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“The Song of Mary”
Pastor Dave Schneider Central Presbyterian Church, Russellville, Arkansas Sunday, December 7, 2008
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Luke1:39-56 “‘For He has regarded the lowly state of His maidservant.’”
I. CHARLES KRIEG, FROM PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY, REMEMBERS HOW AS A LITTLE BOY, ONE CHRISTMAS MORNING MANY YEARS AGO, HE WENT TO CHURCH WITH HIS GRANDMOTHER. “She knelt down for a moment and prayed. I noticed her taking a little straw from the manger and putting it in her purse. As we left church, she told me that now the infant Jesus would see to it that she would always have some money in her purse to provide for her family. A lot of people would laugh at this...’superstition,’ says Charles Krieg. But I see it in a different light. I see here a woman of simple, childlike faith.” A. How does one of us come to Christmas? – with a simple, childlike faith which still believes in miracles of the night on which animals could talk and sense the birth of God himself, of angels appearing to poor shepherds at midnight – or do we come to Christmas as if it were a compilation of so much superstition and legend? 1. I think many of us as sophisticated Protestants tend to dismiss too readily as mere superstition much of the belief surrounding Mary. 2. Certainly we do not confess this woman as the “Mother of God.”
II. WHO WAS THIS GIRL? HOW DID SHE SEE HERSELF, OR UNDERSTAND HER ROLE, WHEN SHE WAS SUDDENLY CAUGHT UP IN A DIVINE DRAMA? A. In the Gospel of Luke there is a lively and pointed interchange between the archangel Gabriel and the youthful Mary, most likely a teenage girl living at home who was waiting out the 12 months of her legally-binding engagement. 1. “Hail, O favored one, the Lord is with you!’” a. It sounds like a greeting from a computer-generated telephone solicitation.
(1)
“If you act now we
will send you a gift from Heaven, absolutely free. All you have
to do is answer a couple of b. or an obnoxious email spam that mean it’s going to cost your big $$ later on. 2. Mary is troubled in her heart, hesitant, uncertain. She has good reason to be!
B. Now Mary finds herself in another household confronted by a second miracle! 1. She visits her aunt and uncle. We are not told the reason for this visit. 2. but it is a home where Mary was always welcome. 3. She could tell her aunt Elizabeth or her uncle Zechariah anything.
4.
Her priestly uncle
could make his Jewish religion come alive and make it so
practical when it came to the typical a. But now her uncle could not speak. b. She must rely on Elizabeth ... c. just girl talk, or talk between two women from two different generations. d. Their shared pregnancies eliminated that gap. 5. This song of Mary is a spontaneous reaction to the stirring of the Holy Spirit and her aunt’s prophetic words. a. Elizabeth addresses her favorite niece , “Why should the mother of my Lord come and visit me?”
C. Why did not Mary sing her song in her own home in Nazareth? 1. Sometimes it is hard to sing our own music in our own home!
a.
because the words we
want to sing in our own free verse make no sense to our parents.
b. It is not the tune their 70's post-Vietnam war generation sings. c. And our grandparents’ songs from their archaic 33's and 45's do not download. 2. This is Mary’s praise song, her song of hope, a. hope for the people who were from Mary’s own common, poorly-educated folk in Nazareth and other Jewish villages, b. individuals in society who also see themselves lowly, as maids, as illiterate servants. 3. Surprisingly her song is welcomed by two old-timers who represent the entrenched religious establishment.
4.
There is no telling
how her song would have been received by her parents or her
brothers and sisters, if she 5. This is the only place she is able to sing her song. 6. And because her song was welcomed, she stayed in that home three more months. 7. Contrast this joyous, spirit-filled praise with the two other responses of young Mary at Christmas.
a.
Her troubled
mind which then submits calmly to the
angel in her own home, “‘Let
it be, I am the maidservant
b.
The second response is
found at the end of Luke’s nativity pageant, where “Mary
kept all of these things and
D. The psalmist and others tell us that the beginning of human wisdom is the fear of the Lord,
1.
