Preached · December 17, 2017
Living in the In-Between
Good morning, everybody. My name is Anthony Parrott, and I'm a member of the teaching team here at Good News. It's good to be with you.
We are, as Pastor Brandon said, in Advent, a season of expectation and waiting. And, of course, we know that Jesus came. Jesus came many, many years ago. Here's a bit of random trivia: does anybody know the year that Jesus was born? Six B.C. One of those confusing things, where you'd think that with B.C. and A.D., Jesus was born on 0 or 1 A.D. But the guy who did the timeline, Dionysius the Little, based his timeline off of the founding of Rome, and he got that detail wrong. That's why Jesus was born in 6 B.C. — six years before we thought he was born. Somewhere between six and four. Fun little fact.
Anyway, we know that Jesus was born. We know that Jesus has come. We know that Jesus, in his life, his death, his resurrection, has inaugurated, has begun, his kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. And yet Advent, this time of waiting, of expectation, is also about the return of Jesus — that Jesus is going to come back. He is going to consummate. He is going to finish what he started. And so we live in the in-between. We live in the waiting period, anticipating with urgent patience what Jesus has done, and is doing, and will do.
The Song of Mary
This week we're going to take a look at the story and the song of Mary — Mary, the mother of Jesus, whom our Orthodox brothers and sisters call the Theotokos, the mother of God. Because Mary was given this amazing responsibility to bear the child Jesus, who is the Son of God, who is God in the flesh — divine, enfleshed in humanity.
If you have your Bibles, I invite you to open them up. One of our high values here at Good News is that we want folks to know how to use their Bibles, how to read their Bibles. And so that means we want you to actually open them up — whether that's in digital form, or a Bible you own, or one you're going to borrow from us. And if you don't own a Bible, we would love for you to keep the one that's being handed to you right now and make it your own.
We're in the book of Luke, chapter 1, and we're looking at what is called the Magnificat. It's the song of Mary. In the Latin, the first word is Magnificat. It means to magnify or to glorify the Lord. And so Mary has this song in the book of Luke.
Luke was a historian who gathered all of these different testimonies and eyewitness accounts of what happened during Jesus' birth and life, the time before and the time after. And so we can presume that at some point Luke encountered Mary herself and gathered this song that she composed when she learned that she was going to be Theotokos, the mother of God, the one who bears Jesus into the world.
This is Luke 1, verse 46. And Mary said:
My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant. From now on all generations will call me blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things for me — holy is his name. His mercy extends to those who fear him, from generation to generation. He has performed mighty deeds with his arm; he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts. He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, remembering to be merciful to Abraham and his descendants forever, just as he promised our ancestors. — Luke 1:46–55
Let's pray.
Almighty God, we know that your Spirit is present with us right now. So God, we ask that your Holy Spirit, in power and in might, would illuminate the word, the Scriptures, for us this morning, that we might hear afresh and anew what Mary has to say. God, we know that you are a God who turns kingdoms upside down. You upend the world's systems and values for the systems and values of your kingdom, here on earth as it is in heaven. And so, God, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts lead us further and deeper into that kingdom this morning, we pray. Amen.
Good News That Reorganizes Everything
The Magnificat is the song of Mary. It is her reaction, her response to this tremendous news that she is going to be bearing God's Son, Jesus Christ, into the world.
Mary is a Jew, a young girl who is betrothed to be married. And this news rocks her world. This news is the kind of thing that almost has her divorced, has her engagement broken off by Joseph. This news is the kind of thing that would follow her around the rest of her life, because she is pregnant — and yet she claims that she is a virgin. This news is going to wreck her life. It's going to send her on a journey away from her hometown, away from her parents, eventually bringing persecution upon her because of who she gives birth to, so that she has to become a refugee in a land far away from home. This news, by any account, would be bad news. And yet she writes this song of praise, glorifying God.
