Well, today we begin the Advent season, and this Sunday is actually the beginning of the new year in the church calendar—a time of preparation and anticipation of Christmas, a time of waiting for a great event—the birth of a baby. Is there anything more worth waiting for?
I know what it was like when our kids were on the way. Plans were made, preparations were made for the nursery, names considered, clothes and diapers and all kinds of other accoutrements were slid into little drawers. We were so excited as we counted down the days.
But you know in the midst of all that waiting there’s also a lot of anxiety. Will we know what to do? Will we be able to provide for this child so that he or she can grow up healthy and happy? Are we ready for this?
I saw a statistic awhile back from the USDA that said the cost of raising a child from birth through the age of 17 can run up to more than $250,000, and that doesn’t include college. The truth is that bringing up a child isn’t just an act of love, it’s an investment. No wonder that these smiling parents coming into church on Sunday morning seem to be a little extra focused during prayer time!
Most of the young families I meet, though, have done some careful preparation. They’ve done the math, worked the timetable, and juggled the job responsibilities to make room for that little bundle of joy. There are others, though, like the single soon-to-be mom who is trying to make it on her own and wants desperately to give her child a good home. Her excitement is tempered by the realization of all that responsibility. No matter how much you prepare, having a child is a very, very big deal. Ready or not, here he comes!
We read the story of Gabriel’s visit to Mary and it’s easy for us to forget that Mary was just a kid herself. Girls in first century Israel were usually married by the age of 12 or 13; about the time girls these days are just beginning to notice that boys aren’t complete nose-picking idiots. She wasn’t married yet, only engaged, and living in a culture where the shame of being pregnant out of wedlock could result in the woman being at best ostracized and at worst stoned to death. On top of that, Luke doesn’t tell us but I’m guessing that Mary and Joseph hadn’t yet talked much about children and probably hadn’t opened a Roth IRA for future college expenses. Being told that you were going to have a baby under unusual and potentially dangerous circumstances was one thing, but Gabriel told Mary also that this would not be just any baby—he would be the baby. The child she would bear would be the fulfillment of God’s covenant with David (Luke 1:36-33), the Messiah who would save the world. Talk about your major announcements!
We certainly couldn’t blame Mary if she had simply said, “No, thanks.” She could have turned into a first century version of a “runaway bride.” Instead, she only asks one question: “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” (1:34). A lot of theological energy has been spent trying to definitively answer that question from a spiritual and physiological perspective. Luke, however, doesn’t give us a comprehensive lesson in divine obstetrics. The angel says that God’s Spirit would “come upon” Mary, and God’s power would “overshadow” her, making the child soon to be in her womb special indeed. Regardless of the physiology, this child would be called “Son of God” (1:35).
Talk about responsibility! And yet, young Mary responds not with fear, but with joy. Despite all the difficulty, the uncertain future, the possibility of bringing shame on herself and her family, the pain of childbirth and the long-term commitment, Mary said yes to the task she was being given. “Here am I, the servant of the Lord;” she said. “Let it be with me according to your word” (Luke 1:38).
Rather than being worried, Mary can’t wait to tell someone. She runs to her cousin Elizabeth’s house, who is herself pregnant with a son in her old age—a son who was also announced by an angel to her husband, Zechariah, and who would become John the Baptizer. Together, Mary and Elizabeth celebrate the news that God had somehow chosen them—the young and the old, the poor and the pious, the unlikeliest of people, to bring babies into the world that would not only bring joy to their homes, but hope for the whole world..
If you’re waiting for the arrival of a baby, you know it’s going to take nine months, give or take. But the baby that Mary is carrying has been anticipated a lot longer than that—indeed, the announcement of his coming went all the way back into Israel’s history—all the way back to Abraham. God promised Abraham that from his family, all the families of the world would be blessed. From that family came a nation called Israel, whom God rescued from slavery in Egypt and gave them a promised land. There God established a king, David, and promised David that one of his descendants would sit on the throne of Israel forever and establish God’s justice and mercy and peace—God’s kingdom—for the whole world.
But Abraham’s family and David’s kingdom both crumbled under the weight of sin. What could have been beautiful became broken because of their disobedience and rejection of God. The result was a people that were broken, exiled, occupied, and enslaved not only by the foreign powers of Babylon and now Rome, but by the even more insidious powers of sin and death—powers that enslave the whole world.
But the promise of the prophets was that one day the new king would be born—God’s chosen one—who would topple the powers of sin and death by taking them on himself. Isaiah had talked about him as the suffering servant, the wonderful, counselor, mighty God, prince of peace—the one whom the world had waited for.
Mary knew this story because it was the story of her people. For her, as for all of God’s people, the story of Scripture was the story. And now, somehow, impossibly, unbelievably, she was going to play a supporting role. The time of waiting was coming to an end, and all she could do was…sing!
“My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,” she sings. We call her song the “Magnificat” because of the first word in Latin—magnify, intensify, reflect, make brighter. Mary sings because she magnifies the joy that God himself feels at the announcement that the time had come.
Indeed, God makes his announcement to the ones who need to hear it most—the poor, the lowly, the broken, the marginalized—those who have no power. Mary represents them—a young woman, barely perceived as a person in that patriarchal culture, with no status, no prospects, and with a common name, living in a tiny village in the middle of nowhere. And yet, she sings:
“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.”
