Sermon

Singing the Season's Songs: A Sermon for Sunday December 17, 2017

by Rev Rachel

Trimmed and Burning: A Sermon for Sunday November 12, 2017

The following sermon was preached at saint benedict's table on Sunday November 12, 2017.  You can also listen to the live recording or subscribe to our podcast. Just click here.

by Rev Rachel

Making Room at the Table: A Sermon for Sunday October 9, 2017

The following sermon was preached at saint benedict's table on Sunday October 9, 2017.  You can also listen to the live recording or subscribe to our podcast. Just click here.

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable and pleasing in your sight O Lord, for you are our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

First of all, my apologies to all of you, and especially to the folks listening to this in podcast land, I will do my best to keep the sniffles to a minimum, but I have a horrible cold.

The lectionary has had us hanging out in the gospel of Matthew for quite some time now and this week I got the sense that I was becoming so fixated on the details of some of these individual stories that I was losing track of the big picture.  So yesterday I decided to read the whole gospel straight through.

And this may say a whole lot more about me than the actual gospel but the word I would use to describe my experience of reading the gospel of Matthew yesterday is “intense.” This is no leisurely romp through a life story.

Jesus is born, grows up, heals all sorts of people and then he spends a good portion of the gospel engaging in something like an extended job interview that is being conducted by a panel of people who don’t seem to realize that Jesus already has the job, and that they were never asked to be part of the “who will be the messiah” hiring committee in the first place.  It’s test after test after trick question after test.

That faux hiring committee then arranges to have Jesus killed, he dies, and then comes back to life.

And Matthew’s gospel tells this entire story in the space of a typical book chapter rather than say, the more leisurely pace of the entire Harry Potter series.

It’s intense.

Today’s gospel reading begins with the words, ‘Listen to another parable…”  We’re still right in the middle of this extended job interview that’s not really a job interview and we’re going to see a repetition of a number of the same themes that Jamie has been identifying over the past few weeks – questions of authority and issues of scarcity and abundance.

In today’s parable we have a landowner who plants a vineyard, digs a wine press, builds a fence and a watchtower.  He then leases the operation out to some tenants and leaves for another country.

When the grapes are ripe and ready to be harvested, the landowner sends his slaves to the tenants to collect his share of the produce. But what ensues is not some idyllic Thanksgiving scene where a meal is prepared and everyone sits down to give thanks for the harvest and eat waaay too much pie and drink waaaay too much wine.

Instead, the tenants are anything but grateful for the arrival of the landowner’s slaves. They seize them, beat them, and kill several of them. The landlord then sends more of his slaves and finally his own son, and they all receive the same treatment at the hands of the tenants.

So then Jesus asks the chief priests and Pharisees a question, “What will the owner of the vineyard do to these tenants? (40)

And they reply, not only should these tenants be put to death, it should be a miserable death. (41)

Then, in verse 42 Jesus says, “Have you never read in the scriptures, the stone the builders have rejected has become the cornerstone…?”

Suddenly Jesus switches from parable to prophecy, from agriculture to architecture and from murder and death to new life.  The death and resurrection of Jesus lurks in the background of the parable but the foreground is occupied by the drama of privilege taken from one group and given to another.  More on this later.  (I found this lovely turn of phrase in some old notes. I’m sure they are not original to me, but I’m not sure who deserves the credit.)

Sometimes, I need to step back and take in the bigger picture – read the entire gospel, but sometimes, I find it is equally helpful to zoom in and focus on a specific detail in the story.

And this week I spent a fair amount of time thinking about cornerstones.

I’ve never built a building or laid a cornerstone, but as I understand it, the cornerstone is a stone, placed at the corner of the foundation of a new building and every other stone is then placed in relation to that stone. It’s the reference point for the rest of the structure.

Sometimes on important buildings, a date or inscription will be engraved on the cornerstone and they’ll even have a special gathering when they lay that particular stone.

And in this parable Jesus is telling us that he is the cornerstone.  He is this stone that is laid at the corner of a building to make sure that everything else is built properly.

