A Sermon of hope

May my words be in the name of the living God. Creating, redeeming and sustaining. Amen.

Wow what a term. I’m really pleased to have managed to get to the end of it in one piece. I’ve had 4 Carol Services, 2 primary school performances and 2 evening performances of our Christmas production in the last 2 weeks. Friday I had the moving job of delivering food parcels to some of our most needy families. I hate the fact that these things have to be done in this day and age.

Like many of you I'm shattered and wondering what I can still get out of the Christmas story that will give me light and life.

So let’s have a look at today’s gospel which concentrates on Mary and see where the Holy Spirit takes us.

Those of you that have been around for a while, do you remember when I first came here and I said I love that bit where Jesus says, "Does anything good come out of Nazareth?" I joked and said I felt the same about when it came to me coming from Woolwich. Well, it's all too easy to forget that Mary comes from Nazareth too and she was probably only just old enough to have a child so still full of all those teenage insecurities.

If we think about that being the back drop to Gabriel's greeting about her being the favoured one. Her response is quite rational she is perplexed and greatly troubled. She is probably thinking "who is this eejit? Doesn't he realise I come from one of the worst slums around here. How on earth can I be favoured?” Well words to that effect anyway.

Then we can also look at it from Gabriel's point of view too. A fella called Frederick Buechner in his book peculiar treasures put's it like this “She struck the angel Gabriel as hardly old enough to have a child at all, let alone this child, but he’d been entrusted with a message to give her and he gave it. He told her what the child was to be named, and who he was to be, and something about the mystery that was to come upon her. ‘You mustn’t be afraid, Mary,’ he said. And as he said it, he only hoped she wouldn’t notice that beneath the great, golden wings, he himself was trembling with fear to think that the whole future of creation hung now on the answer of a girl.”

Ooh don't you just love that, that the whole future of creation now hung on the answer of a girl. Imagine all the angels gathered around, looking down, holding their collective breath. “What will she say? Will she do it? C’mon, Mary, say yes!” Because they all know the way God works is only by allowing people freely to answer “yes.”

Freedom of choice and the exercise of free will is so important to God, who would never force a “yes” from anyone.

During Advent we are encouraged to prepare. We prepare ourselves for God's arrival amongst us and for the light that shines in the darkness. If we haven’t already done so we can prepare ourselves to say, along with Mary, our own “yes”: “Here am I, the servant of the Lord.” These are words that change everything. It might be we need to say it again over another issue.

So at some point in Mary's exchange with the archangel she starts to relax and we get this brave yes, this leap of faith out into the unknown. All of us at some point have to takes leaps of faith. It reminds me of that quote that a bird doesn't have faith in the branch it stands on but faith in its own ability to fly should the branch break. Where are the areas in your life where you need to take a leap of faith? If you do, you'd be amazed how far it will take you.

Now getting to our reading I have given you all of that because it is the back drop to what happens next. This mornings reading gives us the Magnificat which follows the Annunciation. So Mary goes from being perplexed and troubled to not just talking about what God has done for her but broadening the incarnation right out. Here are those words that I have sung since being a teenager myself in churches and cathedrals all over the country. It still gives me goose bumps “My soul magnifies the Lord, ⁴⁷and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour, ⁴⁸for he has looked with favour on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; ⁴⁹for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name. ⁵⁰His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. ⁵¹He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. ⁵²He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; ⁵³he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. ⁵⁴He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, ⁵⁵according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.”

There are so many great statements in the Magnificat. The fact that MY soul MAGNIFIES the Lord. There is a bit of me that magnifies God’s essence. Wow how great is that? In the old version that I still sing we also hear it put like this “For he that is mighty hath magnified me” So now we have God magnifying us. Cool or what. I love the double magnification of the Magnificat. God and us working together is what really brings about the other profound statements. It is when we work together, when God and humanity is in unison that the powerful will be brought down from their thrones and we will send the rich away empty.

You don't need to be a genius to work out we are still waiting though for the rich to be sent away empty and for the lowly to be lifted up. Times of austerity seem to highlight this more so with the gap getting bigger. When we do the right thing though we build God’s Kingdom. If we pay more tax to help the needy, if we do our bit to lobby government to make sure they treat those on the margins with respect, then we continue to build God’s Kingdom.

I told the kids at school this week that there was a lot of confusion that first Christmas and it was into that mess that God chose to reveal himself. I also believe it is into this mess that God continues to believe herself.

Mary knows that the birth of the Messiah to her, a lowly Jewish peasant, is an important sign of what God’s kingdom looks like. It is in the Incarnation that we get our clearest picture of the age to come. God became flesh, not in the person of Julius Caesar or a great Egyptian Pharaoh. God became flesh in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, the son of peasant woman in an occupied land. Without the mighty getting wind of it, they were as good as cast down from their thrones. If the newlywed wife of a carpenter is to give birth to God’s son, then the hungry are as good as having their bellies filled, for God is not only ready and willing to bring about the age to come; God is in fact already breaking the age to come into our world in acting counter to the ways of this present age. Ooh don'tcha just love the way God does things?

What does that message still have for us today? I think because of the ways God has broken into human history, we have had glimpses of a different world. Through the life of Jesus, and sometimes through his followers, we have seen how wonderful the counter cultural world of the gospel really can be. No one is too lowly, too weak, or too undesirable for God. There are no outcasts in God’s kingdom. God does not look to the outward signs of status and success, but rather God looks at the content of your heart.

Use this last week of Advent to make more room in your life for God. Take time to reflect and see if there is a “yes” you need to give to God. The more we allow God into our hearts and lives, the more we will find ourselves loving those whom God loves. Every time we reach out to others to share God’s love, we bring the age to come to life into the here and now and also every time you love and every time you give it’s Christmas. Amen