Fear in the sense of
awe, being overwhelmed by the presence of the divine in
our lives right in the privacy 2. Luke’s words are “the OVERSHADOWING of the power of the Most High.”
3.
My soul, my very
being, is forced to jump out of character and magnify the Lord
because He has regarded 4. That is why I am blessed, that is why I am filled with HOPE! 5. That is why his mercy is on those who FEAR him! 6. It’s an frightening moment, an up close and personal thing that invades and shatters my personal space. 7. And it happens at home. –They say you are never safe at home! a. The Good News is that at Christmas, I am never “home alone”!
III. “‘For with God nothing will be impossible.’” A. Certainly this must be the next step. - 2 - 1. It is a leap of faith that takes her from her song of praise in her aunt’s home back to her own home, a. and from there to conclude matters with Joseph, 2. then from there the winter journey of a pregnant unwed youth with her fiancee to Bethlehem, a. they have no idea of where they will stay, b. or how they are going to care for a newborn baby. 3. ....and from Bethlehem, the escape of two fugitives from the law into far-off Egypt. a. leaving behind family, friends, jobs, their familiar language. 4. So these two must learn to sing a new song in a strange land a. And it must be a song of hope, also, for those who find themselves as elusive people of the night,
b.
Phillip Yancey in his
best-seller, “What Is So Amazing About Grace,” observed that the
more down-trodden 5. I sometimes write sermons while listening to one of my Beatles’ CD’s... “When I find myself in times of trouble Mother Mary comes to me Speaking words of wisdom, let it be... She is standing right in front of me Speaking words of wisdom, let it be... And when the broken hearted people Living in the world agree There will be an answer, let it be.
a.
This Beatles’ exegesis
does not fit into Reformed theology, but I can understand why it
was an instant hit b. The song is based on a dream Paul McCartney had. His mother who was also named Mary died when he was 14. That is about the same age of Mary in Luke. McCartney said he revisited his mother in a dream. He said it was great to visit her again and it inspired him to write about it. In another interview about the dream, he said that his mother had once said to him "it'll be alright, just let it be", this gave him the title of the song. 6. Do you not find it peculiar that there is no mention of Mary’s mother in Luke’s story?
B. Dr. Bruce Larson, a former senior pastor of the University Presbyterian Church in Seattle, suggests Mary may have had some innate sense that “with God nothing will be impossible,” or her naive untapped mind’s “divine gift of wisdom, ‘to comprehend something at the very heart of the mystery of life and the mystery of God.’” 1. To find God is not to find perfect peace. 2. To be chosen of God is to be prepared to leave home and choose pain, suffering, rejection, failure, uncertainty, and even death, a. to realize that your life is not your own but belongs to the One who created you and loves you more perfectly than anyone in your own home. 3. To be chosen of God is also to be given the gift at times to sing your own song, to surrender calmly and say in your heart where perhaps only God hears you, - 3 - a. “My precious Lord, I am the lowliest of your servants and I will sing you my song.” 4. To be singled out by any angel, by the Holy Spirit is to be overwhelmed at times with joyful hope, to have your heart skip a beat within you. 5. It is to know finally, that our minds are too small to grasp “the unmeasured greatness of the works of God, yet somehow to know that, “God is with me...Emmanuel” 6. Says author and Presbyterian pastor Michael Lindvall, who wrote an amusing fictionalized story about his first parish on Long Island, “The Good News from North Haven,” INCARNATION, the birth of Jesus, is “God’s greatest affirmation” of what it means to be human right here where we are in this place today in 2008. 7. So, you and I overtaken by amazement and wonder, it is neither legend nor superstition, it is miracle, a. a song of hope, unbelievable, incredible, wonderful hope! 8. In the words of an Appalachian carol, “I wonder as I wander out under the sky, How Jesus, the Savior, did come for to die, For poor ornery people like you and like I... When Mary birthed Jesus, twas in a cows’ stall, With wise men and farmers & shepherds & all, But high from God’s heaven a star light did fall, And the promise of ages It then did recall... I wonder as I wander out under the sky...”
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