And I have to say that I can’t think of a duller, less inspiring image to use to describe Jesus, the Son of God who was sent to save the world.  Jesus is the stone that makes sure things are built nice and square. He’s a stone that we commemorate with a fancy inscription and maybe a photo op followed by tea and cookies. He keeps things neat, and orderly and in their proper place. He spruces up the joint a bit with all that fancy lettering, but ultimately he doesn’t really do all that much.

There has to be more to this Jesus is the cornerstone business than that.

So yesterday I walked around the church and found the cornerstone and rather than a moment of clarity I had a moment of incredulity.

When Jesus describes himself as the cornerstone, he is quoting from the Psalms (Psalm 118:22).   He tells us that the stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone and that anyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces and that it will crush anyone on whom it falls.

The cornerstone of this church has a fancy inscription on it – you can go for a walk sometime and find it for yourselves – but when I looked at it I thought, how important could this stone really be? I mean I doubt if I was able to pull it out like a jenga block that the entire church would topple over, and it doesn’t seem big or powerful enough to break me to pieces if I tripped over it and, given that it sits at about knee height I also don’t feel like I’m any real danger of having it crush me if it were to fall on me. I mean, it might do some serious damage to my toes but overall I’d come off unscathed.

Now I know that it is usually a huge mistake to try to use modern day practices to understand a biblical image, so I did some research and I came across a different image of a cornerstone that was well, way more inspiring.

When you build a wall around a city, you also need to build openings so people can come in and out.  If you’ve ever had a chance to look at one of these arched openings you’ll see that the bricks curve slightly as you get to the top of the arch where they will meet at a single brick – the keystone. Now if you take that one stone out of the structure, the whole thing falls apart and if you happened to be standing underneath is, you would be crushed. That stone is, in fact, key to the integrity of the entire structure.

Jesus isn’t simply a stone you should stick in the corner of your life to make sure everything lines up nicely. An ornamental object you dust from time to time but ultimately don’t spend too much time thinking about, Jesus is the stone that supports everything else in your life. The stone that, if removed, sends everything else toppling to the ground.

Now that’s a pretty important stone.

But the scripture that Jesus is quoting pushes that image even further by stating that the cornerstone, despite its importance, won’t be the very best stone the builders can possibly find, it will be a stone taken from the reject pile.

Which is the kind of stone we usually like to ignore, not engrave with dates and fancy words or build our entire lives around. What is Jesus up to?

The chief priests and Pharisees would like Jesus to stay in the reject pile. They realize with this parable Jesus is saying that they are the bad tenants and they are none too happy about it.  Jesus will need to be dealt with, but not today when he is surrounded by so many of his supporters.

So they didn’t like the parable, but how does it sit with us today? What’s your reaction?

One possible response is to heave a sigh of relief that there is nothing in this parable that challenges you or your way of life.  The Pharisees are clearly the bad guys in the story, and well, we’re not the Pharisees right?  We’re the good tenants who will be given the vineyard after the Pharisees are thrown out and killed. Right?

I think we are often too quick to put ourselves in the role of the hero in parables like this and it can cause all sorts of problems. If we are already the good guys, where is the challenge or opportunity for growth? If we are already the good guys, how easy is it for us to slip into the same self-righteous judgment as the chief priests and Pharisees?

I don’t think this story was included in Mathew’s gospel so that we could feel smug and receive a pat on the back, I think it’s included to give us a kick in the pants.

Because even if it is a correct interpretation to say that this parable shows that the followers of Jesus Christ would become the new tenants in God’s vineyard, how quickly did those new tenants start acting just like the chief priests and Pharisees?

So let’s take some time tonight to reflect on the things we may have in common with the bad tenants.

First, the tenants are acting as if they are the owners of the vineyard. As if they are the only people who have the rights to be on that land and enjoy the harvest it produces.  They are acting like owners, not renters.

Too often we have treated this world like something we own, something we can do with as we please, and where has that gotten us?  Climate change, strip mining, pollution and a host of other environment challenges that stem from a mindset that we can do whatever we want with this earth.

How do you in your daily life interact with the natural world? Do you view it as a commodity that you can use however you choose? Do you see it as a gift to be cared for, protected, and nurtured?

