Year C
 Micah 5:2-5a
 Canticle 15
 Hebrews 10:5-10
 Luke 1:39-45

May the words of my mouth O God…  speak your truth…

I have no business preaching today…  I’m a man…  and while the author of this Gospel is also a man…  this is a story about women…  in one of my seminary textbooks…  the Women’s Bible Commentary …  Carol Newsom and Sharon Ringe write that Luke’s Gospel is an extremely dangerous text…  perhaps the most dangerous in the Bible…  because it contains more material about women than is found anywhere else in the Gospels…  many of his readers insist that Luke is promoting the status of women…  he is said to be a special “friend” of women…  portraying them in an extremely progressive and almost modern fashion…  giving them a new identity and a new social status…

In today’s story about John the Baptist’s and Jesus’ origins…  Elizabeth and Mary appear in roles far more powerful than the roles of women in the rest of the Gospel…  this is the only section in which women give speeches…  and which are not followed by the women being corrected by a man…  what today we call mansplaining…  and let’s remember that Zechariah has been silenced…  and that Joseph simply says nothing… 

It may be though…  that Luke has permitted powerful women characters to speak…  it may be that the sound of Advent is the sound of women…  it may be that Luke has permitted women to speak because the context is the traditional women’s role of bearing and raising children…  and in that most vulnerable and nurturing role…  the words and emotions of Elizabeth and Mary unapologetically take front and center stage…   the ushering in of God’s kingdom…  is women’s work…  and Luke depicts Mary as the model female believer…  she is the only woman to whom Luke has given a full speech of proclamation…   and the Magnificat…

The Magnificat…  which we just heard…  is a story about God turning things upside down…  people who had no power now have power…  but not to lord it over those who did…  but because the playing field must be leveled…  the vulnerable must be given new life…  because when the valleys are being filled in… and the mountains are being made low… when the crooked ways are being made straight…  and the rough ways are smoothed down…  when all of this is being done…  it’s not to make it easier for God to get to us…  but it’s done to make it easier for us to get to God…  and make no mistake…  the Magnificat is not about the American Dream…  it’s not about money in the bank…   or capitalism…  or consumerism…  and it’s not about us always getting what we want…  but it is always about needing that which God desires for us…  and it is about what the church calls the preferential option for the poor…   a trend throughout the Bible…   and which is contained in God’s teachings and commandments…  as well as the prophets and other righteous people…  of preference given to the well-being of the poor and powerless of society…  because the poor in every generation are most always women…  and the children who are dependent on them…

Pastor Issac Villegas asks…  why was Jesus born at that particular moment in history…  and why Mary…  the Advent stories are full of bewilderment…   Mary asks the angel Gabriel…  How can this be?…  and when Elizabeth sees the pregnant Mary…   she asks…   Why has this happened to me…  that the mother of my Lord comes to me…   and she says…  as soon as I heard your greeting…  the child within me leaped for joy…  not when the child within me heard your greeting…  but when I heard…  Elizabeth was going through her own miraculous experience of new life…  and this speaks to the connection…  between mothers and their children…  especially before they are born…  and the new life inherent within and between John and Jesus…  and it is this new life…  that God prays grows in each and every one of us…

And the best explanations about the timing…  come from theologians who admit ignorance…  they say…  we have no idea why God chose that time and place for the incarnation…  other than that’s when God decided to do what God did…  Thomas Aquinas writes that Jesus was born in first-century Palestine because it was convenient…  or fitting…  because that was the timing that seemed right to God…  the apostle Paul makes a similar point in Galatians 4:4…  When the fullness of time had come…  God sent his Son…  born of a woman…

The fullness of time…  think of God…  waiting since the creation…  overwhelmed with a deep longing to draw closer to human beings…  closer to all of us…  and during God’s long wait…  love expanded in God’s heart…  stretching it to the point of bursting…   Mary’s Magnificat is what God’s heartbeat sounds like as the waiting draws to a close…   God’s words bubble up from deep within her…  Mary’s song is God’s tiny heartbeat…   translated into human language…  as prophecy…

And since scripture is the living word…  it’s transcendent capitol T truth can be expressed in the words of any time and any culture…  a few weeks ago…  we mashed-up Advent 1 and All Saints’ Day…  and so now…  I want to share a mash-up of the Magnificat…  with some new lyrics of Mary Did You Know…  re-written by Jennifer Henry…

Mary did you know, that your ancient words would still leap off our pages? Mary did you know, that your spirit song would echo through the ages? Did you know that your holy cry…  would be subversive word…   that the tyrants would be trembling when they know your truth is heard?

Mary did you know, that your lullaby would stir your own child’s passion? Mary did you know…   that your song inspires the work of liberation? Did you know that your Jubilee is hope within the heart…   of all who dream of justice…  and who yearn for it to start?

The truth will teach… the drum will sound… healing for the pain… the poor will rise… the rich will fall… and hope will live again… 

Mary did you know, that we hear your voice for the healing of the nations? Mary did you know, your unsettling cry can help renew creation? Do you know, that we need your faith, the confidence of you, may the God that you believe in…  be so true…

In the Magnificat…  Mary exclaims that her soul magnifies the Lord…  not praises…  but magnifies…  and while there are some archaic references that use magnify in place of praise… Pastor Martin Billmeier writes…  that even if we use the present day meaning of magnify…  to enlarge…   enhance…   increase…  expand…   and amplify…  we can understand that Mary’s praise at being chosen to be the mother of Messiah indicates that because she feels so blessed…  she wants to magnify the sharing of God’s goodness with others…  and Pastor Billmeier asks us to consider…  how we can make God bigger for ourselves…   so we can make God bigger for others…

Mary was blessed…  like Abraham…  she believed God’s promise without anything in writing…  without any collateral…  without anything but her faith…  and it was reckoned to her as righteousness…  she believed that God would fulfill…  what the angel Gabriel had promised her…  and so I wonder… what promises has God made to each and every one of us…  and what will it take for each of us…   to believe that God will fulfill what God has promised…