Luke 1:39-55 (New International Version)
39 At that time Mary got ready and
hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea, 40 where she entered
Zechariah’s home and greeted Elizabeth. 41 When
Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was
filled with the Holy Spirit. 42 In a
loud voice she exclaimed: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the
child you will bear! 43 But why am I so
favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? 44 As
soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped
for joy. 45 Blessed is she who has
believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her!”
46 And Mary said:“My soul glorifies the
Lord
47 and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
48 for he has been mindful
of the humble state of his servant.
From now on all generations will call me blessed,
49 for the Mighty One has done great things for me—
holy is his name.
50 His mercy extends to those who fear him,
from generation to generation.
51 He has performed mighty deeds with his arm;
he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.
52 He has brought down rulers from their thrones
but has lifted up the humble.
53 He has filled the hungry with good things
but has sent the rich away empty.
54 He has helped his servant Israel,
remembering to be merciful
55 to Abraham and his descendants forever,
just as he promised our ancestors.”
47 and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
48 for he has been mindful
of the humble state of his servant.
From now on all generations will call me blessed,
49 for the Mighty One has done great things for me—
holy is his name.
50 His mercy extends to those who fear him,
from generation to generation.
51 He has performed mighty deeds with his arm;
he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.
52 He has brought down rulers from their thrones
but has lifted up the humble.
53 He has filled the hungry with good things
but has sent the rich away empty.
54 He has helped his servant Israel,
remembering to be merciful
55 to Abraham and his descendants forever,
just as he promised our ancestors.”
The story of Christmas is a powerful story. Believers and
non-believers alike are fascinated by its claims. We sing its songs about baby Jesus,
bewildered shepherds, a fluffy manger, and terrifying angels, but many of us
forget that one of the most striking features of the story is the woman at its
center. The woman who said to the angel Gabriel, “Yes,” when told of God’s plan
that she would bear the long awaited messiah, God’s son.
Mary’s importance was expressed by the famous 19th
century women’s right’s advocate and evangelical Christian Sojourner Truth in a
famous speech titled, “Ain’t I a Woman”. Sojourner speaking at a woman’s rally
in 1851 said, “Then that little man in black there, he says women can't have as
much rights as men, 'cause Christ wasn't a woman! Where did your Christ come
from?,” she asked. “Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man
had nothing to do with Him.”
As I was preparing this sermon, this quote haunted me. I
realized that I knew that “little man in black” that Sojourner addressed. I remembered him from my childhood at church
saying that a woman couldn’t be a deacon or church elder, shouldn’t be allowed
to pray in the pulpit, had to remain always submissive at home, and definitely couldn’t
be a pastor because, well, Jesus was a man and picked only 12 men to follow him.
And as I drew closer I realized with a certain horror that the little man in
black I remembered was me. I was taught to think those thoughts which meant
that I gave little thought to Mary as nothing more than a vessel. So, Sojourner
knew what was at stake with Mary’s story and she whole-heartedly believed in
Jesus’ singular significance as the savior of the world – this wasn’t some
secular, outsider critique nor some over –the-top Marian piety. But she also
understood two important things: 1) that
this event couldn’t have happened without God and a woman; 2) and that that
fact had everything to do with how we understand and treat “all women” in the
present– what they can do, who they can become, what they are capable of in
God’s service – and that is nothing less than the ability to join him as full
and equal partners in his Christmas mission of making the world right. That
is the story of Mary, the story for our daughters –the story I want to share
with mine this morning – that they can bring all that they are to a God who
sees them as active participants in his work, not less than men, or side-lined
in any way by their biology, but front-line soldiers, even dangerous. And
believe me friends, we live in a world where our daughters need to hear that! So, why is this a story for our daughters?
Heck, why is this a story for all of us?
1. The
story of Mary is a story for our daughters and all of us because women are
given a voice.
This all started when Mary said, “yes.” The Christmas story
is truly the extraordinary agreement between the God of the universe and a
young woman who had the guts to say “yes.” I wonder if Gabriel thought,
“Really? You’re willing to say “yes?” Do you know what could happen? It’s
important to reconstruct the world in which Mary said “yes” to the angel and
God. What was life like for women in first-century Judea?
