I want to make my annual public service announcement to the men in our congregation. Guys, it’s time to do your Christmas shopping. I hope our men have this task already out of the way. But just in case, please heed my announcement.
I understand that a [certain couple in our church] slipped off to [a nearby city] to do their Christmas shopping and somehow they got separated for several hours. Fortunately they had their cell phones with them.
“Honey, where are you!?” [the woman] asked.
“Darling,” [he] says, “do you remember when we were first married the jewelry shop where you saw that diamond necklace you loved? But we didn’t have enough money at the time, so I said, ‘Someday I’ll come back to this shop and buy that necklace for you.’ Do you remember?”
“Yes!” she shouts, excitedly.
“Well,” [he] says, “I’m in the Home Depot next door to that jewelry shop getting some supplies.” *
The big day is almost here. We have experienced another exhausting Advent season. So many things required our attention.
Maula Powers is a storyteller. In an issue of Catholic Digest some years ago Ms. Powers told about a creature called the “Advent Teufel.” Teufel is a German word for devil. According to an old German folktale it is the Advent Devil who tries during the Advent season to keep people so busy in outward affairs that they lose sight of the real meaning of Christmas. The Advent Devil doesn’t want people to have time to experience the rebirth of Christ within themselves. The temptations of the Advent Devil are diabolically clever. He makes it so easy for us to go along with the flow of seasonal celebrations. The Advent Devil’s business is to keep us so busy with holiday obligations that we forego daily prayer, Scripture study, and church services.
Some of us have been fighting the Advent Devil this year. Hopefully, we now have him under control. Just a couple more days. I hope you are in a position to use that little bit of time that’s left to focus on the real meaning of it all.
Our lesson from Luke’s Gospel takes place some months before the birth of Christ. In fact, Mary has only recently learned from the angel that she will bear a child, a child conceived of the Holy Spirit. Almost immediately, Mary decides to visit her older cousin Elizabeth. This meant she had to travel about 100 miles south to the hill country of Judah. This would be about a five day journey, an amazing trip for a young teenage pregnant girl. It’s disconcerting to realize that Mary would have been in about the 9th, maybe the 10th grade when all this happened to her.
Perhaps the awkwardness of her situation played a role in her decision to visit her cousin. After all, for having a child out of wedlock, she could be stoned for adultery. At the very least, she could be rejected by Joseph, her parents, her village. She could spend the rest of her days in poverty, struggling to keep herself and her child fed outside the safety of a marriage and community. We accept an out-of-wedlock pregnancy much more casually in our society, but this would have been a big deal in biblical times.
Elizabeth herself was married to a priest named Zechariah. Elizabeth was a descendant of the Hebrew people’s first high priest, Aaron. They were a deeply religious couple. Luke describes them as being righteous. Elizabeth was also pregnant for the first time. She would also face ridicule. The source of Elizabeth’s social torment, however, would be age. There would be those who would whisper to their friends, “Isn’t she too old to have a baby?” Elizabeth was far beyond normal childbearing years, yet she was six months pregnant. In fact Gabriel came to her long before he came to Mary to announce her son’s coming. Elizabeth’s son was not divinely conceived any more than you and I were, but his birth was still significant. He would be the forerunner of the Messiah. We know him as John the Baptist.
Elizabeth and Mary were quite a pair. As Dr. M. Craig Barnes has noted, “One of them is too old to be a mother and the other is too young. But both are in the hands of God.”
In that culture and at that time and place, it normally would have been appropriate for Mary to pay homage to the elder Elizabeth, but this is not a normal situation. Elizabeth, through the Spirit, recognized that she was in the presence of the mother of the Messiah. Luke tells us that as soon as Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and she was filled with the Holy Spirit. So she praised Mary and pronounced her blessed. In a loud voice she exclaimed: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear!”
That’s interesting, don’t you think? Elizabeth’s unborn son announced the coming of God’s son. Elizabeth asks with humility, “But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her!”
At this Mary breaks out in a song, a song we know as the Magnificat. She sings, “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.”
The Magnificat echoes several Old Testament biblical passages, but the most pronounced allusion is to the Song of Hannah, from 1Samuel 2:1-10. The Magnificat is radical and revolutionary. The humble and the hungry are lifted up but the wealthy are sent away empty. William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury, warned his missionaries to India never to read the Magnificat in public. Christians were already suspect in that country and they were cautioned against reading verses so inflammatory. (1)
In our land, Mary would be accused of “class warfare.” It’s dangerous to talk about the greed of the wealthy and powerful and the oppression of the least and lowest.
What is it that we need to take away from Mary’s song so close to Christmas? Three things. First of all we need to see that Jesus came to turn the world right side up.
Jesus didn’t come to maintain the status quo. Jesus came to bring righteousness and justice. The message of God’s love for all people regardless of who they are or what they have is the most liberating message in the world.
Some of you recognize the name, Harriet Tubman. Before the Civil War Harriet was one of the most courageous leaders of the Underground Railroad, leading at least 300 slaves to their freedom in the North. At one point in her courageous journeys, Harriet had a premonition that her three brothers, all still slaves, were in trouble. She decided then and there that her brothers would be with her on the next Underground Railroad to the North. With the help of a literate friend, she sent a coded letter to her three brothers. In those days, the authorities often read the mail of influential black people, looking for any suspicious anti-slave activity. So Harriet’s code to her brothers that they should follow her to freedom was as follows: “Read my letter to the old folks, and give my love to them, and tell my brothers to be always watching unto prayer, and when the good old ship of Zion comes along, to be ready to step on board.”