Second, the tenants seem to be locked into a scarcity mentality. There is nothing in the parable to suggest that after the landowner took his share of the profits that there wouldn’t also be more than enough for the tenants to live comfortably.  But rather than accepting that there is more than enough to go around, they are holding onto everything for themselves.

I can’t even begin to wrap my mind around the shooting in Las Vegas earlier this week. I can’t even begin to reconcile the fact that an event of that nature has become almost routine. I have no idea why that man chose to do what he did.

But I do know, that a lot of the rhetoric I have heard surrounding this and other tragedies like it comes from a scarcity mentality.  People who, for far too long, have been taking up too much room at the table are afraid that they are going to lose their place. They’re afraid, and they are making decisions –dangerous and violent decisions -out of that fear.

They don’t realize that making room at the table will require them to make some adjustments, but it doesn’t have to mean there won’t be a seat for them.

Realizing you have privilege and learning to let go of some of that privilege can be incredibly difficult and does require some sacrifice but it isn’t something we need to fear.

Because the truth is that in God’s economy there is always more room at the table, room enough for everyone. And the meal is more pleasant when everyone has a seat.

Where are the places in your own life that you lean more into the lie of scarcity than into the truth of God’s abundance? What are you afraid to let go of for fear that there won’t be enough? Money? Food? Love?  What would happen if you began to let go of some of that scarcity mentality and lean into God’s abundance? What would you discover is you scooted over and room for someone else at the table?

Lastly, the tenants are not willing to make room for other people in the vineyard.

When Europeans first came to North America they came both with a belief that they could be the owners of any land they found, and with a scarcity mentality that said there wasn’t enough resources for everyone. Just like those wicked tenants, they wanted to keep everything for themselves and they were willing to kill anyone who challenged that way of life.

We are still dealing with the wounds created by that mentality and in many ways we are still living in a system that upholds that mentality.

It can feel like such a small thing, but every time I attend a gathering and I hear a territorial acknowledgement, I am reminded that there is a different and better way for me to think about my relationship to this land and to the various people who call it home.  It’s a small, but powerful reminder that there is a different, better way to live.

Where are the places in your life where you may be taking up too much room? Where could you make space for other people in the vineyard?

Over the past year we’ve had a number of different voices speaking from this music stand and the only reason that could happen is because Jamie chose to make room. If he had said, “I am the preacher and you’re going to have to pry this music stand out of my cold, dead hands,” then we never would have heard from those other voices and you wouldn’t be hearing from me tonight.

He made room.

Thanks Jamie. I am so grateful that you did make room not just for me, but for other voices as well.  And now I need to be aware that I have the choice to hang onto my piece of this music stand until my knuckles turn white. I can lean into they myth of scarcity, believing that I have taken up the last possible inch of available space or I can lean into abundance and look for ways to make room for others as well.

Where else can we make room? How can we be more attentive to the barriers that are keeping people from full participation in the life of our city and of the life of this church community and help to make some more room?  Because the truth is there is always more room at the table.

We are tenants on this earth, and it is a good place to call home. Harvest and thanksgiving give us such tangible examples of God’s love and abundance. May we truly celebrate these good things, and may we continue to find ways to make room for others at the table.

Amen.

by Rev Rachel

Sniffing Out the Good News: A Sermon for Sunday September 10, 2017

The following sermon was preached at saint benedict's table on Sunday September 10, 2017.  You can also listen to the live recording or subscribe to our podcast. Just click here.

At a church I used to pastor, we had these big log books where we would record important events in the life of the community – baptisms, marriages, and deaths. The first time I baptized someone, the church’s administrative assistant got the books out of the safe for me to update. In a world where almost everything is computerized, I was fascinated by these big old volumes so I decided to spend a little bit of time flipping through the pages, reading the names and running my fingers along the dates and the details.

Jane Doe, baptized, July 23, 1952.   John Smith, baptized, August 15th, 1952 and so on.

And then I found a section where the pages began to tell a different kind of story. John Doe, baptized November 2nd, excommunicated May 18th. Jane Smith, baptized, October 9th, excommunicated, January 16th.      As I ran my fingers over the names and the word “excommunicated” next to entry after entry I couldn’t help but think, there is a story behind each one of these entries. A difficult story. Stories that are still impacting the life of this church, even if we never talk about them.