Well – we get a clue when we look at popular literature at
the time and what it said about those in Mary's position as a young, virginal,
daughter. There is a great text that does just that. Funny enough this text
also connects to Jesus, not Jesus of Nazareth, but Jesus Ben [son of ] Sirach, who
wrote a book of proverbs around 180 B.C., which was read throughout Judea. In a
section about daughters, he write
On daughters
9 A daughter is a hidden source of
sleeplessness for her father, and anxiety about her deprives him of sleep: in
her youth, that she doesn't pass her prime, and when she's married, that she
not be hated; 10 while she's a virgin, that she not be seduced and
become pregnant while still living at home; when she's married, that she not go
straying; or having married, that she not be infertile. 11 Keep a strict
watch over an unruly daughter so that she doesn't make you an object of
ridicule to your enemies, a topic of talk in the city and the assembly of the
people, and she shame you before the crowd. 12 Don't consider
the beauty of any person, and don't spend time among women. 13 Moths come out
of clothes, and a woman's wickedness comes from a woman. 14 A man's
wickedness is better than a woman who does good and a disgraced woman who
brings shame.
The message of Jesus Ben Sirach is clear – watch out – your daughters are
dangerous to your reputation, they can bring you great shame, make you an
object of ridicule if they don’t get married or can’t become pregnant, or have
an affair. Daughters are never as good as men, even wicked ones, have
wickedness come out of them like moths come out of clothes. It's the ancient BINARY
understanding of male/female. Male is to spiritual / public as female is to unspiritual or wicked / private. In fact, in 22:3, Jesus Ben Sirach says, “It is a
disgrace to be the father of an undisciplined son, and the birth of a daughter
is a loss.” Mary said “yes” despite male advice that said that.
This culture of shame was Mary’s world and threatened to
crush her and it’s important to remember what could have happened, what should
have happened. Mary was betrothed to Joseph which meant that they were legally
husband and wife but without the final step of sexual relations. So any sexual
activity on the part of Mary would have been considered adultery and not
fornication. And in Mary’s world, the charge of adultery held mortal danger:
death by stoning - Deuteronomy 22:23-24.
If Mary was charged with adultery and disputed it she would have been
assigned the law of “bitter waters,” which came from the fifth chapter of
Numbers – a practice that still continued in the first century. The ceremony
was elaborate requiring the accused to drink a mixture of dust, holy water, and
the ink of a curse written by the priest and to do so publicly with her breasts
exposed, her clothes torn, and her hair down while passerbys looked on with
shame and disgrace. If the accused’s belly swelled, she was guilty. Mary said
“yes” despite the threat of that.
This leads us to Luke’s contrasting picture here of two
responses to God’s work and challenge to Jesus of Sirach’s view of women. Luke
1 begins with Zechariah - a male priest, “righteous before God, living
blamelessly according to all the commandments and regulations of the Lord,”
working in the temple. You can’t really get a better pedigree, a more honorable
standing – he’s bright, comes from the right family, isn’t wicked, on the
contrary, he’s a man of justice maintaining a heart-felt and sincere faith. But
he doesn’t believe and his unbelief leaves him mute – the best of Judah’s best has
his voice taken. Yet, not Mary, she gains hers. Mary, like Zachariah, has a
similar experience with an angel announcing a miraculous birth. She doesn’t
understand “how” it will take place but believes anyway. So, Luke tells us, in
vss. 39-45, that she entered Zechariah’s home and “greeted” Elizabeth –
something that Zechariah could not do – in his own home no less. Elizabeth
“heard” Mary’s greeting and her baby leaps for joy, Luke tells us, and then in
case we don’t get it as Elisabeth exclaim “in a loud voice”, “As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears,
the baby in my womb leaped for joy.” Male,
privileged, favored authority was mute and Mary, she greets and sings,
Zechariah doubts and Mary believes. Her voice, a woman’s voice, was courageous,
spirit-filled, no less.
Why is this an important story for our daughters? Because
this is not the story they often hear in society or even in the church.