Remember that when the angel greeted Mary he addressed her as “favored one” (1:28). It was not that Mary was particularly righteous or worthy, though some Christian traditions have assumed that understanding, yet she is “favored” or blessed with the task of bearing the Messiah. It wasn’t her character that made her worthy, though I’m fairly sure that she was faithful based on her response. Instead, like her ancestor Abraham, God “favored” Mary—an ordinary girl in an ordinary place—and blessed her so that she might be a blessing to the world, a vital link in the covenant chain that God had begun with Abraham generations before (Genesis 12:2). We call her blessed because she blessed the world by saying “yes” to God. “Let it be with me according to your word.”
The blessing that God will work through her will come via the son that she bears—God’s own son, who will come to save his people from sin, but also to overturn the power structures that had so long held people in slavery. She sings:
“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 his descendants forever.”
What Mary sings about here is the promise of what happens when God occupies the earth as its true king. When God is king, all human power structures get overturned—the proud are replaced by the humble, the hungry are filled and the wealthy go hungry. And if you pay attention to the verbs in her song, they are past tense. Mary sings as though these things have already happened. Such is the confidence of faith! The child that she carries is God’s own Messiah…indeed, God himself—the king who comes and announces in his words and actions that the kingdom has arrived.
To put it another way, we might say that Mary’s song is the outline for everything that God’s son will do when he grows to manhood. He will scatter the proud and self-righteous by exposing their true selves. He will challenge powerful kings like Herod and Caesar, not through revolution or protest, but by setting up an alternative kingdom where true justice and mercy and peace rule—a kingdom that will one day trump all the others. He sat at table with the poor, the hungry, the sinners and the outcasts, filling them with hope, while the wealthy walked away from his call to give up their things in exchange for finding the kingdom. The Gospel writers tell us that the rich fools and rich young rulers walked away from Jesus empty, while the poor were fed with an abundance of bread on a hillside. The child that Mary carries will turn the world upside down. This is what happens when his kingdom occupies the whole world.
So Mary sings, even though we know what all of this will cost her. A sword will pierce her soul, she is warned when Jesus is just a baby. She will lose him and frantically search for him for three days when he’s a young boy because he is about his father’s work in the temple. She will think he has gone completely made when he turns thirty and leaves home to start preaching and challenging powerful people. And she will suffer the agony of watching him die on a cross, nailed there by the powers that always do that to those who would oppose them. But all that is in the future. For now, she sings.
We sing our Christmas carols, too, knowing that Good Friday is not far away. We sing them knowing where this child will go and what he will do. We sing them knowing that there is a cross ahead, but also and empty tomb.
But our Christmas carols often miss the power of this first one, sung by a insignificant girl in an insignificant town in an insignificant place, but with significant and ultimate hope and joy. The birth of a child is something to sing about because it changes things. Mary’s child will change everything. She believed the promise.
The question for us, however, is whether we live with the kind of faith that Mary had—a faith that things have already started to change. It’s too easy for us to look at what’s going on and think that nothing will ever change. We see gridlock everywhere we turn—in government, in economics, in poverty, in war, in everything. We hope that someone, somewhere, will change things.
But what if that someone is us? What if it is our job, as disciples of Jesus, to bear his truth, his grace, his mercy, his justice, his kingdom into the world?
I’ve been collecting icons for a few years now, and one that hangs prominently in my office depicts Mary holding the child Jesus and is titled with the Greek word that the Eastern Orthodox churches use to describe her: Theotokos, which means “God-bearer.” That’s a perfect description of what Mary did in giving her consent to the divine mission she was being offered. “Here am I, the servant of the Lord. Let it be with me according to your word.” Let it be that through me, your king and your kingdom will come, and your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. That’s a God-bearing life, and a God-bearing life changes things. God’s blessing always comes to us on its way to someone else.
What would happen if we looked at every day as an opportunity to be God-bearers? How would things begin to change if everyone who follows Christ began every day with Mary’s “yes” to God—“Here am I, the servant of the Lord. Let it be with me according to your word.”
Think about it. Start with a simple example. You’re in the grocery store and a mom with several anxious children is behind you in the register line. She’s at her wit’s end, just needing to get to the car and get her crying toddler home for a nap. You’re busy and in a hurry, too, but here’s a perfect opportunity to step out of line and say to yourself,
“Here am I, the servant of the Lord. Let it be with me according to your word.”
When there is conflict in your workplace, you have an opportunity to be a peacemaker through your calming presence. “Here am I, the servant of the Lord.”
While the government argues about spending and taxes and programs, you have an opportunity to serve people in need rather than waiting for someone else to do it. “Here am I, the servant of the Lord.”
Where there is injustice and where people are marginalized because they are different, you have an opportunity to say, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord,” and show them the love of Christ who lifts up the broken.
If you’re worried and afraid of what lies ahead, take the example of Mary who trusted God in a tough circumstance. “Here am I, the servant of the Lord.”
If you’re wealthy, you have an opportunity to say, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord,” and use your wealth to invest in people rather than more things.
If you’re poor and wonder if you have anything at all to give, you remember that, like Mary you can still serve, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord.”
If you’re looking for a purpose in your life, the coming of Jesus gives you one—a purpose in living and working for the kingdom. “Here am I, the servant of the Lord.
Advent is a time of waiting, but like busy parents we, too, need to be at work preparing the way for Christ to come into our world and into our lives. When we serve the Lord, when we recognize that the king has come, we begin to see the world very differently. We begin to see the kingdom breaking in all around us, and we can sing with joy because of it.
May we all become joyful God-bearers for the kingdom.


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