What the Magnificat does is show us that the news of Jesus — the gospel, the good news about Jesus — radically reorganizes and changes the way the world runs. It reorganizes the way that the world is organized.
My wife, Emily, and I are lovers of books. If you've ever walked into our house, one of the first things you're going to see is three large bookshelves covered with lots and lots of books. We were lovers of books from an early age. And so when we got married, one of the symbols of our two lives becoming intertwined, becoming one, was that we had to mingle our two libraries. They went up on all these shelves, organized in a way that made sense. The top left was biblical theology and things like that. Then it moved down to fantasy and science fiction. Then it moved to literature and poetry. It made sense. It had an organization to it.
But then, several years into our marriage, we started to watch too much HGTV and Fixer Upper, and Chip and Jo got to us. When we bought the house we're in now, it had carpet in the living room and in the hallway. But we knew there was hardwood underneath, because other parts of the house had hardwood. And so, after another inspired session of Fixer Upper, we had the idea: what if we tore our carpet up? Well, this was also connected to a second idea Emily had, inspired by what else but Pinterest, that said: what if we reorganized our books by color? Now, this, to me, was absolutely horrifying. Nobody goes to the public library and has the Dewey Decimal System replaced by rainbow order.
But after this inspired session of Fixer Upper, we were finally convinced to rip the carpet up, which meant we had to move the bookshelves and take all the books off — to which Emily said, "Anthony, this is a great opportunity to do it." And so up came the carpet, down came the books. Amazingly, we didn't have to sand a thing. The hardwood was beautiful. Who on earth decided to put carpet on it? We'll never know why. And then the books went back up in rainbow-colored order. And now I've completely owned this idea as if it were my own, because when people come into our house, we absolutely, one hundred percent judge them by whether or not they notice they're in rainbow color. Now you all have a leg up — if you come over to our house, you'll recognize it.
When momentous events happen, they have to radically reorganize the way your life is shaped. And so for Mary, when she gets the news about being the mother of God, the mother of Jesus, it not only radically reorients, reorganizes her life. It reorganizes the life of the entire world. And the Magnificat shows that in three primary ways. If you're taking notes, you can set an outline for yourself. It reorganizes Mary's personal life — the personal life of anybody who follows Jesus. It reorganizes the politics of the world; we'll talk about why "politics" isn't a dirty word in a second. And it also reorganizes who the people of God are. So: personal, political, the people of God. That's what the Magnificat is about.
The Personal: A Life That Magnifies God
Let's take a look at verse 46. To glorify or to magnify someone is basically to enlarge or to make their name great. It's to make somebody more famous than they already are. To glorify or to magnify God is to take his name and enlarge it, to make sure that more and more folks know about this God.
And so Mary gets this news that, for a lot of people, could be considered bad news, because now there are going to be rumors following her around the rest of her life. And she responds by saying, "I'm going to make God more famous. I'm going to make God's name even bigger and better than it was before. I'm going to make sure that everyone who encounters me knows how good God is."
And the reason Mary responds this way is that she says the Mighty One has done great things for me. There's a personal aspect to what's happening here. Yes, what Jesus will do for the world cannot be measured. It's massive. It changes everything. It changes the universe. But Mary realizes: what God has done for me matters. There's a personal aspect — Mary has encountered the living God. Mary has a relationship with the divine itself. And so Mary responds in praise, radically reorganizing her life around God's deeds, God's actions for her.
She says, in verse 50, that his mercy extends to those who fear him, from generation to generation. For those who recognize just how massive and large and transcendent God is — for those who recognize that, there is mercy. God is going to respond with kindness and gentleness and love. There is a personal aspect to the gospel, to the good news: that God has acted, not just on behalf of the universe, not just on behalf of the cosmos, but on behalf of you — personally, you. And this requires response. This requires radically reorienting our lives around that good news.
