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Hail Mary!                         Luke 1: 46-55                                    December 24, 2006

When I was growing up, most of my friends were Roman Catholic.  In fact, I believe I’ve mentioned to some of you that my first experience with organized sports was playing on a pee wee football team sponsored by the local Roman Catholic church and aptly called the Knights of the Altar.  A dozen or so Altar Boys and me – it was quite a sight.

I’m sure many of you have had similar experiences.  Clifton, where I grew up, is a lot like Riverside in many respects.  And one of them is that, at least when I was living there, it was pretty much a Roman Catholic town.  There were several Protestant churches, but we were distinctly in the minority.

As kids, then – and I’d guess this is true of kids now as well – we would sometimes find ourselves talking about our different religious traditions.  Actually, it was more like making fun of one another’s traditions, if the truth be told.  But anyway, one of the things I never quite understood about my Roman Catholic friends’ practice of religion was their apparent fascination with Mary.

To my youthful eye, Mary, for my friends, was right up there with God.  They prayed to her all the time.  Or at least that’s the way it seemed.  My friends would have to go to confession – another practice that seemed foreign to me – and occasionally I’d wait outside for them and more often than not they emerged from the confessional with a directive from the Priest to say a bunch of “Hail Marys.”  Probably at least one for each time they swore or disobeyed their parents or snuck a cigarette when no one was looking.

I can still recite the prayer, as I’m sure you can as well, if you either grew up in a Roman Catholic Church or, as I did, in a Roman Catholic neighborhood.

Hail Mary, full of grace.  The Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners,
now and at the hour of our death. 

We Moravians, like most Protestants, tend to ignore Mary.  In fact, for some of us, the ignoring sometimes borders on disdain.   We wouldn’t dream of praying to her.  But never mind praying.  Except for this time of year when we pick a young girl to portray her in our Christmas pageant, we almost never even include Mary in our worship consciousness. 

This week, as I prepared the order of worship for this morning’s service, I thought I’d pick a hymn that honored Mary to follow the sermon.  Guess what?  There aren’t any.  Not even one hymn in the entire Book of Worship has so much as a stanza that praises the mother of our Lord.

Edward Markquart, a noted Lutheran Pastor and author, suggests – correctly in my view – that our Protestant disdain for Mary stems largely from our protests against her role in the Roman church.  He also suggests, while reflecting on our Text from Luke’s Gospel, that it is time for us to renew our appreciation for Mary, pointing out that the Bible says that she is the most respected woman of all time.

I agree with him.

Who, then, was this Mary, mother of Jesus?

 It is really impossible to piece together a reliable, historical sketch of Mary’s life.  The data in the Gospels is sparse and the non-Biblical sources are not much help either. 

What we do know is this:  Mary was a Jew, living in Nazareth.  Scholars differ on the details of her background.  Some argue she was a descendant of David, others suggest she was from the tribe of Levi. 

The evidence suggests that Mary was from a poor family.  In ancient Rome the rich only pretended to pay taxes, while everyone else bore the brunt of supporting the state. So despite the decree from Caesar Augustus for “all the world to be taxed,” if you lived in one of the better neighborhoods, you didn't need to be saddled with such inconveniences.  If you were poor like Mary and Joseph, on the other hand, a 100-mile journey by donkey when you were nine months pregnant was to par for the course.

There is also evidence that Mary was little more than a girl when all of this happened.  Most Jewish boys at that time married when they were in their late teens, but girls were often even younger.  It is quite possible that Mary was as young as 12 or 13.

At the time she conceived, she was engaged to Joseph, who was a descendent of the house of David. The pregnancy came as a surprise to Joseph.  His fears and concerns, however, are allayed by the assurance of an angel, according to both Luke and Mark, and he proceeds with his plans to marry her.  But we can only imagine how confused and apprehensive this young couple must have been as this tremendous drama unfolded before them.

Despite her youth, her poverty and what was undoubtedly a grueling and frightening experience, Mary also shows – particularly in our Text – that she understood – profoundly – the importance of what was about to happen.

