Transformed by Hope:  Choosing Joy
2 Samuel 7: 1-11
Luke 1: 46-57
A Sermon by the Reverend Odette Lockwood-Stewart

I wish you a very Mary Christmas!  ... M-a-r-y Christmas!
To understand the reason for the season ... to understand the meaning and the message of Jesus... listen to the song of his mother.

Every year Mary's song sounds urgency and promise, comfort and challenge.  Every year one Sunday in Advent, approaching Christmas, we give our primary attention to the one whose faith precedes Jesus‚ birth, the one whose courage welcomed Jesus, the one whose love wrapped around him like loving arms, the one whose revolutionary "yes" upended the accepted order of the world's people and powers.

"My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my savior, for God has looked with favor on the lowliness of this servant ... has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty."

To know the depth of joy in the carols we sing, and to receive the presence we celebrate on Christmas, we must unwrap our minds and hearts and open our souls to a song of liberation sung by this poor, unwed, pregnant teenager living in occupied territory, near what is today Ramallah.

Mary's song is not just Mary's song.  She sings for her people.  She praises God for turning the way of the world upside down and downside up!  She echoes the song of Hannah centuries before.  Hannah sang, "The bows of the mighty are broken, but the weak are strengthened.  Those who were full have hired themselves out for bread, but those who were hungry have ceased to hunger." (I Samuel 2:1ff).  Mary‚s song gives voice and gives good news to people in sustained poverty.  As Richard A. Horsely says in his book, The Liberation of Christmas, "If we take seriously the substance and significance of her song...in the Magnificat...Mary meek and mild becomes Mary our mother revolutionary."

As in this morning‚s text from 2 Samuel, Mary‚s soul magnifies a God whose presence cannot be contained in a house, temple, or Tabernacle, tent, regulation or dogma... Mary's spirit rejoices in a God in the people, who moves, walks, and lives in the midst of history, surprising, reversing expectations.  Mary remembers the future...now.

 God has lifted me up ...the powerful have lost their authority ...the rich are being sent empty away and the poor are fed and flourishing.

We have heard a lot about Wall St. and Main St. in recent days. Mary's song belongs to those in her day as in our own who lived in hardship and hunger long before any particular economic crisis, the anawim, the poor, those living in the socio-economic-political shadows, overlooked, ignored.  

In the synagogue in Nazareth Jesus chose the scroll of the prophet Isaiah to begin his public ministry, continuing the message of his mother's song, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because God has anointed me to preach good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captive and recovery of sight to the blind, to set the oppressed at liberty and proclaim the year of God‚s favor."

Jesus teaches the hard work of justice and the reordering of relationships and he talks about the cost of following him.  But he promises full life ... abundant life.  The apostle Paul says, "The joy of the Lord is your strength." As we align ourselves with life-sustaining and life-changing joy... we participate in that wondrous reversal of which Mary sang and in which Jesus lived and taught and served and died and rose.  We inherit a legacy of enduring joy.  In the Book of Acts 17:6 one of the charges leveled against Christians was, "These people are turning the whole world upside down!"

Hear the song of Maria, another Mary, a Chilean woman,...
"With pride and dignity I sing my song of joy
I feel the Lord's presence;
I am poor and vulnerable...but the Lord looked upon me
And the history of the poor will give witness to my joy.

God is unfettered and unpredictable,
God's power shows itself each day when God exposes the foolishness of the powerful.  God uncovers the feet of clay of those in power and nourishes the yearning of the poor.
To those who come hungry God gives bread. And to the wealthy, God exposes the emptiness of their ways."

"With pride and dignity I sing my song of joy...."   Let us choose joy that reaches into our lowest places, touches our deepest fears ... and leads us to song.  To choose the joy of Jesus‚ birth, the joy of Mary's song, isn't about believing in something at all.  It is about living into transformed reality.  It means living in the song rather than being threatened into silence or distortion.

Mary may have been an unwed teenager from nowhere, but she sang large. One poet wrote,
All that I am
Grows and expands
And rejoices with God who will save me.
Small I may be,
I grow and expand,
To the future and God who has blessed me.
God‚s love offers life,
God‚s strength is the love
That brings justice and peace to all nations.
                                (Ralph Milton, 1995)

 Mary Christmas.  Joy to the World.