The question I have for us today is: can we say the same thing as Mary? Can we say that our soul glorifies, magnifies the Lord? Have we shaped our lives, our values, our schedules, our wallets, our credit cards — have we shaped them all in such a way that people would look at our lives and say, "I want to know more about God"? Are we making God more famous than he was before through the way we have lived our lives?
The other thing we recognize about Mary's personal response to God is what she says in verse 48: God has been mindful. It's a word that means to cast your gaze upon. God is paying particular attention to the humble state of his servant. And Mary is using a kind of double negative here — the humble state of a servant. The humble state is one of the lowest social castes in Jewish society. And it's the humble state of a servant. In the Greek, it's doulos. It means to be a slave or a bond servant. It means that you are basically owned by someone else. And so God — this transcendent, almighty God — casts his gaze, his attention, his affection, on the humble state of a servant. God identifies himself with, and is willing to be borne by, the humble state of a slave. God identifies with the lowest of the low.
And so, again, a question for ourselves. Not only are we willing to reorganize our lives in such a way that we make God more famous — are we also willing to reorganize our lives in such a way that we identify with the lowest of the low? Do we still have an excitement that God loves us? That the good news is still good news in our lives? That we never lose sight of the fact that this affection God has toward us, the lowest of the low, is undeserved? It's something we cannot expect. If we were to do the mathematics on it — how transcendent God is and how low we are — it would never be the sum at the end of the equation. And so do we still have an excitement, a soul magnifying God, about the fact that he does pay attention to us? He does love us. He does cast his gaze upon us with love and affection.
The gospel, the good news, radically reorganizes our personal lives so that we might lift up high the name of Jesus.
The Political: A Kingdom Turned Upside Down
Secondly, the gospel, the good news about Jesus, radically reorganizes the politics of the world. Now, politics — that's one of the two things you're not supposed to talk about over Christmas dinner, right? Religion and politics. And here we are, sitting in a church, doing both. Oh boy.
Politics comes from the Greek word polis, which was a city. A polis was a city, and it was how human beings organized themselves. So the politics were about the rules and the laws and the regulations, about how humanity organized itself for the common good. And so, of course, when God enters the scene through the person of Jesus, this is going to have implications for how human beings organize themselves for the common good. It has implications for our politics, our organizations, our institutions, our laws, and our regulations.
Here's how Mary puts it. Verse 51:
God has performed mighty deeds with his arm... he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts. He has brought down rulers from their thrones and has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things, but he has sent the rich away empty.
When Jesus enters the scene, when God takes on flesh, this has deep implications for how society organizes itself. And it's in a surprising way — not in the way we would expect. Because just as it was two thousand years ago, so it is today: we think the rich and the powerful are more blessed than we are. We think that if we become more rich and more powerful, that must mean we are more blessed than someone else. These lies — and that's what they are, they are lies — sneak into our psyche all the time. And so we end up wanting to affiliate with those who are richer and more powerful than we are, hoping some of that blessing can rub off on us.
But Mary teaches us quite the opposite. When Jesus enters the scene, he takes that social order and he flips it. Those who are proud, those who are conceited, those who think that what they have done, what they have accomplished, is the best — God scatters them. It's like an image of the Tower of Babel: humanity trying to build a tower to reach the heavens, so that they might enter the throne room of God on their own power. And what's God's response? He scatters them across the earth. In the same way, those who are proud, those who rely on their own ambitions, those who rely on their own accomplishments — God kind of chuckles and says, "Be scattered."
Mary continues: he has brought down rulers from their thrones. This is the deep political implication of what Jesus is going to do. Because Jesus is going to become king of the universe. Jesus is going to become king of the world. Jesus is the king of the Jew and the Gentile, the slave and the free — which only means that anybody else who claims to be ruler is wrong. Anyone else who claims to be in charge is mistaken. The good news of the gospel is that what we thought was in charge is not. God is instead.
