Extreme Home Makeover
Third Sunday of Advent, 2005
Luke 1:46-55
Do you remember in school learning about the law of inertia? Like
gravity, it’s not just a good idea, it’s the law. You remember: a body in
motion tends to stay in motion while a body at rest tends to stay at rest. I
recall the first time I realized there was an equally powerful law of personal
inertia. I was lying on the couch watching a ballgame when my younger brother
said, “let’s go out and play.” I barely conjured up the energy to raise an
eyebrow in disdain. This body at rest was going to stay at rest, thank you very
much.
You know, there’s another powerful law of institutional inertia, and
probably one of societal inertia as well. The ways things are is the way things
will always be. An institution at rest has a huge “do not disturb” sign over
its doors. A society moving along any particular path – for better or for worse
– does not easily stop or even change directions. The laws of various inertias
are powerful, indeed.
But Advent undermines such laws, personally, institutionally and
socially. And, if Ron and James’ recent experience with a tumbling Christmas
tree can be taken as evidence, perhaps Advent even undermines the basic law of
physics, as well … although I imagine gravity had something to do with that
body at rest suddenly becoming a body in motion.
But I digress … which, as it turns out, is perfectly OK from a certain
cultural perspective. After all, from the perspective of the economy aren’t we
all called to digress during this season. Aren’t we
all called to get utterly lost in a frenzy of shopping and spending.
Doesn’t Christmas come wrapped up in packages, boxes and bows? Nothing says,
“Happy Holidays” like a Lexus wrapped in a bow.
But Mary’s Song, even when it comes in the beautiful strains of Bach’s
setting, utterly interrupts the digression and all of its temptations. Mary’s
Song jars us from all inertia. Mary’s Song insists that Advent time is no
digression. It is preparation, and preparation for the most profound interruption
of human history. God is getting ready to interrupt.
Advent calls us to anticipate and prepare for changes. It calls us to
anticipate and prepare for changes in our personal relationship with God. It
calls us to anticipate and prepare for changes in our personal spiritual
practices and outward expressions of piety. It calls us to anticipate and
prepare for social and institutional change as well.
I think by now that most of you expect me to talk, from time to time,
about issues of social justice. And I think it’s safe to say that you expect me
to talk, every once is a while, about issues facing the Christian church. And I
don’t think I’m taking too much risk in assuming that you all expect me, now
and then, to reflect on changes we face right here at Clarendon. I don’t
imagine it comes as too great a surprise that I might talk about changes in our
personal spiritual lives. So, no, I don’t think anyone who knows me at
least a little would be too very surprised to hear me talk, every once in a
rare great while, about change, about bending the arc of the moral universe a
bit closer to justice, about bringing our personal and vocational lives more in
line with where God calls us, about putting a little reform back in the
reformation.
So it may just strike you as the most surprising move of all that I
should confess this morning that our passage from Luke – with which we began
our worship and a version of which we sang in that Irish tune we just shared –
this passage from Luke – Mary’s Song – scares the devil out of me.
It’s OK to talk about
change. It’s OK to sing about it from
time to time. We can loudly proclaim that we are the church reformed and always
reforming. We can hang a banner over the parking lot that says we are the
church progressive, the church inclusive and the church diverse. But these
words from Luke are dangerous! They are revolutionary! And they are extremely
disquieting, uncomfortable, unsettling. This passage scares me.
It scares me because I am a straight, white, North American man – the
picture of privilege and recipient of all the benefits that come along with it.
I never had to fight for a decent education. I’ve never been pulled
over by a police officer who wondered why I was driving through the suburbs
after dark. I never had anyone tell me that doors would be closed to me on
account of my gender. No one ever said, “the church
you grew up in will not ordain you because of your sexuality.” Never had anyone
tell me that there was something wrong and evil about me because of who I love.
All I’ve ever had to do was play by the rules that were, after all, set up by
people like me to ensure the success of people like me.
When I listen to these beautiful, powerful and compelling words from
Luke – “God has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts, God has
brought down the powerful from their thrones and sent the rich away empty” – I
wonder, “how am I to hear good news in this when, after all is
said and done, I am, in fact, the proud, the powerful and the rich?’
The good news comes in the form of a simple reminder: scripture is not
all about me! Thanks be to God! You know, it’s just
not. It’s not always about me, and it’s not always about you. Sometimes it’s
just not about us.
I know that it is sometimes difficult for some of us to realize this,
but it is not all always about us. And in the case of Mary’s joyous song of
hope, it’s not nearly so much about us as it is about God.
This song is about what God has done. It is about who God is. It is
about what God cares about. It is about the heart and the passion of God.
This song of hope tells us that God cares about what is lowly
according to cultural and economic values, looking with favor “on the lowliness
of God’s servant.” It tells us that God has a heart filled with compassion for
the hungry, and that God has a passion for justice – for sorting out what
belongs to whom and returning it.
