wants to forgive them.
According to the Gospel of Mark, the appearance of John is the beginning of the good news of Jesus (see Mark 1:1-8). Drawing primarily on Isaiah, Mark helps us to see John as the voice crying in the wilderness who heralds the coming of God into the world. John is in the world pointing to the one that is coming into the world. He is reminding us to listen to God's call to us, to listen to the call to forgive, to listen to the call to peace.
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As the calendar of the church year starts over, we also switch to a new primary gospel. Where our gospel readings over the last year were primarily drawn from Matthew, the next twelve months will see readings predominately from Mark. Mark is the shortest of the gospels and, most likely, the one written the earliest. Even though many of the stories found in Mark are also found in Matthew and Luke, one of the things we will begin to notice in the coming months is the way that Mark does things a bit differently.
Maybe some of you notice this difference with today’s readings. The stories surrounding the birth of Jesus that we are most familiar with come primarily from Matthew and Luke. Luke gives us the story of the angel visiting Mary, the journey to Bethlehem, the manger, and the shepherds. Matthew gives us an angel visiting Joseph, the magi, and the escape to Egypt. Even John gets some attention at Christmas by connecting Jesus to the creation story in Genesis.
But when we look to the first chapter of Mark, we step into a story already in progress. For Mark, “the beginning of the good news about Jesus Christ” (Mark 1:1, CEB) is not in the story of Jesus’ birth, his genealogy, or his existence since the beginning of creation. For Mark, the good news about Jesus starts with John the Baptist. Mark is writing primarily for a faithful Jewish audience. His focus is not on miracles. His focus is instead on how Jesus is the Messiah, the one foretold in the prophets. So he begins his gospel by quoting the prophets.