Theologian and pastor Nadia Bolz Weber says that excommunication is just a fancy way of talking about kicking people out of the church and my former church’s record book told the story of people who were welcomed into the community through baptism, and people who had been kicked out of that community through excommunication.

A person whose story includes being kicked out of a church or having a loved one kicked out of a church is going to bring that experience to this passage – whether it was a formal excommunication process, or the strong sense that because of who they are they are no longer welcome or would never be welcome. That experience impacts how they hear this gospel passage. No one comes to a text as a blank slate.

Context matters. Experience matters. Our story matters.

But despite the diverse nature of this congregation and the wealth of experiences you all bring with you, I believe that this passage contains good news for all of us, and that part of my job is to try and help us to see it.

So where is the good news in this passage for this community? For you as an individual? For myself?

What I’d like to do tonight is offer a few hunches. I spent the week acting like a dog hunting for a bone, sniffing out the good news. And I hope you will do the same tonight. Give each of these ideas the sniff test. Do they smell like good news to you?[1]

[1] Thanks to Kalyn Falk for this image.

I hope so, but it’s OK if they don’t.  And I’m open to further conversation with any of you about any of these things throughout the week, just get in touch with me.

I believe that the first piece of good news in Matthew 18:15-20 is this: sin and conflict exist. They are a natural part of life, and while we shouldn’t run headlong into these sorts of behaviours, we can’t pretend that we will never experience them.

So when you sin, and when you find yourself in conflict with another person you can say to yourself, “Hallelujah! I’m totally normal!”

Which is good news right?

I think it would be great news if we could all lean into having a more positive attitude towards conflict because a lot of what can get weird when we are in conflict with someone else comes from our sense that it is wrong to simply be in conflict.  If we view conflict as abnormal, the fact that a conflict exists means we are already doing something wrong and that makes us uncomfortable.

But the presence of conflict doesn’t mean we’re abnormal, it means we’re human.

The second piece of good news in this passage is that when sin and conflict occur, there are things we can do about them. We aren’t helpless. We don’t just have to suffer under their weight; we can act, change, and grow.

Matthew 18 is not directly applicable to every form of conflict, and it has been misused, but it does provide us with a framework for handling situations when someone in the church has hurt us.

But does this framework contain any good news for us today?

Verse 15 says, “ “If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone.”

So a couple of things to note here. First of all, this is a plan that has a context, the context of Christian community. Although these steps may be applicable to other situations and relationships, this plan assumes that the people involved have a relationship, that they care about each other, and that their relationship is based in part on their shared membership in the church.  There is a base upon which to build.

A lot of people have spent a lot of time trying to figure out just what the phrase, “sinned against you” means, but I think it is less important to make a list of sins or to work to define what exactly it means to be “sinned against,” then it is to note that this text is showing us that the result of sin is a breach in relationship. There is a breach in the relationship, there is a wound, and that wound needs to be healed. This particular passage is not focussed on every consequence of sin, it is focussed on the way sin impacts human relationships.

So if someone has sinned against you, if a breach has been created in the relationship, then Jesus is telling us to go and talk to the person about it in private.  Choosing to deal with the matter one on one in private allows the person to hear what you have to say with minimal shame. Which is a good thing, because shame makes us behave in weird and unhelpful ways.

Jesus is setting up a process that focuses not on the sin itself, but on the impact of that sin on the relationship.  Jesus is aware that we will tend to experience shame in these kinds of situations and is sensitive enough to minimize that potential. That sounds like good news to me too.

The passage is also saying that when someone hurts you, you shouldn’t simply ignore it.  Which also means that Jesus is acknowledging that sin hurts us and that hurt should be taken seriously.   I don’t know about you but too often in my life I’ve been encouraged to minimize situations where I have been hurt, or to ignore them entirely.  Today it feels like good news to imagine Jesus standing before me and saying,  “No, that did hurt you, and that hurt has impacted your life. You don’t have to pretend that it didn’t just to make other people feel more comfortable.”