He has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things. In fact, it's those we might end up despising, those we would not want to associate with — the hungry and the poor and the dirty and the broken, those who have never once touched power or wealth in their lives. It's those folks God ends up lifting up and raising.
Now, Jesus takes up this very message just a few chapters later. If you go to Luke chapter 6, this is Luke's telling of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. It's probably another case where Jesus is taking the same teaching but adapting it for a slightly different audience. Luke chapter 6, verse 20. This is what Jesus says:
Blessed are you who are poor.
That verse right there dramatically changes everything that religion, that culture knew about the poor. To be poor was not to be blessed; it was to be cursed. To be poor was a sign of God's disfavor and displeasure on you. To be poor must have meant that you had done something to tick off God, or the gods. You couldn't possibly be poor and blessed. And yet Jesus says, blessed are the poor. God's favor is upon you. You are close to the divine —
...for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you and exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil because of the Son of Man.
Christmas, we know, is a time that can be difficult for a lot of folks. It can be difficult because it can remind us of losses we have experienced, that we are experiencing. It can remind us of loved ones and friends who have passed away. It can remind us that maybe we are far more lonely than we want to be right now. And Jesus says, blessed are you. God's favor is upon you, for the day will come when you will laugh again.
But verse 24, Jesus goes on:
Woe to you who are rich...
Again, radically turning upside down the common wisdom of that day. Woe to you who are rich? Aren't the rich the ones who are blessed by God? Aren't the rich the ones who have God's pleasure upon them? Jesus says:
...woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort.
In other words, if your comfort is in your riches, if your comfort is in your wealth, if your comfort is in your power, if your comfort is in the fact that you are at the top of every food chain there could possibly be — then that's all the reward you're ever going to get. And the kingdom of God will seem like nonsense, a distance away that you will never travel.
Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep. Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.
Like a sermon from a month or so ago: woe to you whose reputation is spotless. Because that makes you nothing like Jesus, whose reputation was one who hung out with prostitutes, tax collectors, and sinners.
So, back to Luke chapter 1. The teaching of Jesus and the song of Mary resonate. He has brought down rulers from their thrones. He has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things. He has sent the rich away empty. Why has he sent the rich away empty? Because these rich are convinced that they don't need anything from God — that God has nothing to offer them, that God's kingdom is only bad news, because it means they're going to be brought down from their thrones.
Where the reality is, God wants to take those of us who are in positions of privilege and power and wealth, and he wants us to admit: it's not enough. It will never be enough. It will never finish what is necessary to bring us close to God. It's not that God hates your wealth. It's not that God hates your power. God hates it when we think that is what brings us to God. And so God asks that we would be brought down low from our positions, our wealth, our authority — brought down low for one purpose: so that we may use it for lifting others up. For lifting up the poor and the lonely. God wants to invite us into the grand project of revealing his kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. And that starts with admitting that what we have, no matter how much it is, is not enough — and that it all belongs to God anyway.
For some of us, this is good news. We've been on the wrong side of society before. We've lived on the wrong side of the tracks. We've been abused by people in positions of power and privilege. And so when we hear this, we want to say, "That is good news." We want to cheer. We want to say, "Go get 'em, Jesus."
And for some of us — a lot of us, me included — this makes us a little squirmy, a little uncomfortable. Like we talked about earlier this summer: we are the one percent. If you have an income over twenty thousand dollars, that makes you among some of the wealthiest people in the world, in the history of the world. And so passages like this sound awfully directed toward people like you and me. And so our response can only be: God, would you humble us? God, would you remind me yet again that what's in this wallet, what's in this position of power and privilege and authority, what's in my bank account, what's on my business card, will never bridge the gap between me and God. Only the gospel will. Only the good news will.
The People of God: Israel's Story Fulfilled
Finally, we see that Mary's song has repercussions not only for how we organize our personal life and our political life, the way society organizes itself, but also for what it means to be part of the people of God. Mary says, in verse 54, that Jesus is the climax, the epitome, the glorious conclusion to the story of Israel.
