St. Mary the Virgin

August 18, 2002

Isaiah 61:10-11                          Psalm 34                St. Mary the Virgin

Galatians 4:4-7                                                                  Luke 1:46-55

"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… 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.”  (Luke 1:47-48, 52-53 NRSV)

Powerful and wealthy people do not need a savior. The very word “savior” brings forth images of need, absence of health and welfare, danger, loss, poverty, oppression and crying for help.

Mary needed a savior and her people needed a savior. God had promised that Abraham’s descendents would be saved from their enemies and here was that savior. The Romans had oppressed the people in Israel just as the Syrians and Babylonians had in older times, but this time the people of Israel were left in their own land to work for the benefit of another instead of being carted off to a strange and alien land.

Mary was from a poor family. There was no middle class in her society and she was not wealthy. She was certainly not singing about being sent away from the table empty, but about being invited into the feast, about being fed real food and not scraps.

Here was someone who would fulfill God’s promises and save His people. And it was her son. She was overjoyed, elated. Eugene Peterson says it this way in his translation of the Magnificat, “I’m bursting with God-news; I’m dancing the song of my Savior God.”

Mary was probably thinking that Jesus would raise up an army and defeat the Romans with strength and shrewdness and then he would be crowned king. She probably imagined him putting the traitorous leadership of the Jewish people in prison and setting up a land where honest people could live out their lives working and praising God. Her son would be a magnificent leader, like David, and would bring peace by defeating Israel’s enemies and would bring justice by defeating the corrupt powers of the Jews in league with the Romans. It was a great dream, but it was not to happen.

Jesus would be the savior all right, but at the cost of his own life, not the lives of Roman soldiers and Jewish aristocrats.

Mary is to be honored for her commitment to following God’s voice in her life. Imagine the hope Mary must have held for her son, the dreams of greatness. All mothers have dreams that their children will be great, that their children will shine in a special way. Mary was no different, but had the added boost of a vision that told of her son’s greatness.

Her child would save the Jews from the Romans. He would bring justice back to all people. He would lift up the poor and feed the hungry. He would tear down the mighty with the help of God.

And all because she had obeyed God’s word to her. God had looked with favor on her and she was blessed.

Now jump forward a few years from the exuberance of a teenager about to have her first baby, the exuberance of a young mother-to-be sharing her hopes with her older mother-to-be cousin, jump forward from this to the anguish of a mother looking on as her son hangs naked and disgraced on a cross, his bones out of joint and his body bruised and beaten. And wonder with me for a moment about how she felt about obeying God’s word now. Where was God in all this? Even her son cried out, “My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?”

And all because she had obeyed God’s word to her.

No wonder Mary is held in such high esteem for her faithfulness. How many of us could stand at the foot of the cross knowing that our obedience to God brought about this tragedy and not lose what was left of our faith right there? But we all stand at the foot of the cross. Because it’s the only place to stand. We stand at the foot of the cross knowing that because of us, this tragedy has occurred.

Perhaps some of us would rather not be there, would rather not look at the dying and broken body and see our part in it. But that is the only way that this savior business works. It’s not about crowns and noble battles; it’s about crosses and senseless beatings. Philip Yancey reminds us in Soul Survivor of the constant refrain in Martin Luther King, Jr.’s sermons and speeches, “Christianity has always insisted that the cross we bear precedes the crown we wear.”

This is the folly that Paul spoke of when he said that the cross is shame to the Jew and folly to the Greek. How could a man dying on a cross save anyone? Why do we need that kind of savior? In fact, if that is being saved, why do we want to be saved at all? Good questions. And some days I’m not sure that I like to think about it and not sure I’ll like the answer when I do give it consideration.

If that is my savior, then what kind of need must I be in that a dying man could save me? The more questions I ask the less I like the answers until I finally get to the question of, “How did he get here, anyway? This was the chosen one; the one God would use to show us His ways. How did he get to be hanging on a cross from being the object of so much hope?” And as I answer my own foolish question I remember what brought him here. Obedience to God’s voice.