So let’s review the process: If someone sins against you, the hurt is real. The wound is real. It may be a small scratch or something life threatening, but it exists.   And when that happens, you need to acknowledge the wound and go and talk to the person who hurt you in private, and if they hear you, if they realize they have indeed wounded you and they seek to repair that wound, great! The two of you can continue to work together to heal that wound and deepen your relationship.

But if they don’t, bring a second person with you, and if that doesn’t work, bring another member of the community, and if that doesn’t work, involve the rest of the community. Involve the church. And if that doesn’t work, treat them like a Gentile or a tax collector.

Now I have had some really good experiences with this process. Experiences where someone has come to me and let me know that I hurt them and how that impacted them and I was able to apologise and correct my mistake and we remain in relationship. And I’m grateful that they didn’t just cut me out of their life or complain about me for hours to their friends but instead gave me a chance to make it right.

These positive experiences have become a part of my story, and they have helped me to develop the confidence to engage in bigger, more challenging conflicts because they taught me that engaging in a challenging conversation can have good results. Even if it’s really hard at the time.

I’ve also had some harder experiences with this process. Experiences where people used the form of the process to tell me they were unhappy with something I’d done without also using the spirit of the process – with its focus on healing a relationship.  They came, quoted these verses, informed me I had “sinned against them,” dropped the mic, and walked away. There was no dialogue, no chance to process, no chance to heal the breach in the relationship. In these experiences Matthew 18 felt more like a weapon than a tool of reconciliation.

And I’ve also had the experience of going to someone and saying, “You have hurt me,” and they weren’t wiling to listen. And so I brought someone else with me and again I said, “You have hurt me,” and … nothing. And I have gone all the way to the end of this Matthew 18 process and still there was no movement on their part. So now, this person is to me like “a Gentile or a tax collector.”

And I grieved that, and I’m still grieving that.

And I don’t think it is sugar coating things in any way to say that in that grief there is also good news.

Because while it is painful and it is not a learning process I would wish on anyone else, I think my grief is teaching me what is means to treat someone as a Gentile or a tax collector. I think it is teaching me how God wants us to think about people that we can’t be in a healthy relationship with. I think there is some good news in there, even if I don’t always see it.

And I’m going to unpack that a little bit more in a minute, but there is something I want to say first.

It is really important for me to emphasize that there is an essential first step that you have to practice if you’re ever going to engage someone in a Matthew 18 style conversation, and it’s a step that is often missed.  It’s also the essential first step if you want to practice forgiveness, which is a related, but different practice we don’t have time to get into in detail tonight.

Sometimes when someone hurts us it’s a tiny scratch. Sometimes it’s a bite, and sometimes it can be life threatening. Sin always hurts, but some of the ways that we sin against each other are more damaging than others.

So if you want to, on one hand, work through a process of healing a relationship or forgiving someone who has hurt you.[2] If your right hand is going to walk through these steps, then before you can do that, your left hand needs to go up and say, “No more abuse.” Sometimes, because the hurt is minor and the relationship strong, that’s an easy thing to do. You can hold up your left hand and say “No more abuse,” freeing your right hand to work through the steps of the Matthew 18 process. But sometimes, it may take all of your strength just to hold up that one hand that says, “No more abuse,” and that will be all you can handle. And that’s OK. The other hand can wait.

[2] Thanks to Fr. Matt Linn for this illustration.

Sometimes, holding up that hand that says, “No more abuse,” will be even more than you can handle and that’s OK too. You may need to enlist the help of friends you trust, or the authorities, or both.

To often verses like Matthew 18 have been used to send people back into abusive situations and I want to say as clearly as I possible can that that is wrong.

So step one: No more abuse.

That is the starting point. And I hope that sounds like good news.

There is one final piece of good news I’d like to highlight from this passage tonight.  I think it is good news that we are supposed to treat people that we can’t be in a healthy relationship with as if they are Gentile and tax collectors.

So with the hand of “no more abuse” always firmly in place, what does it mean to treat someone like a Gentile or a tax collector?

Too often, I think we have made the mistake of treating these sorts of people the way the world treats Gentiles and tax collectors.   We’ve shunned them, reviled them, ridiculed them. We have declared that they are not welcome.

