THE FOURTH SUNDAY IN ADVENT     December 21, 2008

"MARY"   Luke 1:26-38

You remember Murphy’s Law: "Whatever can go wrong will go wrong." There are also a number of corollaries that go along with that, one being this: that if you drop a piece of toast with jam on it, more often than not it will land on the floor jam-side down. It's just one of those things. The normal state of the universe, according to Murphy, is upside down.

But then there are times when upside down is exactly the way things ought to be.

Take for example this story about Mary. When all is said and done, and the angel’s message is delivered, and Mary and her cousin Elizabeth have had a chance to compare notes, Mary bursts into song. You might know her song as “The Magnificat,” for it is a magnificent vision of God taking this upside down world and turning it on its head; turning it upside down, but in reality, turning it right-side up. That's the way God works, Mary sings, taking that which is on the bottom of the heap - the lowly, the hungry, the poor, the outcast, and the downcast - and raising them up; and taking those who thought they had made themselves into something special and bringing them down. Where are Caesar Augustus, and King Herod, and the High Priests, and those others who thought they were at the center of the universe as the story unfolds? Where are they while God is at work? They are out of the loop; left out, left over, left behind. "God has brought down the powerful from their thrones," Mary sings, and all the world is turned upside down; which is to say, at last, all the world is turned right-side up.

But not just all the world. Mary's world as well. It's not just the entire universe which changes with the coming of the Messiah, it's Mary's life which is stood on its head, because, you see, Mary had a life of her own. She had plans for herself. Oh, probably nothing tremendously exciting or extraordinary by our standards. She was, after all, just a young girl in a society which valued neither women nor youth very highly. But still, she had her plans, and having her life turned upside down was not exactly what she had in mind. She was going to marry Joseph the carpenter. And in their little town of Nazareth, nestled peacefully in the Galilean hills, they would raise their family. Mary would quietly but proudly take her place in the adult world as "the carpenter's wife," and together they, and their children, and someday even their grandchildren, would take their place as respected members of the community, just like her parents and her parents' parents before them. Mary could well have considered herself to be blessed already: blessed with a good community and friends; blessed with a husband-to-be who was a kind and honest man; blessed with the prospects of a simple yet happy life which stretched out before her. Yes, indeed, Mary had her plans...

But how quickly plans can change! How quickly life can go upside down. It happened for Mary just about the time the angel showed up with a message from God. "Greetings, favored one,” the angel told her, "The Lord is with you. For you have found favor with God. And now, you will… bear a son, and you will call him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever; and of his kingdom there will be no end.” Never mind that you're not married yet; for “the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy, the Son of God."

And Mary, in that moment of great clarity which often comes in times of surprise, must have been able to see all of her plans for the future, all of her hopes for a normal and peaceful life, go flying right out the same window that the angel had flown in. And yet Mary's reply is so full of faith; she is so full of confidence that God's future for her, no matter how mysterious or uncertain or upside down it might be, must still be far better than any future she could have planned for herself. Martin Luther once commented that there are three miracles in the story of Christmas: that God became human, that a virgin conceived, and that Mary believed. And the most amazing of the three, Luther said, is that Mary believed. "Here I am," she tells the messenger, "the servant of the Lord. Let it be with me according to your word."

Mary and Elizabeth cross paths in the story just long enough for Elizabeth to reaffirm Mary in her decision. When Elizabeth sees her coming, she cries out, "Blessed are you among women! Blessed is she who believed that God's word could be trusted." I imagine those were good words for Mary to hear. You know how helpful a word of encouragement can be when it's spoken at just the right time. And I bet that Mary thought about those words a lot, in the days and years that followed, because there must have been a lot of times when she didn't feel particularly blessed. "Blessed is she who believed..." She must have wondered what sort of a blessing this could be when she returned to her home town and it began to be more and more obvious to everyone around her that an unexpected baby was now expected, and the rumor mill got cranked up and running. She must have wondered what sort of a blessing this was, on that day when she finally had to face Joseph and explain to him what was going on. And it must have been hard to feel blessed in those final days of her pregnancy, when she and Joseph had to set out on a seventy mile journey, on foot or by donkey, so that some Roman bureaucrat in Bethlehem could count them for the census. And it must have been hard to feel blessed when the stable was the only place they could find to spend the night, and the time came for this, her first child, to be born, welcomed only by cows and sheep and a small band of curious shepherds. And it must have been hard to feel blessed when they had to flee for their lives from the wrath of a frightened king, and become exiles in a foreign land. And it must have been hard to feel blessed at all, when, having watched her son grow and mature, Mary also had to watch him die - executed as a common criminal, as a threat to those in power. "Blessed is she who believed..." - but some days it must have been hard to feel very blessed; and some days it must have been hard to keep on believing. It's like that sometimes when your world is turned upside down. It can be hard to feel blessed, and it can be hard to keep on believing.

And yet, through it all, God's promises had not failed. Through it all, Mary was blessed; blessed through the struggles and the trials which taught her about God's unfailing faithfulness; blessed through the difficult days with a growing spirit of strength and peace; blessed even at that terrible moment of her son’s death to see even then the grace of God at work. Blessed is she, because she believed, because she trusted God to do what God had said, because she allowed herself to be a part of God's fulfillment of God's word.

Well, this is our final Sunday of Advent preparation before we begin our celebration of Christmas. The gospel story for today invites us to think again about Jesus' mother Mary, and to recognize in her a person who is not so very different from ourselves; and at the same time, to recognize in ourselves people who share much in common with blessed Mary. We, like she, have plans; plans for ourselves and for our families, hopes for the future, dreams to accomplish. But we, like Mary, are sometimes asked to leave those plans behind, to leave those hopes and dreams unfulfilled, because God also has plans - plans that involve us, plans to fulfill the divine promises to us and in us, and to the rest of the world, through us. God has plans to turn our lives upside down, which is to say, really right-side up. Oh, sure, the ways God seeks to use us rarely (if ever) seem as spectacular as the way that God asked Mary to serve. Our service usually comes through the more mundane sorts of tasks that we're asked to do in our families, or in our congregation, or in our communities, or at our place of work; tasks that don't always exactly fit into our own plans, but rather fit into God's plans for us. Our paths may not have the major twists and turns that Mary’s did. But the importance of it all comes down to our obedience, because it's in our obedience to God that we’re blessed, and that others around us can be blessed; blessed with a faith rooted in trusting God with our very lives.

We could learn a lot from Mary. We could learn a lot about letting go of our own plans, about putting our lives into God's hands, about trusting God to be faithful to his word. And yet we don't need to idolize Mary, as if she weren't human just like us. It says in more than one place in the story that Mary "pondered in her heart" the things that had happened, and I take that to mean that even in the midst of her faith, she herself did not always understand just exactly where her Lord and her life were leading her. Faith does not necessarily answer all the questions of life; faith simply recognizes and accepts that there is more to life than meets the eye, that God does indeed work in mysterious ways, ways that are often hidden from our view. Faith believes that despite any appearance to the contrary, God can be trusted, and God keeps his word, and through it all, God blesses his people.

And so as our Advent Season draws to a close, we’re left with this portrait of Mary, who prepared herself for the birth of Jesus by recognizing and accepting herself, first of all, as God's obedient servant, who allowed her life to be turned upside down in order that God could turn the world right-side up. As our Advent days of preparation end, and our Christmas celebration begins, may we take her example of faith to heart, so that Elizabeth's benediction might also be spoken over us: "Blessed are they who believe that God's promises will be fulfilled."

Amen.