Mary clearly believed that God had chosen her.  She believed that she was about to be the mother of the Messiah.  She evidently didn’t hesitate or ask God to choose someone else.  Instead, in the passage we read a few moments ago, she sings out:

“My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, because He has acknowledged His servant's humiliation.”  “Look,” she cries, “from now on all ages will call me blessed because the Almighty One (holy His Name) has done great things for me! His mercy falls on every generation that fears Him. With His powerful arm He has routed the proud of heart. He has pulled the princes from their thrones and exalted the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty.”

The point is that Mary is far more than the afterthought to which she is often relegated by so many of us.  She is much more than the vessel that happened to carry Jesus to term.  In no way was she a surrogate mother.

By the way, I don’t believe that Joseph was just a surrogate father either, but that’s a subject for another sermon.

But, back to Mary --

• Like all mothers, Mary loved her baby, Jesus, before he was born. 
• She loved him at his birth. 
• She loved him when he was a young child. 
• She loved him when he was 12 and amazing the teachers in the Temple with his wisdom. 
• Mary loved Jesus at the wedding feast where he turned water into wine. 
• She also loved him at the foot of the cross and endured the excruciating pain that only a mother could endure as she watched her son be executed as an enemy of the State. 
• And finally, she loved him when he had been raised from the dead and appeared as the risen Christ.

But it is in the passage we read today – the Magnificat – where we see the stuff of which Mary was truly made.  Where we see her strength, her wisdom and the depth of her understanding of God’s intentions in sending her son to be the Messiah.

Jim Rice, writing in Sojourners magazine calls that passage “the great liberation song of the New Testament.”  He then goes on to point out that it paints a very different portrait of Mary than the one we normally think of.  “This Mary,” he writes, “is the prophet of the poor, the champion of the downtrodden.  She proclaims the overthrow of the social, economic, and political order of things. This Mary praises God for ‘putting down the mighty’ and ‘sending the rich empty away’. God shows his power, Mary proclaims, by filling the hungry with good things and exalting the lowly.”

Little wonder, then, that Jesus grew up proclaiming this same message.  We know very little about his formative years, but the fact is that when Jesus emerges on the scene as an adult, like his mother he tells the poor and the powerless that God loves them and that they will inherit the Kingdom, and at the same time tells the rich and the powerful that their earthly wealth and power and influence have no meaning in the sight of God.

“Today’s story,” Rice Continues, “is focused on hope and vindication and triumph. To Mary we proclaim:  ‘Of all women you are the most blessed’ and ‘Blessed is the fruit of your womb.’  We listen as Mary sings, ‘My soul magnifies the Lord!’  The promise is fulfilled.  The victory will soon be complete. Unto us a child is born.”

But there is more.

Just as God chose Mary, God has also chosen you and me. I believe that you and I are here in this place today because God has chosen to use us in God’s mission for the world.  Just as God had a purpose for Mary, God has a purpose for us.

We must together believe that God has chosen us – this particular congregation, First Moravian Church – to accomplish good works of love on Christ’s behalf.  That God has brought us together to do a mission, to do a ministry together.  That God has great tasks for this congregation to do. Together, we need to believe that, just as Mary dared to believe that in her own life. 

We need to grasp, as Mary did, that God is engaged in the process of filling the hungry with good things, and exalting the lowly, and calling the powerful to task; and we need to believe that we have an important role to play in that process.

And, my friends, if we truly believe that; if we, in fact, believe that God has a significant mission for each of us as individuals and for our congregational life together, fantastic things will happen in the life of this congregation and in our individual lives.

Finally, When Mary realized the miracle that God was working in her, she broke out in song. She could no longer be contained, and so she started singing at the top of her voice, “My soul magnifies the Lord. For God has seen what a lowly person I am and yet has still chosen me. Praise God.” 

For us, as Moravians, Advent and Christmas are all about singing.   I think it is because at this time of year we remember, more than any other time, the wonder of God’s gift to us and the joy that this gift of love can bring.   

Mary was an amazing woman.  More amazing, still, is the message of hope and reconciliation that she proclaimed.  May we follow her example and sing praises to the God who chose her, and chose us, as well, to do God’s will.  

Let us sing.  Today, in this Christmas season and throughout the year.     

                                                                                                            AMEN