But that’s not how Jesus treated Gentiles and tax collectors. And Matthew, who this gospel is named after knew that all too well because before Jesus chose him to be a disciple Matthew was a tax collector. [3]  And it seems to me that Matthew was never able to shake the fact that Jesus chose him, a tax collector, to be a disciple.

[3] This explanation of the gospel of Matthew’s view of tax collectors comes from Timothy J. Geddert’s book “Double Take: New Meanings From Old Stories.”

And I think that’ s the point.  I don’t think tax collectors are used as an example here by accident.

The book of Matthew places a unique emphasis on tax collectors. In chapter 9, we hear the story of Matthew’s decision to leave his work as a tax collector, when Jesus asks Matthew to follow him. In chapter 10 Matthew lists the names of all 12 disciples but he only includes the profession of one of them, “Simon, Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Thomas, Mathew, the tax collector, and so on…  It’s like he still can’t quite believe that he has been included in Jesus’ inner circle.

In chapter 11 Matthew Jesus responds to his critics who accuse him of being a  “friend of tax collectors and sinners.” Of course they think they are discrediting Jesus but Jesus quotes them as if to say, “Yes! You’ve got it! That’s exactly who I am!” And Matthew records the incident as if to say, “A friend to sinners and tax collectors? You bet he is!”

So what does it mean to treat someone like a tax collector?  Well, if Jesus is our guide in this, it means to love them, to care for them, to want to be in relationship with them.  And, if a relationship isn’t possible at this time, to hope and work for a day when one might be possible in the future.

It means to make sure we always keep up the hand that says, “No more abuse,” while also working to avoid turning our other hand into a fist. It means resisting the temptation to wound as we have been wounded. It means keeping our hand open to the possibility of reconciliation in the future.

And because I just can’t resist, here is some more good news. You are God’s beloved, no matter who you are, no matter what you have done, no matter how much money you have in your pockets, no matter what colour your skin is, no matter who you love.  You are God’s beloved even if you are a Gentile or a tax collector.

You are beloved.

And you are welcome.  God always stands with open arms of welcome waiting to embrace you.

And in a few minutes we’re going to move to the communion table, to Christ’s table, and you are welcome there too. You are always welcome.

You are beloved, and you are welcome.

And that’s good news. Amen.

by Rev Rachel

You're Asking the Wrong Question: A Sermon for Sunday November 6, 2016

The following sermon was preached at saint benedict's table on Sunday November 6, 2016.  You can also listen to the live recording or subscribe to our podcast. Just click here.

by Rev Rachel

Bearing God: A Sermon For Sunday December 20, 2015

The following sermon was preached at saint benedict's table on Sunday December 20, 2015.  You can also listen to the live recording or subscribe to our podcast. Just click here.

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable and pleasing in your sight O God for you are our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

This sermon is strongly influenced by the book “The God Bearing Life” by Kenda Creasey Dean, which I highly recommend.

This is a poem entitled “Virgin” from the excellent collection God Birthby Sam Gutierrez:

It seems that everyone

wants at least three to five years of experience.

Except God, that is.

[God] looks for the one willing to try something new.

Today’s gospel reading begins with these words, “In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country…”

Although Mary’s story is a relatively familiar one, I think her decision to take a trip deserves some context so I’m going to back up about 10 verses to the point in the story where the angel Gabriel first appears.

Gabriel begins as he always begins, as God always begins -since this is really God’s message, not Gabriel’s - with the affirmation that all that God has created is good. “Greetings, favoured one!” Gabriel proclaims to Mary. “The Lord is with you!” Before she hears anything else, God wants Mary to hear this: She is favoured and God is with her.

As a young girl, Mary hasn’t had any time to “find herself.” She hasn’t taken a backpacking trip across Europe or enrolled in a course that changed her life or whatever the correct historical equivalent of those events might be.  Her identity is a gift, bestowed upon her by God alone.

Mary may wonder, “Who am I?” but God’s answer is clear, “You are my favoured one, beloved and beautiful to me.”