He chose to obey God and love rather than to conquer. Like his mother, Mary, he chose love over appearances. Jesus could have stirred up a crowd in Roman occupied Palestine. He came into town on a donkey when he could have ridden in on a war-horse. He could have opted for the crown of gold and gemstones over the crown of thorns. But that is not God’s way. It is not God’s way to bring about justice through the means of injustice, something we would do well to remember as we try to heal the broken pieces in this world.

That is what it means to be healed by the man dying on a cross. It means we have to recognize our own need for healing, our own broken lives and our own poverty. If we are rich, if we are wealthy in all things, if we are powerful, then we have no need of God’s healing in our life. It is only the blind who need to receive sight and the deaf who need to hear. If we are already “whole”, there is nothing for God to do with us.

We reject God because we don’t need him. Some say that is why the rich were sent away empty in the Magnificat, they believed that they lacked nothing and needed nothing, therefore God had nothing to give them because they were full of themselves. That view is consistent with the Beatitudes as translated by Eugene Peterson, “Blessed are you when you are at the end of your rope, when there is less of you there is more of God.” Or, “Blessed are you when you’ve lost it all, God’s kingdom is there for the finding.”

When we recognize our poverty then we can accept the riches that God has for us. But first we have to give up the idea that we are “fine” and “whole”, we have to give up the idea that we can control everything and make everything work out OK. Some things don’t work out OK, at least from our limited perspective. Perhaps Mary felt that way at the foot of the cross.

But God does have promises for us. Promises that we will never be alone, that we will be made whole in love, in God’s love and in God’s time. The promises don’t say that we won’t endure the cross, but that Jesus has endured the cross and is there with us. And that is how a dying man can heal us. Through his suffering we know that God does not abandon us, but raises us through the suffering to a new life, a life closer to the love we have sought from the beginning.

Philip Yancey relates a famous story about the early experience of Dr. King as he was chosen as a spokesman for the burgeoning civil rights movement in Montgomery, Alabama. When word got out about his being selected as a leader, Dr. King was arrested and thrown in jail for driving 5 mph over the speed limit. After being released from jail he was sitting at home wondering if he could take on the cross of this kind of leadership. He had wanted to find a quiet place where he could pursue some scholarly work.

The phone had rung about midnight and the caller had threatened his life, the life of his family and his home. Dr. King was scared and wondering how to bow out of this role. His wife and baby daughter were asleep in the next room and he sat thinking about them, as well. King remembers the story in a sermon:

I sat at that table thinking about that little girl and thinking about the fact that she could be taken from me any minute. And I started thinking about a dedicated, devoted and loyal wife, who was over there asleep…And I got to the point that I couldn’t take it anymore. I was weak…

And I discovered then that religion had to become real to me, and I had to know God for myself. And I bowed down over that cup of coffee. I will never forget it…I prayed a prayer, and I prayed out loud that night. I said, “Lord, I’m down here trying to do what’s right. I think I’m right. I think the cause that we represent is right. But Lord, I must confess that I’m weak now. I’m faltering. I’m losing my courage.”

…And it seemed at that moment that I could hear an inner voice saying to me, “Martin Luther, stand up for righteousness. Stand up for justice. Stand up for truth. And lo I will be with you, even until the end of the world.”… I heard the voice of Jesus saying still to fight on. He promised never to leave me alone. No never alone. No never alone. He promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone.

Most of us will never get to that point of desperation where we believe our family is at stake or our life is at stake if we follow where God leads us. Sometimes I think it would be easier to have such a stark choice, to know that things are out of my control and that I have to rely on God. It’s easy to believe that I can control life and that I am fine and don’t need any help, or at least don’t need such drastic help as that which a savior, a dying one at that, might offer.

But finding myself in need, finding myself in poverty, is the only way to the sharing of God’s love. Because God can’t fill the full and God can’t heal the healthy. God can, however, give health and wholeness to all of us who are in need. And God can invite all of us who are hungry to a feast. And God can raise the dead, even the spiritually dead. And God can be with all those who are in poverty and are suffering, because God has been there in the life of Jesus, the life of Mary his mother, and God continues to be there in our life today. +