On Mary's Song and God's Creative Resistance (Sermon for 3rd Sunday in Advent)

Sermon for Sunday 11 December 2016

3^rd Sunday of Advent

Lutheran Church of the Redeemer, Jerusalem

The Rev. Carrie Ballenger Smith

Luke 1:46b-55

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

The residents of the Bedouin encampment Khan al-Ahmar, located a few kilometers east of Jerusalem in Area C, between two Israeli settlements, were tired of sending their children to the Bedouin school seven kilometers away. They were also uninterested in sending them even further away, to Jericho or East Jerusalem, which was suggested by the Israeli government. They wanted their own school—but it’s simply not possible for Palestinians to acquire building permits in Area C, under complete Israeli control. Frustrated, and having exhausted all legal options, the parents took matters into their own hands. They got creative. In 2009, with the help of an Italian NGO, they built their own school—out of old tires and dried mud.

One hundred and sixty Bedouin children now learn and play behind those tire and mud walls. But, according to the state, the school is a “threat”, and is built on land that “belongs” to the Kfar Adumim settlement and far too close to Road 1. It has been under demolition orders since one month after it was opened.

Seven years later, the school stands. So does the demolition order! But until now, every year, the school has expanded. Until now, every year, new boys and girls have attended the school, learning and growing and preparing for an uncertain future, because of their community’s creativity.  

I heard the story of the Khan al-Ahmar school on Friday morning, during a conference in Bethlehem with the theme: “Faith, sumud, and creative resistance.”

I was sitting near the back of the conference room, where Mary’s song, the Magnificat, stared at me from my computer screen in an otherwise blank document entitled: “Sermon for the 3^rd Sunday in Advent.”

I was staring back at that blank screen when, suddenly, a message popped up (along with an adorable photo) of a friend’s long-awaited baby daughter, who had been born just a few hours before.

And I thought, “I just don’t know what I’m going to write about for Sunday morning…”

Ah, but the Holy Spirit is faithful, even when the preacher is slow! What better to preach about on the 3^rd Sunday of waiting for the Lord, and the 3^rd Sunday of lighting candles against the darkness than creative resistance? And who better to teach us about creative resistance than the Creator of all things? After all, the birth of one particular baby—to Mary, in Bethlehem, just down the road from that conference room—is God’s own creative resistance. What we call the miracle of the Incarnation is God’s way of resisting human sin, evil, despair, and our ongoing addiction to hurting one another.

In great love, and with great creativity, God the Creator saw our weakness, saw our brokenness, saw our disobedience, and chose to do something radical, wild and unexpected: God chose to be born among us as a tiny baby. Coming to be with us in this humble way—instead of as a military leader, or a wealthy ruler, or a vengeful dictator—God reclaimed humanity and all of creation for love, for peace, for justice, and for mercy. Artists and activists today would call this creative cultural resistance.

Of course, to Mary, the one who literally bore the weight of God’s creativity, this miracle probably just felt like trouble. I imagine Mary would have preferred God to use all that creativity to build her a new house, or to give her fiancée a new job, rather than making her pregnant by the Holy Spirit and making her into the laughing stock of the neighborhood.

Mary had every reason to refuse to participate. She had every reason to run the other way when the Angel Gabriel paid her a visit. But instead, she said: “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”

Today, we rejoice that Mary said “yes”, and chose to join God in creatively resisting the powers of fear, of despair, and of darkness. Mary answered God’s call to join in birthing something beautiful into the world! Her song, the Magnificat, is the outpouring of her passion, her love, and her bold decision to join the cause for the world’s liberation from sin and death.

Of course, we sort of take it for granted that Mary was just so good, so holy, and so pure that of course she said “yes”. Of course she became pregnant by the Holy Spirit and then sang a song. Right? This is the image of Mary we see in our nativity sets and in our icons. This is the sweet Mary we will see portrayed in the children’s Christmas play after worship.

But to tell you the truth, I’m not sure singing would have been my natural response to God’s over-active creativity. If I did sing something, I have a feeling it would be something more like, “Are you serious, God?”