It is unlikely that Mary would have ever had an opportunity to develop a distinctive identity apart from the one given to her by God. She is too young to have had time to achieve much on which to base her identity. She is too poor to purchase her place in society.

Add to this the fact that she is female, which means that even if she did have accomplishments or social stature to her credit, they likely would have gone unrecognized because of her gender.

All of this makes Mary a most unlikely candidate for helping God save the world, which may just be why God chooses her. Nothing about Mary suggests that she can be who she is apart from God’s favour.

So Gabriel begins by affirming God’s love for Mary and continues, as angels speaking to human beings tend to do, by telling her there is no need to fear.

“Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High…”

God’s message to Mary and to us has two parts – affirmation and expectation. Because Mary is beloved by God, because she has found favour in God’s eyes, God has a plan for her. It is an astonishing plan: the angel in the living room, the impossible conception, the fact that her child will grow up to be a king.

The child’s name must have caught Mary’s attention. Jesus, a derivation of the Hebrew name Joshua, means “God save us.” Something revolutionary is happening here: God has just asked a teenage girl to help save the world.

The text doesn’t say how long it took Mary to respond to Gabriel’s message – seconds, minutes, hours, days. It just tells us that when she did respond she said, “Here I am, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”

 Young people are capable of an extraordinary commitment to someone who believes in them and of an almost ridiculous loyalty to a cause worthy of their total commitment.  Young people are amazing and we often take them for granted, but God never does. God did not choose a teenager by accident.  Who else would agree to such a crazy plan? I know I wouldn’t have.

God’s plan puts Mary in significant danger. Gabriel has come to share this news with Mary and Mary alone at this point. He didn’t call a town meeting to make sure that everyone around Mary would understand how she came to be pregnant before getting married. That would have been a classy touch, but instead, Gabriel leaves Mary to break the news to the people in her life. Will people believe her? Will she be judged? Ridiculed? Rejected? How on earth is she supposed to explain this to her parents, to her fiancé?

So it in not surprising that Mary decides that now is a good time to take a trip.  At the beginning of today’s gospel reading (Luke1:39) we are told that shortly after Gabriel’s visit Mary hastily departs her hometown and travels to the home of her relatives Zechariah and Elizabeth.  When she arrives, she greets Elizabeth who says to Mary, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.” (41-45)

There are a lot of important things going on in this passage. This is an exchange between two Godly women with some insider knowledge about God’s plan to save the world and they theologize and speak with authority about what God is up to.

I imagine that Elizabeth’s words were a tremendous comfort to Mary.  I suspect that as she travelled Mary prayed that her relatives would be understanding and not turn her away. I imagine she rehearsed some sort of speech or story to explain to Elizabeth why she was there and what had happened, but Elizabeth’s words made any such explanation unnecessary. Elizabeth already understands and affirms both Mary and her secret- what a relief, what a blessing that must have been!

Elizabeth’s words to Mary heap affirmation upon affirmation.  Blessed are you among women Mary. Blessed is the fruit of your womb. Blessed are you because you believed what the angel told you.

So it’s not surprising that a few verses later Mary breaks into the joy-filled song we call the Magnificat that begins: My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour, for [God] has looked with favour on the lowliness of [God’s] servant. Surely from now on all generations will call me blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things for me and holy is [God’s] name.” (46-49)

I believe that this praise stems from more than just God’s choice to have Mary bear the son of God. I believe it is also the overflowing of gratitude she feels for the affirmations she has received along the way. Having given a very young girl such incredible news and such an important role to play in God’s plan to save the world, our loving God directs Mary to a supportive community of faith. In the home of Zechariah and Elizabeth, Mary will be surrounded by people with mutual experiences, mutual faith, and mutual hope.

Elizabeth’s initial response to Mary also shows the beginning of the redefinition of social realities that Jesus will bring about on earth.  Here is a story where the key players are women.  Joseph is absent and the priestly Zechariah maybe present, but he has been silenced because of his own disbelief. The social constructs of the time are beginning to shift.

Of the two women, Elizabeth is the more mature and as the wife of a priest she has a higher social status than Mary but it is Mary’s child who will become a king.

