Jarrett McLaughlin
A Weary World Rejoices: “and the soul knew its worth”
Luke 1:39-56
December 22, 2024
Cold Open:
The force that attracts any two objects with mass toward one another – this is a simplistic definition of gravity as articulated by Isaac Newton.
Another Newtonian concept: The power of this attractive force is directly proportional to the respective mass of each object – I don’t speak “Physics” very well, so those of you who do can correct me later, but what I mean to convey is that the greater the object, the more powerfully it acts upon lesser objects.
This is why the Moon (the smaller object) orbits around the Earth (the larger object) and why the Earth orbits around the Sun (a far bigger object). Gravity, Newtown argued, is a universal constant. Like an apple falling to the ground – it always behaves the same way.
Except – when it doesn’t.
A reading from the Gospel of Luke, chapter 1
Scripture:
In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth.
When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leapt in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leapt for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.’
And Mary said,
‘My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour,
for he has looked with favour 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.
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 to his descendants for ever.’
And Mary remained with her for about three months and then returned to her home.
The Word of the Lord
THANKS BE TO GOD.
Sermon:
On planet Earth, the gravitational constant is 9.8 meters per second squared. That’s the acceleration of an object falling to earth.
As a young, unwed and prematurely pregnant mother-to-be, Mary is this close to discovering just how fast you can fall.
Don’t be fooled by the soft glow of countless nativity scenes.
The gravity of her situation cannot be overestimated
First – there’s Joseph. In Luke’s Gospel, Joseph is practically non-existent – he doesn’t have a single line in Luke’s Christmas pageant – but none of this changes the fact that he could utterly destroy Mary’s life for becoming pregnant out of wedlock. The Law is on his side – if he wanted to push her, Mary would certainly fall.
To his credit, he doesn’t make that choice.
But in Luke, after the angel Gabriel informs her she would conceive a child, Mary doesn’t even go to Joseph.
Instead, she immediately runs to her cousin Elizabeth.
Perhaps that seemed like the safer thing to do – woman to woman – she will understand, right?
Maybe, but maybe not.
Luke has already described Elizabeth as being “righteous before God, living blamelessly according to all the commandments of the Lord.”
That’s Elizabeth – Mary on the other hand….well, in that culture, let’s just say pregnant before marriage isn’t what one would call living blamelessly according to the commandments.
So when Mary goes to Elizabeth, she could have been met with a giant helping of judgment.
It could have been “Shame on you, Mary. How could you bring disgrace upon yourself and upon your kin….upon me!”
It could have gone that way – Lord knows the ones who think of themselves as blameless have a way of heaping shame on everybody else.
But instead of shame, Mary is met with blessing – “blessed are you among women,” Elizabeth says, “and blessed is the fruit of your womb.”
On the precipice of falling, Elizabeth’s blessing comes to Mary as grace so amazing, so spectacular that it defies the gravity of her situation. Mary cannot help but break into song:
Something has changed within me…(shake it off) – no wait, wrong song…that’s from Wicked –
And yet something has changed within Mary.
This grace emboldens her to sing a song of grateful praise.
The verses that follow are often called the Magnificat, so named after the Latin translation of the first line – Magnificat anima mea Dominum – “My soul magnifies the Lord.”
She sings a song of God looking with favor on the lowest of servants.
She sings a song of God who bestows marvelous honor upon the most unlikely of people.
She’s singing about herself.
We first meet Mary as a young woman standing before an Angel who tells her that she – of all people – will bear the son of God. Luke tells us that Mary “was much perplexed by his words.”
That’s the line Luke uses – she was much perplexed by his words.
That’s not difficult to imagine – bearing the son of God? Me? Some ordinary peasant-girl who can’t even hide her miraculous pregnancy behind the respectable guise of being married already.
But here, in the presence of Elizabeth who blesses her;
in the presence of an in-utero John the Baptist who does a somersault at the sound of her voice – it all snaps into place for her.
“Ooooooh! I get it,” Mary realizes, “Looking with favor on the lowly…this is what God does.
This is who God is.”
At long last she realizes that – in the eyes of God – she is not just some lowly peasant girl.
She can be and will be a god-bearer – somebody capable of bringing holiness into a weary world.
Future generations will call her blessed.
Finally, the soul knows its worth.
And so she breaks into song –
“I think I’ll try defying gravity…”
Ah – wrong song again.
Here’s the thing – though.
Mary’s song is not just about her defying gravity – it’s so much bigger than that.
Her song is about everyone knowing their worth in the eyes of God.
She sings of God lifting up the lowly poor and bringing the proud down from their thrones.
She sings of God filling the hungry and sending the rich away empty.
She sings about a God who is overthrowing the gravitational constant; a God who is completely erasing the categories of the haves and have-nots.
The ones who are expendable and tossed aside are in fact close to the heart of God.
