The Rev. Ann R. Lougee
December 16, 2007
Rejoicing while waiting
Isaiah 35:1-10; Luke 1:46-55

“My soul magnifies the Lord...” begins Luke’s poem. Luke depicts Mary singing that song in a time when it would have been difficult to say she was happy. We’re so used to pretty Christmas cards and Renaissance paintings and statues showing Mary looking healthy and serene in a clean, blue gown that we may lose sight of the fact that she was not in a very enviable position.

We know from the nuptial customs of that time and place that she would have been only thirteen or fourteen years old, engaged but not yet married. And she was pregnant. The best she might hope for in that culture, in that time and place, was to be ostracized from society; the worst she might expect would be being stoned to death. Either way, she’s in big trouble.

Her situation is of one looking up out of the bottom of a well, so that one might expect her to quote the psalm “Out of the depths I cry to you. Lord, hear my prayer.” Yet the song Luke gives her to sing is instead one of rejoicing in God’s presence and God’s promises.

In Luke’s creation, it isn’t just Mary’s voice we hear in this song, but one voice among many. Centuries earlier, Isaiah had used similar words to encourage Jewish exiles, painting for them a picture of the way God would someday set things right and lead them back to their homeland. He encouraged them to rejoice in God’s presence and promises as they waited for their fulfillment.

So in Mary’s song, the song of a pregnant, unmarried teenager, Luke makes us hear the voices of people who have nothing except hope for God to do a new thing. From the underbelly of society, Mary sings of revolution, of an upheaval of society in which God sees to it that the hungry are filled and the rich are sent away empty. This is a politically seditious message that challenges common assumptions about who is in charge and who is not.

Everybody expects that there is good news for the fortunate who are presumed to be worthy of their good fortune, perhaps even favored by God. But Luke’s composition of Mary’s song tells a different good news, the good news that God acts on behalf of those need to be lifted up above their own lack of self-esteem and lack of respect from others.


While most of us occupy a much better position in life, we can hear our own voices in Mary’s song too, from our own struggles. There’s a lot of pain here in this sanctuary this morning. There is bereavement, some that is fresh and raw, and some that has settled down into a dull ache.

There is the sense of loss that comes from dealing with aging or illness in oneself or one’s loved ones. There are the struggles which accompany growing up, and the anxiety of watching and praying for young people in those struggles.

There are broken relationships and difficulties with relationships. There are disappointments, comparing what we actually have and how we actually are to what the culture tells us we ought to have and be at holiday time.

In the gospel of Luke, Mary voices all of these pains and more. Out of the darkness and fear of her situation comes her song filled with hope, and yes, with joy. For Luke portrays her as one who regards herself as being “saved,” as having her deep distress transformed by God, by love, into blessing.

Mary’s song expresses faith in God’s presence in the dark times, the difficult times, the times that feel hopeless. This kind of faith allows one to feel joy even while waiting out a difficult situation. This is faith in Emmanuel, in God’s truly being with us in all the messiness of our human condition.

For, of all the places for us to see God enfleshed, we see God in Jesus, a Jewish peasant from a little backwater town called Nazareth, a man who was murdered by the authorities, not because of the peculiarity of his birth, but for the revolutionary quality of his life. Jesus was violently tortured to death, not because he was a baby conceived out of wedlock, but because of the revolutionary things he said and did once he was grown up.

But for now, we focus, with Luke, on Mary awaiting his birth. Giving birth is hard, messy work — that’s why it’s called labor. It takes pushing, grunting, and bearing down, and it rarely happens without pain and tears. But it brings new life and a new presence of God into the world. The face of a mother bringing a wanted, longed-for life into the world shows pain and joy at the same time. To experience joy is to give oneself over to the fullness of life. That fullness includes not just all of life’s pleasures and riches but also all of its pains.

That’s what Christmas is really all about. It’s not about just being happy. It’s about being full of God, full of life, full of joy — pregnant with life, with God, with joy.
The Eastern Orthodox Church calls Mary the theotokos, “the God bearer,” for in giving birth to Jesus she bears God into the world. Meister Eckhart, the medieval Christian mystic, wrote that we are all called to be mothers of God in our own time and place, to bring God to new birth. “What difference does it make,” he wrote, “that Jesus was born once long ago if Christ be not born anew in my heart?”

Giving birth to a new life isn’t easy. Giving birth to God by living out the faith we claim isn’t easy either. That kind of faith and that kind of living may take some pushing and grunting and bearing down, and we can be pretty sure it will be messy and painful, at least sometimes. But in saying “yes” to the part we can play in bringing God to birth in our time and place we can also find and joy in heart and soul.

We are called to give God’s spirit of love flesh and blood anew in our lives, to let Christ be born in us and live anew. May we find joy, in saying “yes” to God’s call to fullness of life. Joy to the world! Amen.