Elizabeth’s son John will have priestly credentials but the commoner Mary will bear the king, the Son of David, who rules over the priesthood.

Jerusalem, the exalted center of Christian worship, ought to trump humble Nazareth of Galilee; but the order of sacred geography is also being upended.

And this is just the beginning.

This redefinition of the social order is a key theme in the Magnificat.  The first three verses are Mary’s expression of praise to God for the great things God has done for her and then Mary transitions to more universal themes singing these words to God:

Your mercy is for those who fear you

From generation to generation

You have shown strength with your arm

And have scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.

You have brought down the powerful from their thrones

And lifted up the lowly;

You have filled the hungry with good things,

And sent the rich away empty.

You, O God, have helped your servant Israel,

In remembrance of your mercy

And to the promise you made to our ancestors,

To Abraham and to his descendants forever.

Mary’s song begins with the praise to God because of the things God has done for her personally and then moves into praise for God’s goodness to the rest of the world – it is praise for the way that God turns the expected on its head – the proud are made low, the humble exalted. The hungry will be full and the rich turned away empty.

The Magnificat is an amazing piece of scripture and so it is not surprising that it has become one of the most famous, most repeated passages in the Bible. I, however, have a real soft spot for the underdog, and so I’d like to highlight a verse that I think it also quite lovely. A verse the lectionary leaves out, but that we have reclaimed this evening. Verse 56 says,  “And Mary remained with her about three months and then returned to her home.”

Mary remained with Elizabeth for about three months.The Bible doesn’t tell us what happened during those three months, but imagine with me for a moment what that might have been like. I imagine that it was a wonderful time for a young woman like Mary to spend such concentrated time with an older and wiser woman.

By now Mary’s body will have begun to change as her pregnancy progresses and her role in God’s plan will be something she can no longer hide from judgmental eyes.  But when this happens, she will have Elizabeth to turn to for support.

I think this tells us a lot about the nature of God. God is asking an awful lot of Mary. Being the Mother of God will be an unusually difficult job, but God will be with her and God will provide for her in lavish and unexpected ways.

Mary met God’s affirmation with a “yes” of her own. “Let it be with me according to your word.”  Her “yes” changes her life forever and because of her, the world is also transformed. Mary is actively involved in this transformation, undergoing all of the metamorphoses that occur during pregnancy plus a few that undoubtedly go along with being the mother of God’s son.   By saying yes, Mary becomes the means by which Jesus comes into the world.

While the coming of Jesus Christ in a virgin’s womb is the unrepeatable mystery of God, God also invites all of us to become God bearers.  Just as Mary had the choice to say yes to God’s plan, so can we. The moment we say yes to God, we also become God bearers. This is what Elizabeth did for Mary in those three months they spent together.  She reminded Mary of the prophecies, she reminded Mary of God’s promises, she reminded Mary of God’s goodness, and she reminded Mary of God’s love. I image they laughed together, cried together, and marveled at the ways their bodies were changing together.  As Mary was preparing to bear God for the whole world, Elizabeth also bore God to Mary.

In his book Life TogetherDietrich Bonhoeffer speaks a universal truth using regrettably exclusive language. Here is my paraphrase of those words:

“the Christian needs another Christian who speaks God’s word to them. The Christian needs that other Christian again and again when they become uncertain and discouraged…They need their brothers and sisters in Christ as a bearer and proclaimer of the divine word of salvation.” (23)

Mary bore God, the savior of the world, for each and every one of us. Elizabeth bore God for Mary, and all of you, have in your own way, been a God bearer for me.

I am so grateful for the many ways that this community has been a community of God bearers for me.  In the eight or so years that I have been coming here, you have been a tangible reminder to be of God’s love. When you say hello, or shake my hand, or hand me a piece of bread and a cup filled with wine, when you pray when I have lost the words, when you say God can be trusted when I’m not sure it’s true, when you say God loves me when I can’t imagine why anyone would - in all these ways and more, you have been God bearers to me.

I hope you have experienced that here as well. I hope this is something we keep doing for each other.  I hope you have come to see just how loved, and valuable you are to God and to us.

And I thank you for being God bearers for me.

Amen.

by Rev Rachel