The ones who seem so high and mighty – like they will stand forever – they are already falling.
In a recent article entitled “The Shock of Faith,” David Brooks explored his own experience of the divine in the most un-awe-inspiring location:
One morning in April, he writes, I was in a crowded subway car underneath 33rd Street and Eighth Avenue in New York (truly one of the ugliest spots on this good green earth). I looked around the car, and I had this shimmering awareness that all the people in it had souls. Each of them had some piece of themselves that had no size, color, weight or shape, but that gave them infinite value.
It’s not always easy to see the worth of another human soul, much less the worth of our own soul. And yet there are moments when that truth snaps into place and it all makes sense.
Those moments can occur just as easily in a New York subway car as it can in Nazareth – but suddenly the value of every human life comes into focus and it changes you.
There’s a theological question here that is worth exploring;
A question that might make us a little nervous –
Does God in fact love the poor more than the rich?
It’s not a stretch to interpret the Magnificat as a manifesto against the wealthy.
One might even imagine the Magnificat inspiring some to take matters into their own hands and give God a little help “toppling the mighty.”
I need to say that this would be a gross mis-reading of this text.
The Magnificat is not there to inspire the Luigi Mangiones of the world.
At no point does Mary sing about God lifting up the lowly so that they might destroy the mighty ones. This is NOT a song of revenge or recompense.
If I understand the text, God is bringing down the mighty and lifting up the lowly so that they might finally be on the same footing – equals in the family of God.
So – does God love the poor more than the rich? No.
But, in the world as it is, does God draw especially close to the poor?
Absolutely – how else will they come to know their worth?
In her novel The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver tells the story of a family on a mission in Africa. The father is Nathan Price, a Baptist minister so driven by his need to save souls that he drags his wife and four daughters into the Congo.
The story that unfolds is one of a spectacular missionary failure. Nobody knows better than Nathan and he refuses to learn anything from those he would serve.
The book is narrated through the eyes of his four daughters – One of them, named Adah, is partially paralyzed on one side of her body and so walks with a significant limp. Her disability has taught her that she is not worth as much as her sisters.
One night their village is overtaken by a massive colony of Driver Ants – the insects cover the ground and walls and trees and devour everything in sight.
While Nathan rants about judgment coming upon the heathen village like the Ten Plagues of Egypt, his wife and children do the more sensible thing and run for their lives. The only escape is to reach the river and get into a boat until the threat passes.
Adah fears that, with her limp, she will not make it – that she will be left behind and die. Adah sees her mother carrying the youngest daughter Ruth May and in that moment of crisis, it solidifies what she has suspected all along – that she is worth less in the eyes of her mother.
But, as they are fleeing and as Adah is falling behind, her mother places Ruth May in the arms of another villager and she stops to snatch Adah up and get her to safety. It’s a defining moment in Adah’s life – one that she returns to over and over again, wondering why her mother made that choice. Years later, Adah finally confronts her mother about that moment. She recounts:
The night before Christmas, I woke up my mother and finally asked her why she chose me that day at the Kwenge river.
Mother hesitated, knowing there were many wrong answers. Finally, she said “After Ruth May, You were my youngest, Adah. When push comes to shove, a mother takes care of her children from the bottom up.”
Mary has come face to face with the God who loves her children from the bottom up.
Countering all the years she has spent internalizing her worthlessness, Mary is suddenly snatched up in the arms of the God who chooses her to bring Christ into the world. It is grace so amazing, so spectacular that she cannot help but break into song.
“Just You and I – defying gravity”
For those of you familiar with the musical, and now film, Wicked, it has clearly been a thread woven through this sermon…for the second week in a row.
You’ve probably been living through the past 15 minutes terrified that I might attempt breaking into the musical’s signature, show-stopper of a song, “Defying Gravity.” Fear not, I am not that foolhardy.
It’s recognized as one of the most complicated songs in all of musical theater. Because it’s even more difficult for me to speak Music than it is to speak Physics, I turned to google to tell me why it is such a difficult song to sing..
Apparently – “Defying Gravity” is so challenging because it is written in four different keys with a staggering number of flats and sharps, it changes time signatures twice and has five dynamic notations throughout that constantly push the vocalist’s range to max out.
I don’t know what any of that means – I have no doubt that it is a very difficult song to sing.
And – I have a sneaking suspicion that the Magnificat is even harder to pull off.
Mary has to do what might be the hardest thing of all – the thing that we all struggle to do:
She has to trust in her own worth.
She has to defy all the self-doubt that so easily drags her as well as the lowly masses down.
Mary has to trust that she is blessed – and that the lowest of servants soar in the sight of God, who loves her children from the bottom up.
I have no doubt the Magnificat pushed Mary’s range to the max.
But wow, what a show-stopper.
What a show-stopper indeed.