My son recently informed me of an interesting metric which rated the presence of female characters in movies, called the Bechdel Test. It's a simple test which names the following three criteria for a movie to pass: (1) it has
to have at least two women in it, who (2) who talk to each other, about
(3) something besides a man. It pleases me greatly that if the our text today was a movie it would pass that test. Mary’s
story declares that women aren’t less than sons, or wicked, or simply pretty to
look at. And the world isn’t saved by the likes of Bruce Willis with machine
guns blazing or Gandolf and Bilbo fighting the dragon Smog with tons of witty
dialogue and maybe a few lines for a sexy female role. Mary is not some bit
part actor in a male drama – she’s a star, Oscar material and her voice, apart
from Jesus, did more to save the world than any other.
2. The
story of Mary is a story for our daughters and all of us because women are
given a new Beatitude. Actually, the first one!
When we think of the beatitudes, we often think of the
sermon on the mount in the Gospel of Matthew. Jesus’ manifesto recategorizing
who was actually blessed, a reorientation of the world. So its interesting that
the first beatitude in Luke’s gopel comes not from Jesus but from Elizabeth
blessing Mary’s faith (Blessed
is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her!” 1:45)
– her belief in God’s promise despite all the obstacles.
Later in Luke’s Gospel, however,
someone tries to reassert a beatitude for women not in the way Elizabeth gave
it. In Luke 11:27 a woman shouts to Jesus, “Blessed is the womb that bore you,
and the breasts that nursed you!” This sounds nice, but it seeks to fit women
back into the old paradigm of saying that only as a “wife and mother” are women
blessed, as if these are all Mary gave. A reassertion of the older model of
Sirach, that women are blessed only by their connections to male husbands and
their biological roles as mothers. But Jesus corrects the person in a shocking
way, given the thoughts about women at the time. In response, however, Jesus
says, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it!” That’s
Mary – she wasn’t blessed because she had female parts. No, God’s plan was
birthed because this young, powerless woman said, “yes.” This was Elizabeth’s
claim that she is blessed because she believed, vs. 45. Mary wasn’t blessed
because she had a womb. She was blessed because she had faith. And faith is gender
neutral, unisex!
How did Jesus come to this
conclusion? Could it not be because he heard stories about Elizabeth and his
mother – their power, their courage, their faith. This beatitude is the seed
that flowers into the belief that women can be full participants in God’s
story, in the sharing of the gospel, and the declaration found in the Christmas
song that the world will be made right “far as the curse is found.” The rupture
of sin in human relationships between men and woman is now being overturned and
women are equal partners in all things. Like men, they can hear the Word of God
and do it!
3. With
the story of Mary, all of us are given a dangerous song to sing.
Mary was a dangerous woman and not surprisingly she sings a dangerous
song. It was banned by the governments of El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, as
well as Argentina. This is Mary’s song about God in the face of real threats
and shame to women, political turmoil, revolution. Does this sound like the woman we see in the
crèche? Why is it so dangerous? Because oppression succeeds by making people
small, nothing, of little worth. And Mary sings because she is reminded that
her soul is worth something because God is mindful of her. It’s a song that
talks about what God has done and therefore what God likes to do. It’s a song
that reminds people of what God says to those that the powerful try to put
down, shame, disenfranchise. It reveals to the powerless what can happen if
they say “yes” to God – the powerful are unseated, the proud confused, the
hungry fed. What Mary realized and why
she sings is that God doesn’t simply like to use the powerless to serve His own
purposes – some sort of divine handout to the poor girl on the street – no, God uses the powerless because by using
them He empowers them, gives them a voice, offers them a new blessing, and
changes the world. “It’s time” that our daughters know that.
In the mid 1970s, 14 mothers gathered in the Plaza del Mayo
in front of Argentina’s presidential palace to protests against the military
dictatorship that had been kidnapping and torturing their children. A law
prohibited groups of three or more people from gathering in public places. Yet,
these women began to walk around the pyramid in the center of the plaza and
used Mary’s Magnificat to call for
nonviolent resistance to that military rule and helped create the grass roots
revolution that helped the military junta fall. This is the song that the powerless
sing when they hear “Greetings favored one. The Lord is with you.”
Like Mary, they sang “He has performed mighty deeds with his
arm; he has scattered those who are proud; He has brought down rulers from
their thrones and lifted up the humble . . .”
And if he has, they, along with Mary, reasoned he will do it again.
He will . . .
He will . . .
He will . . .
That’s the Christmas story for our daughters and the world!
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