Just as it is important to me to proclaim Jesus as both fully human and fully divine, so it is important to me that we proclaim Mary’s full humanity. I think Mary, being fully human, probably had a few choice words to say to God after she discovered she was pregnant and before she sang “My soul magnifies the Lord; my spirit rejoices in God my savior.”  Amen?

So, the question then becomes: What was it that gave Mary the courage to sing? What was it, ultimately, that gave her the audacity to think she could join in God’s radical strategy to reclaim humanity and the world for the sake of love?

My Greek professor would have pointed us back to the second half of Mary’s song, which happens to be written in past (or “aorist”) tense. Now, this fact wouldn’t be interesting at all if Mary sang her song on Christmas morning. Past tense would make sense if Mary gazed into the manger at the sweet baby Jesus, and sang “You, the Almighty, have done great things for me.” If Mary sang the Magnificat after the pregnancy, after the long trip from Nazareth to Bethlehem, after going into labor with no plan of where to stay, and after preparing a bed for the baby Jesus in an animal’s feeding trough, then we would hear it as a song of triumph, and survival, and thankfulness to God for getting her through it all. Past tense, in that case, would be the perfect tense.

But as it is, we know that Mary sings “You have done great things for me” while she is still pregnant.

Mary sings “You have shown strength with your arm and scattered the proud in their conceit” while she is still unmarried and her neighbors are still judging her.

Mary sings, “You have filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty” while her future is still uncertain.

Mary sings—in past tense, about future events, not because her struggle is over, but because she knows God is with her. She sings her heart out, not because she’s not worried about the future, but because she knows who holds the future.

Mary sings because God is good. God is faithful. And she has the audacity to say yes…and to sing…because she knows God keeps God’s promises.

And this, dear friends in Christ, is why I think the Magnificat needs to be the official soundtrack for 2017.

In this uncertain time, when the great powers of the world seem to be realigning, when extremists are trying to kidnap our religious traditions, and when even presidents engage in hate speech;

And especially in this coming year when here in Palestine and Israel we’re marking both the 100^th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration and the 50th anniversary of the occupation of the Palestinian territories;

we need the song of Mary.

We need to be reminded of how to sing God’s praises while the world is still only pregnant with promise.

We need to be reminded that while the wall still stands, and the occupation continues into the second half of a century, we are not simply waiting for God to do something about it. God has already done something wild, unexpected, and creative: God invited a young girl to be part of birthing the kingdom of justice, peace, and love into the world. And two thousand years later, God has also invited us to be part of the creative cultural resistance called faith in Jesus, crucified and risen.

One of the sessions at Friday’s conference in Bethlehem was called “Where are we now?” The speaker, a famous Israeli journalist and a prominent voice against the occupation, began his speech by saying: “Where are we now? Well, the answer is that we are in a very bad place, and we are going to a much worse place. And now I should just sit down, for perhaps there is nothing else to say.”

From a political perspective, this may be entirely true.

But our faith teaches us that, faced with sin, evil, and disobedience of humanity, God our Creator decided there was much more to say. God even decided that what needed to be said was best expressed in flesh, walking among us.

For this reason, no matter what we face in life, no matter what darkness surrounds us in the world, and no matter what politicians or prophets of doom may predict, as people of faith we know there is always something more to say.

There is always a song to sing!

Mary sang it with the words, “Magnificat anima mea Dominum”

The community of Khan al-Ahmar sang it with tires and dried mud.

The water protectors at Standing Rock sang it with their steadfast presence.

Palestinian and Israeli firefighters sang it when together they battled dangerous wildfires.

And you, each of you, sing it when you care for the poor, when you speak out for justice, when you teach the story of Jesus to your children.

On this third Sunday of Advent, along with Mary, let us we choose hope. Let us choose joy. Let us choose resistance and creativity. Let us choose to sing! Let us sing against the darkness…until the star appears, until the baby is born again in our hearts, and until the fullness of peace, justice, and love are born into the world.

Amen, come Lord Jesus!