Luke 1:47-55 My soul extols the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has shown consideration for the lowly stature of his slave. As a consequence, from now on every generation will congratulate me; the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name, and his mercy will come to generation after generation of those who fear him. He has shown the strength of his arm, he has put the arrogant to rout, along with their private schemes; he has pulled the mighty down from their thrones, and exalted the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. He has come to the aid of his servant Israel, remembering his mercy, as he spoke to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever. (Luke 1:46-56, SV)
I Thessalonians 5:16-24 5:16 Rejoice always, 5:17 pray without ceasing, 5:18 give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. 5:19 Do not quench the Spirit. 5:20 Do not despise the words of prophets, 5:21 but test everything; hold fast to what is good; 5:22 abstain from every form of evil. 5:23 May the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 5:24 The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do this.
John 1:6-8, 19-28
1:6 There appeared a man sent from God named John. 1:7 He came to testify--to testify to the light-- so that everyone would believe through him. 1:8 He was not the light, but he came only to testify to the light. 1:19 This is what John had to say when the Judeans sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, "Who are you?" 1:20 He made it clear--he wouldn't deny it--"I'm not the Anointed." 1:21 And they asked him, "Then who are you? Are you Elijah?" And he replies, "I am not." "Are you the Prophet?" He answered, "No." 1:22 So they said to him, "Tell us who you are so we can report to those who sent us. What have you got to say for yourself?" 1:23 He replied, "I am the voice of someone shouting in the wilderness, 'Make the way of the Lord straight'--that's how Isaiah the prophet put it." said. 1:24 (It was the Pharisees who had sent them.) 1:25 "So," they persisted, "why are you baptizing if you're not the Anointed, not Elijah, and not the Prophet?" 1:26 John answered them, "I baptize, yes, but only with water. Right there with you is someone you don't yet recognize; 1:27 he is the one who is to be my successor. I don't even deserve to untie his sandal straps." 1:28 All this took place in Bethany on the far side of the Jordan where John was baptizing.
This week, this third week of Advent, we have John, the Baptizer, and Mary, the mother of God. The radical challenge to the status quo from a young woman in a nowhere backwater, and a guy out in the desert dunking people in a river.
Why make it what it wasn't? John quotes Isaiah when asked who he is, but Isaiah 40, not Isaiah 64. That's the precursor to Mary's song. One of them, actually. There are four stories in the Hebrew Scriptures of mother's rejoicing at the birth of a child, at an unexpected birth. Mary reverses those stories because she is young, and Jesus is her first. We'll get to those this Advent. For now, we have Mary singing out because her cousin Elizabeth has greeted her when she sees her, long before anyone knows Mary is pregnant. But Elizabeth does, because she tells Mary her child, John the Baptizer as we will know him, stirred in her womb at Mary's greeting.
Is all of this true? True how? Why is that the question? I take it as a story of God in human history, not as a newspaper account verified by eyewitnesses or an historical account supported by important documents. Mary was a nobody in a Roman backwater; John was her second cousin, if Luke is to be believed, preaching repentance and the appearance of the Anointed, in the same backwater. Why do we know this story, is a more relevant question.
Better still, why don't we know Mary's Magnificat better than we do? Maybe you know Bach's setting of it. But do you know the words?
My soul extols the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has shown consideration for the lowly stature of his slave. As a consequence, from now on every generation will congratulate me; the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name, and his mercy will come to generation after generation of those who fear him. He has shown the strength of his arm, he has put the arrogant to rout, along with their private schemes; he has pulled the mighty down from their thrones, and exalted the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. He has come to the aid of his servant Israel, remembering his mercy, as he spoke to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.
That's as radical and revolutionary as anything AOC has ever said; or Bernie Sanders, or Hugo Chavez, or whoever you admire or revile. Pay attention; keep awake! Listen:
He has shown the strength of his arm, he has put the arrogant to rout, along with their private schemes; he has pulled the mighty down from their thrones, and exalted the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.
Will we be able to see that in January, in Georgia? Do we see it now, in D.C.? No. The rich replace the rich, and the hungry are still hungry. The mighty leave their thrones but take their thrones with them. So what is Mary on about?
And if that's not bad enough, we have Paul's admonition: "Pray without ceasing." What does that mean? A rhetorical flourish? Or an actual directive? What he doesn't mean is "Ask God for things endlessly." Prayer is not just supplication. It is not addressed to the Santa Claus at the mall. Prayer is directing yourself towards God. It is not necessarily a silent or mumbled string of words poured out over folded hands. And it's not a spontaneous overflow of powerful emotions, either. I used to hate giving the "pastoral prayer" in Protestant worship, that horrible relic of Zwingli. I wasn't that good at spontaneous praying anyway, and too often my words were a stain on the silence. I preferred the kind of written prayers I post here from time to time, mostly from the E&R Hymnal: corporate and communal prayers rather than the ramblings of a man on a microphone in the dead silence of a worship service. If we pray without ceasing, don't we have to reimagine our whole relationship to prayer?
John the Baptizer was all about that: reimagining relationships, I mean. He tells the priests sent out to him that he's not the one they imagined or expected or even understand, and he's only there to announce the one who is coming, to prepare the way of the Lord. But he's out on the far side of the Jordan; people have to come out to him, he's not going in to them. He's in the wrong place; who's going to listen?
And Mary sings her song to Elizabeth, then she stays with Elizabeth for three months; and then she goes home. What about that strength of arm, and the arrogant put to rout, and the hungry fed and the proud cast down? She gets to Nazareth and when she's about to come to term, Joseph puts her on the back of a donkey so they can so stay with family in Bethlehem, for the census (not a real thing either, in history, but who cares?). The powers that be are pushing these two nobodies around. What happened to that reversal she sang about, the same one Isaiah promised?
The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; to provide for those who mourn in Zion-- to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit. ... For as the earth brings forth its shoots, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up, so the Lord GOD will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations.
It's still there. You only have to look to see it. There is good news for the oppressed, binding for the brokenhearted, liberty for the captives, release for the prisoners. Why don't we proclaim it? Why don't we make it happen? God has put the arrogant to rout and pushed the proud off their thrones. Why do we put them back up there, and give the arrogant power over us? God gives us the vision, the truth, the story: why don't we act on it?
Praying without ceasing is an activity, you know. And prayer takes many forms that don't involve folded hands.
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