If you remember, back in Genesis, God told Abraham, "I will bless you, and through you, you will be a blessing to all nations and to all people." And Israel, quite frankly, failed. Their mission of being a blessing to all people, of being the light to the world — as Deuteronomy said they were meant to be — failed. They got caught up in the idols of the day, the values of the day, the systems of the day that made the rich the top and the poor the bottom. And so the good news they were meant to spread — that Yahweh was the only God, and that God approached in mercy and love — Israel failed to spread that message.
And so along comes Jesus. And in Jesus, he embodies the whole of what Israel was meant to be. He is God's favored Son. He is the light of the world. And Jesus dies on behalf of the world, so that all people — male or female, slave or free, Scythian or Greek or Jew — all people may come under the name Israel. All people may come under the name "the people of God." And God will be their God, and they will be his people.
And so when we tell the Christmas story, what we are beginning to tell is the climax of Israel's story: that Israel's failure is no more. That God's mission for the world — of bringing everyone into redemption, everyone into reconciliation, everyone into an intimate relationship with God — will be fulfilled through Jesus Christ. And what it means to be part of the people of God is now radically reorganized and redefined: to be those who claim Jesus as king. Jesus, born in a manger, in a stable, in a backwater town, in a backwater Roman territory. He takes the poor and the humble, and he lifts them up. And Jesus becomes king.
Three Questions (Or Four)
And so I want to leave us with three questions from Mary's song.
One: are we living a life that makes God more famous? Can we say the same thing as Mary — "My soul glorifies the Lord"? Is my life organized in such a way that anyone who encounters me may know God a little bit better through my life? Are we living our lives in such a way that God becomes more famous?
Number two: have we organized our lives in such a way that we are now identified with the marginalized? That we associate with them, that we become one of them? Eugene Peterson puts it this way: the poor are not a problem to be solved, but rather a people to be joined. Are we willing to live those kinds of lives — to identify with the marginalized, the hungry, the poor, and to view the rich and the powerful with suspicion? (Parentheses: that may include ourselves.) Are we willing to identify with the poor and to view the rich and the powerful with suspicion, even if that includes ourselves?
And finally: are we living our lives as if Jesus were king? Living our lives not as if folks in Washington, D.C., or folks at the U.N. building, or folks at the Capitol building in Des Moines, or folks at the state house, or the mayor's office, or somebody across the street, or the IRS, or anybody else were in charge. Are we living our lives as if Jesus were in charge? Are we living our lives with our finances as if Jesus were king? Is our marriage aligned as if Jesus were king? Is the way we're loving our neighbor as if Jesus were king?
Next week is Christmas Eve — two services, 9:00 and 4:30, both candlelight, identical services. And that brings the last question, so I guess there are four. The last question: are we inviting folks to meet with God in the flesh? Inviting folks to meet with the King of the world? Statistics say that if you ask somebody to join you at church — the number one thing people say brings them to a church, I think it's about eighty percent of people, is that it was an invitation. And to be honest, it's about a fifty to sixty percent chance that someone will say yes. It's a toss of a coin. But what's the worst that could happen if someone says no? And what's the best that could happen if someone says yes?
So I want to make that challenge to you. Invite your neighbor. Invite your friend. "Hey, do you have somewhere to go to church next Sunday? It's Christmas Eve. Would you come along with me?" Let's pack this house out.
Closing Prayer
Would you pray with me?
Almighty God, may we be able to join with Mary and say, "Our soul glorifies the Lord." May our lives make you famous, God. May the words that come out of our mouths, the actions that come out of our bodies — may they make you famous. And God, would you change our lives in such a way that those who are poor, those who are hungry, those who are weak, those who are without power, may look at our lives and say, "That's my friend. That's my brother. That's my sister." God, may we view you as the King of the universe, and no one else. May we magnify and glorify your name. Amen.
