Magnificat
Romans 16: 25-27
Luke 1: 26-38
St. Christopher's Episcopal Church
Kailua, HI
Fourth Sunday of Advent
"Let it be with me according to your word."
May I speak to you in the Name of the True and Living God, + Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
Have we paid attention though to the messages of the past few weeks, in the season of Advent, and even before? God’s true might and power is not to be found in the stars, moon, and sun. God’s true might and power is not to be found in the armies of angels and archangels that surround the Throne.
We await the coming of Christ. With Christmas around the corner, we might think that the waiting is for Christmas, for the first coming of Christ. But Jesus has already come; we know how that story was acted out. There is no great surprise or mystery that Jesus might not actually show up this Thursday, unless the doll goes missing for the pageant. Instead, in Advent, we await the second coming of Christ. And yet the story of the first coming of Christ helps us understand his second coming. This is a two-fold expectation. The first is the coming of Christ and the end of the age, but then also the coming of Christ within us. The great signs and wonders of the cosmos mean little if that still-silent voice is not present within us, if our hearts are so closed that we cannot say yes to God. This is what lies at the heart of today’s Gospel, and why all generations call Mary blessed, because she said yes to God.
The yes Mary gave in response to God was an integral piece for God’s plan for redemption in this world. In the beginning, God created the Heavens, the Earth, and all life therein from the tiniest of bacteria, to the largest of oceanic creatures. Over the span of billions of years, from each and every division of each and every cell, new life kept coming forth until one day, until a certain species of hominids began walking on the earth. And God said that it was good. Somewhere along the line, sin and death entered into the world, when it is made itself manifest in the world, it came and comes often in the form of Pride. The pride of greatness, the pride majesty, the pride of might, and the pride that we can be Gods ourselves apart from God, that we can pull ourselves up from our own bootstraps and forge ahead with our own destiny. This is the very primal sin of our species, whether you believe the stories of Adam and Eve in the Garden to be myth or fact, there is a truth that pride continues as the primal sin of our species.
God never abandoned us though. Time, and again, God came to us. God never gave up on us, perhaps out of a sense of love, or stubbornness, or both. We kept messing up, we always do. That same pride, that same thought that we can do it ourselves, and alone, without consequence led to catastrophe. As Christians we believe that God reached out to Abraham, to Isaac, to Jacob, to Joseph, to Judges, to Kings, to Prophets, to Priests, to Poets, to Sages, and to Philosophers, to call humanity back to that original, good, relationship. All the pieces were in place, and all that was left was for the hope that each pointed to in their life, the coming of the Messiah.
The Archangel Gabriel comes to Mary for this next piece in the plan. There is a certain 15th century hymn that tells the story like this that I’d like to share with you:
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| Cool, new, hip Annunciation? |
He said: "Hail, Mary, full of grace!"
When the maid heart tell of this,
She was sore abashed, ywis,
And weemed that she had done a miss.
Then said the angel: "Dread not thou,
Be conceived with great virtue
Whose name shall be called Jesu."
Then said the maid: Verily,
I am your servant truly,
Ecce ancilla Domini.
Nova! Nova!
Ave fit ex Eva! Nova!
Be it unto me according to thy word!
News! News! Hail the new Eve!
The sheer magnificence of God’s might and majesty is revealed most in this story of the Annunciation. The fifth century Patriarch of Constantinople, Saint Proclos describes the Annunciation as:
“Who has ever seen, who has ever heard, that the Limitless God would dwell within a womb? He Whom the Heavens cannot circumscribe is not limited by the womb of a Virgin!”
The infinite becomes surrounded by our own limited human nature, and in this the salvation of the world, and ourselves, comes forth. The great cosmic dimensions of God’s plan are meaningless in comparison to Mary’s yes though, because that yes came from the very human nature that we have. Our human nature grants us the freedom to sin, but it also grants us the freedom to be humble before God. That same human nature that causes so much sin became the human nature to bring forth salvation into this world. From Mary, Jesus takes on that very same human nature when he became incarnate as fully human and fully divine.
Mary became the mother of God, or, as the Eastern Orthodox Christians call her, the Theotokos—the God-Bearer. She became the new Eve that gave birth to the new Adam, Jesus Christ. The rest then, is history.
Ah, but we are not let off the hook so easily, no. In our creeds, we believe that Christ will come again to judge the living and the dead. We have plenty of images that depict the second coming of Christ in a cosmic sense. But as we’ve noticed, the cosmic sense carries little meaning without the personal sense, and it is in Mary’s yes, in Mary’s acceptance for salvation to be done according to God’s will, that we get a vision of Christ’s second coming in a personal sense.
Through our baptism and confirmation, we celebrate the indwelling of God within us; and in the Eucharist we celebrate a remembrance of that indwelling of God. In fact, each and every Eucharist is a celebration of Christ’s second coming into our midst in the bread and wine that becomes the Body and Blood of Jesus upon the altar. But we also need to live lives that make God manifest within us daily, so we to hear from Jesus, John the Baptist, and Mary as to what that means; to stay awake and listen, to cry out for justice in the world, and to say yes to God. When we do that, we prepare the way of the Lord for God to be present within us.
Of course, here we run into an interesting problem. Though I am twenty-five years old, I have yet to have an angel show up and tell me “here, do this for God.” Maybe some of you might have been lucky to have such a visitor in your life, but for those of us that have not had seen as much as a tiny seraphim, we might not be completely sure how we can serve God, how we can be Theotokoi in the world.
I may be young, but one thing I find helpful while waiting for that angelic message of inspiration is to perhaps do the things I ought to do: show kindness to others, be appreciative of to those who help me out, to be forgiving when others make mistakes, to know when to say something to someone who mourns, to know when to be quiet when words fail, being patient with others, and maybe do something generous to someone random once in a while with no expectation for a reward. Maybe nothing will happen, the heavens may not open, no angel may appear. You could do this from the first day of your life until the day you die.
Even Mother Teresa went through life with no vision of the divine, no angelic visitor, and during her ministry in Calcutta, she often experienced depression in the midst of her work. And yet perhaps the beauty that was made because of her actions might speak to something beautiful within her. All of the great and awe-inspiring magnificence of the cosmos pale in comparison to the God made manifest within through our faith and works .
Even if we never see an angel, we can still be like Mary, and be Theotokoi by making God manifest in the world. In that, the original hope of creation is to be found because the relationship between God and us, and between each other is restored. And God saw that it was good.
When we say yes to God, our Kyrie Eleisons become Gloria in Excelsis.
Even if there is no Angel, we must say yes to God so our Kyrie Eleisons become Gloria in Excelsis.
When we love our neighbor as ourselves, when we love our enemies as ourselves, when follow the commandments of God, we say yes to God, and so we cannot help but have our Kyrie Eleisons become Gloria in Excelsis Deo.
Amen.
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