One of Harriet’s Underground Railroad stops was at her parents’ cabin. She and her fellow travelers would hide out in the barn. Because Harriet’s mother was given to outbursts of screaming and crying whenever she was happy, it was impossible for them to let her mother know they were there. Instead, they subtly alerted Harriet’s father to their presence. Before Harriet’s father entered the barn, he put a blindfold over his eyes. He knew the authorities would come to ask him if he had seen Harriet, and he wanted to be able to say “no” truthfully. (2)
One reason that Harriet’s coded messages contained biblical references is that African-American slaves could relate to the message of freedom that the Bible proclaims. Remember that the very first message the adult Jesus preached was based on the words of the prophet Isaiah and went something like this: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18-19).
Jesus was not a revolutionary. He was sent to be the Savior of the world. However, his message was revolutionary. Once you accept that God is the Father of all people, once you accept the fact that Christ died for all people, once you accept the fact that everyone on earth is our brother and our sister, it becomes impossible to justify the oppression of one people by another. It becomes impossible to justify that some would live in absolute luxury while others go to bed each night with hunger pangs gnawing at their insides. Jesus came to turn the world right side up.
Jesus also came to give dignity to those whom society does not value. The Christmas story shows those in government palaces in the worst possible light. Meanwhile members of society’s least prestigious vocation, shepherds, hear the message of “Peace on earth, good will toward men.” That is no accident.
Dr. Craig Barnes, pastor of the National Presbyterian Church in our nation’s capital, tells of walking downtown several years ago. It is Christmas time and he was late for an appointment. He rushed past a small group of young teenagers who were singing carols on the sidewalk.
He should have kept running, he says, but for some reason he stopped for just a moment. It was then that he noticed all of these teenagers had some kind of developmental disability. One young lady with Down syndrome had the job of playing the triangle. Whenever the director pointed to her, her face would light up, she would smile from ear to ear, and give her triangle a whack. Barnes says he was riveted by her. He says she became his priest. As his eyes teared up something inside him leapt for joy. He noticed the stressed-out leaders of business and government around him who had also been captivated by this moment, dabbing their eyes. What was happening? He wondered. “Something deep inside,” he writes, “something planted by God, was touched as they sang, ‘the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.’ That holy thing God had started leaped up to our hearts and every one of us wanted to join that group of singers saying, ‘I have disabilities, too. My spirit and heart have been disabled by cynicism, hurt, and anger. I would love to have your innocence and purity leap out of me as it does your little choir.’” (3)
It is only right that at Christmas we should be mindful of those for whom life is a struggle. It is only right at Christmas time that we should be reminded of our bounty and the world’s need. Sometimes it seems that Christmas is homage to Mammon and not to God. Whose birthday is it anyhow? Jesus came to turn the world right side up. Jesus came to give dignity to those whom society does not value.
Jesus came to give hope to the hopeless, peace to those who hearts are in turmoil, love to those who are broken.
In an issue of Good Housekeeping magazine some years back, Sheryl Van Vleck-Wells tells her favorite Christmas story, a true story that happened many years ago in the life of Sheryl’s mother, Phyllis.
Phyllis grew up in a very poor but very happy family. One year, just before Christmas, Phyllis contracted diphtheria. Diphtheria was a serious and highly contagious illness, so the whole family had to be quarantined for many weeks. Every Christmas Phyllis’ mother had sold baked goods in order to buy Christmas presents for the children. But this year, due to the quarantine, her mother wasn’t allowed to sell any baked goods. But seven-year-old Phyllis’ biggest concern was that the quarantine would keep Santa from coming to their house. The poor little girl spent the weeks leading up to Christmas in a depression.
On Christmas morning, Phyllis’ father went up and brought his daughter down so she could see her surprise. Under the tree was the most beautiful doll Phyllis had ever seen. For years she would recall that doll as the best gift she’d ever been given.
Years later, Phyllis learned the secret of the doll’s origins. Phyllis’ mother had taken one of Phyllis’ old, ragged dolls and washed and painted it. Then she took her one and only dance gown, the prettiest dress she owned, and cut it up to make a dress and booties for the doll. Finally, she cut off a length of her own beautiful hair and fashioned a wig for the doll. Her mother’s sacrifice resulted in a Christmas memory that will be passed down through many generations. (4)
What that mother did for her daughter, God wants to do for each of us this Christmas season. He wants to take our lives and transform them. He wants to take our misplaced values and put them more in line with His divine purpose. He wants to take our broken dreams and broken hearts and replace them with dreams that are ever new and a heart that will never fail.
In “Family Circus” sometime back we see little Billy. He’s spent the afternoon wandering through various stores where he’s seen signs that say, “Don’t forget Christmas Candy; don’t forget wrapping paper, don’t forget to visit Santa, don’t forget last minute gifts.”
Billy goes home and draws a picture of Mary, Joseph and Jesus and the star and writes on it simply, “Don’t forget.” (5)
Among the things we will want to remember is the song the gentle maiden sang as she awaited the birth of her son, God’s son. The song was about her son and his mission in the world. Jesus came to turn the world right side up. Jesus came to give dignity to those who society does not value. Jesus came to give hope to the hopeless, peace to those who hearts are in turmoil, love to those who are broken. Jesus came to give you the greatest gift of all.
* Note: this joke works well if you choose a real couple in your church who are good sports, and a real nearby city.
1. Bruce Larson, The Communicators Commentary, Vol. 3, Luke (Waco: Word Books, 1983), p. 39.
2. “Free For Christmas,” by Lerone Bennett, Jr., Ebony, December 1994.
3. http://www.natpresch.org/sermon.php?d=2000-12-17%200000.
4. “The Miracle Doll,” by Sheryl A. Van Vleck-Wells, Good Housekeeping, December 1994, p. 78.
5. Source unknown.