Sensing Joy
Luke 1: 46-55
The Reverend Odette Lockwood-Stewart

There is a big difference between singing “Merry Christmas” and singing Mary’s song.

Merry Christmas is great.  It sounds like “Jingle Bells.” It smells like hot spiced cider and hot cocoa.  It tastes like figgy pudding, or chestnuts roasted on an open fire, if we know what those taste like.  Merry Christmas looks like parties and twinkling lights.

Mary’s song is not merry.  It is a song of joy.  Revolutionary joy.

Like the other songs in Luke’s gospel about the coming birth of Jesus ... Mary’s song is a song of liberation for herself and her people. “God ... has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly; (God) has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.”

Mary ... 14 years old ... lived in occupied territory (very near what is today Ramallah)  She was pregnant and not married. And she sang, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior ...”

Her song was born of the history, legacy, and language of ancient Palestinian Jewish hymns.  Psalms of praise, songs of victory in the midst of struggle, the songs of Hannah, Miriam, Deborah and Judith shaped Mary’s song and Mary’s son.  

Mary rejoices in God who saves the people through centuries of domination by foreign rulers, through life under the rule of Herod and Rome’s occupation of Palestine.

And if we take seriously the substance and significance of her song, if we sense the depth and breadth of her joy, the image of a young maid meek and mild will be shattered by this song of subversive joy.

I was in Cuernavaca, Mexico, when I first saw a nativity set with an “extra figure.”  Not an angel, not a shepherd ...  no wings or gifts... another woman... a midwife!  A friend!  There was, after all, a real birth happening in that stable ... and there are real births happening now.  

The good news that lived in Mary ... lives in us.  It is brought to birth in ever-new ways in our lives and in our world as we sense the joy. The good news of this birth turns the world upside down and downside up.  And it is very messy.

Elizabeth Jarrett Andrews is Emily Hughes’ partner and a writer. She wrote about an advanced writing student who struggled because she couldn’t break out of writing neat, short pieces that seemed safe and limiting.  Elizabeth gave her a daunting assignment.  “Write 100 pages of shlock.”   She said, “I want mess. I want unanswered questions, unresolved emotions, random thoughts and memories, loose ends; I want disorder.”

She went on, ”If you want real order, you’ve got to take everything out, look at what you’ve got, get rid of stuff, and then put it back....meanwhile “you live in a state of crazy-making chaos.”

You know and I know that births and change are both painful and messy ... and no matter how much preparation you do ... you aren’t prepared because you don’t know what’s coming. Meanwhile, you “live in a state of crazy-making chaos.”

Mary’s soul magnified the Lord because God was already at work in her body, in her life, and in the life of her people.  She sang victory over powers that still held power.  She knew she would bear God, she would give birth to a new world. But she did not know how she would live or how her son would die.

Of the 12 women who have been honored in the 100 years of the Nobel Peace Prize,  there are seven living today...

Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan of Northern Ireland won the award in 1976 for peacemaking efforts that began after these women witnessed the deaths of children killed in sectarian violence.  

Aung San Suu Kyi was awarded the prize in 1991 for her leadership in the non-violent struggle for democracy and human rights in Myanmar.  She is at present the only imprisoned Nobel Peace Laureate.

Jody Williams of the United States founded the International Campaign to Ban Landmines.  Rigoberta Menchú Tum is a leader for the rights of indigenous peoples in Guatemala.  Shirin Ebadi struggles for the rights of women, children, and political prisoners in Iran. Wangari Maathai developed the grassroots Greenbelt Movement in Kenya to empower women and care for the environment

Last year six of these women formed the Nobel Women’s Initiative, to bring their experiences together, and to carry on their work – together—for peace with justice and equality. The great work of these women all began with vision born out of response to human pain.

Mary trusted God as the power that would hold her in her vulnerability and care for her in her pain.  Mary trusted God as the power that would hold her people in their suffering and liberate them from oppression.
Souls who magnify the Lord go where the pain is.  

If Mary’s song were danced through the streets of our cities, through the malls and town halls of the nation... Who would be scattered?  Who would be lifted up?  Who would be thrown down? Can we sense her joy in such a vision?

Wendell Berry wrote, “Whatever is foreseen in joy must be lived out from day to day.”

Mairead Corrigan said, "Everyday there are people in our world that do absolutely amazing things. People of all ages are very capable of doing tremendous, courageous things in spite of their fear."

Our Christmas offering this year will go in part to Free the Children.  This is an international organization started in 1995 by a 12 year old boy and six school friends. Free the Children works to end child slavery around the world by helping children fight to free children.  “People of all ages are very capable of doing tremendous, courageous things....”

I wish I could have brought you with me to a meeting I attended at Cal this week.

Dave, a dear friend and longtime activist sent me a high priority email inviting me to an urgent one-hour meeting to “to strategize the most effective way to prevent an attack on Iran and how to respond if it occurs.”  While I couldn’t say “no” to him,... I confess I went wondering who else would be there to take care of that agenda in an hour!

The agenda changed because of recently released intelligence information.

  
When I walked in I was the oldest person in the room.  All the others were young adults, young adults who are doing “absolutely amazing things:” originators, organizers and collaborators with vast new initiatives – Peace not Prejudice movements on campus, world bridges, radically diverse poetry slams, national leaders of sustained education, rebuilding and national advocacy in rebuilding the Gulf Coast, empowerment of young Latinas at King Middle School, union organizing, mentoring Oakland youth on arts and activism, congressional aides, leaders in network of spiritual progressives....

Brian McLaren has written a book titled Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crises, and a Revolution of Hope.  He said, “We can be agents of a secret revolution of hope, a global movement unleashing coordinated, well-planned acts of unterror and healing ... “

To hear Mary’s song this Christmas ... and beyond ... is to bet our lives on the belief that the birth of God-with-us turns the world downside up ... and changes our lives.  God-with-us expects those who worship to assist in births and rebirths of hope so the vulnerable are protected and the weak are strengthened ... and privilege is challenged and power finally is shaped to the contours of justice.   

In Mary’s song there is healing, and there is joy.  
The joy of Christmas.  Thanks be to God.