You see, God knows that food belongs to the hungry, that good news
belongs to the poor, that voice belongs to the
voiceless and power to the powerless, that dignity belongs to the outcast and
the lowly.
And, most remarkably enough, the very grammar of this song tells us
that not only does God care, but that God acts. You see, all of these
descriptions of lifting the lowly, scattering the proud, bringing the rulers
down from thrones – all of this is in the past
tense. It is as if, even though we have yet to live into the evidence, God has already done this.
From the moment of Mary’s conception, God has already done this.
The good news of the gospel is that the great turning around of all
things, the turning of the world, does not depend upon us! This is God’s doing.
Which is very good news indeed, because if it were up to me it
wouldn’t be.
It’s not that I don’t want the powerless to have power. It’s not that
I don’t want the voiceless to have voice. It’s not that I don’t want the lowly
lifted up, the captives set free, the mourners comforted, and the poor to hear
good news.
Indeed, the church at Clarendon is committed, in its common life, to
the love and justice of the gospel. I share in that commitment. You share in
the commitment. We would not be here today if we did not believe in this
promise, this commitment.
But, if we are honest with ourselves, we must acknowledge the limits
to our commitments. These limits may be ones of omission or commission. They
may be failures of faith or of imagination. They may spring from human frailty
or human fear. They may be combinations of all of these conditions, for each is
part of the human condition. And the very real social conditions at which
Mary’s Song aims are human constructs, human institutions built too often as
the reflection of human brokenness.
The church participates in this as well. Our brokenness – expressed in
policies that marginalize women, that use scripture to reinforce social
prejudice and rank bigotry, that bless an unjust status quo, and that drift too
easily into uncritical nationalisms – our brokenness as church reflects and too
often reinforces our brokenness as individuals. We are broken people – each and
every one of us. Our brokenness is uniquely our own, but each of us shares this
fundamental condition.
It does not rob Mary’s Song of its radical social, economic and
political content to suggest that each of us, in some parts of our lives, share
in the lowly estate of being human. And precisely here, at the moment when we
might be tempted to wallow in despair, when we might give in to cynicism, when
we might choose the darkness because it is familiar, God looks with favor on
the lowliness of a servant people.
Now before I succumb to the temptation to an easy escape into overly
spiritualizing Mary’s words, I want to recall what Elsa Tamez,
in Bible of the Oppressed, says about
them. She reminds us that “Mary’s song does not speak ‘of individuals
undergoing moral change but of the
restructuring of the order in which there are rich and poor, mighty and
lowly.’”[1]
That’s why Bonhoeffer called Mary’s Song
“the revolutionary word of Advent.” That’s why he warns that, at the manger “we
have to become clear … how we want to think, from this point on, about what is
high and low in human life.”[2]
Maybe this is why holiday greetings from places of power no longer
wish the recipient, “Merry Christmas,” but rather the more politically correct
“Happy Holidays.” It’s not merely more inclusive – which is a good thing – but
it’s easier, precisely because as we gather close to the manger, God is calling
us to become clear about what is high and what is low in human life, culture,
economy and politics. God is calling us to become clear about what is high and
what is low in our own human relationships. God is calling us to become clear,
to become as crystal clear as a cold winter night.
The arc of history is indeed very long, but it has been decisively
redirected by the action of a justice-loving God. Even in our time we can
perceive the ripples rolling forth, we can see the arc bending by degree. The
spread of democracy around the globe – although certainly fraught with perils
and marked by much self-interest – expresses more voice for the voiceless. The
growing global disgust with warfare – although certainly overwhelmed today by
state power – reminds us that the peacemakers are surely the children of God.
The simple fact the mail we have received at Clarendon in response to our new
wedding policy runs about 10 to 1 in support reminds us that those who once
exercised absolute authority with unquestioned prejudice are being pushed from
their thrones and replaced.
None of this is completed, but all of it is already accomplished
because God has acted in human history to bring it about.
So even in the midst of our too-often fractured world, even as each of
us struggles with our own particular brokenness, even as darkness seems to
reach out to envelop us, I will say with my brother Paul, “Rejoice always, pray
without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances;” for God has acted
decisively in the world and it is our great privilege to be called in this
moment to live more fully into the heart of God’s imagination.
God is calling us to participate fully in a world in which “the Mighty
One has done great things” for the lowly. So “do not quench the Spirit or
despise the words of the prophets, but hold fast to what is true and abstain
from what is evil.”
God is calling us to live each day into a world in which the proud
have been scattered, the powerful brought down, the hungry filled and the rich
sent away empty. So “may the God of peace sanctify you entirely; and may your
spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord
Jesus Christ.”
God is calling us to the manger, to gather as an Advent people, to
anticipate and prepare for the turning of the world. For “the
one who calls you is faithful;” and the turning of the world has begun for God
has done this and is doing it still. Amen.