Magnificat - summitdurango.org“The Magnificat” Sermon preached by Jeff Huber December 13-14, 2014 at First United Methodist Church, Durango Luke 1:46-55 46 Mary responded, “Oh,

Jeff Huber’s Sermon – First UMC Durango – December 13-14, 2014 Page 1

“Magnificat” Theme: The First Carols of Christmas Scripture: Luke 1:46-55 Things I’d like to remember from today’s sermon: _____________________________________________________________________________________________

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Meditation Moments for Monday, December 15 – Read Psalm 85:8-13– The Old Testament word for peace meant much more than just a temporary truce, a time when life was not marred by open conflict. As the New Bible Dictionary put it, the Old Testament word for peace, shalom, means, “completeness, soundness, well-being.”

Like the Hebrews, we use the word “peace” to describe many states of well-being. It can mean freedom from

fear or danger; inner tranquility with ourselves, others and God; quiet and rest; or confidence that the course

we are following is right. What kind of peace do you treasure most right now? What role has Jesus played in

helping you to find that peace?

This psalm helped to counter the idea, common to people then and now, that “righteousness” involved heavy

doses of condemnation and guilt. In what ways have “righteousness” and “peace” worked together in your

spiritual journey? How do these two divine gifts strengthen and reinforce each other?

Prayer: Lord God, your presence is leading me into a life of “completeness, soundness, well-being,” of shalom. As your voice speaks peace to me, my heart sings a new carol of gratitude and love to you. Amen.

Tuesday, December 16 – Read Luke 1:26-33 – God’s supreme act to speak peace to the earth was to be born as a baby named Jesus (the Greek form of the Hebrew Joshua, which meant “God saves.”)

When you read or hear about God’s incredible love for you, are you able to take in this “good news”?

What has been your experience of love and trust in close relationships? What helps you trust that God’s

love is real through all the ups and downs of your life?

Gabriel said to Mary, “The Lord God will give him the throne of David his father. He will rule over Jacob’s

house forever, and there will be no end to his kingdom.” That could only apply to the long awaited Savior,

God’s Messiah (see 2 Samuel 7:12-16, Isaiah 9:6-7)! The angel also said, “Rejoice, favored one! The Lord is

with you!” How can you nurture a sense of God’s continual, loving presence with you? How is your story

connecting with the story of Jesus?

Prayer: Lord Jesus, you were born much as I was—into a family, into a town—yet you are God! Keep increasing my capacity to love and be loved, to live my life the way you did. Amen.


Wednesday, December 17 – Read Luke 1:34-38 – Mary asked Gabriel, “How will this happen?” Gabriel explained, “The Holy Spirit will come over you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you …” Mary’s trusting response? “I am the Lord’s servant. Let it be with me just as you have said.”

God’s call to Mary was unique in all of history. But God, through our gifts, talents and circumstances, calls

each one of us to fill a particular place in the divine mission of redemption. How do you respond when you

sense a divine “nudge” in your heart, when a path of service opens before you? What does it take for you

to respond, as Mary did, “Let it be with me as you have said”?

Prayer: Lord God, from darkness to light, from illness (physical or spiritual) to health, from death to life—you are always the God for whom nothing is impossible. I praise you for the possibilities you’ve opened for me. Amen.

Thursday, December 18 – Read Luke 1:39-40 and Matthew 1:18-23 – Mary’s pregnancy altered her fiancé Joseph’s life as well as her own. “Because he didn’t want to humiliate her [Joseph] decided to call off their engagement quietly.” But in God’s great timing, “as he was thinking about this, an angel from the Lord appeared to him in a dream …” explained Mary’s pregnancy and repeated that the baby’s name would be Jesus (“God saves”). The child would fulfill Isaiah 7:14’s words about a sign that meant Emmanuel—“God with us.”

The gospels don’t tell us much about Joseph. But Matthew, with just a few words, showed us something

important even before Joseph had his dream about the angel: “Joseph her husband was a righteous man

… he didn’t want to humiliate her.” When have you been humiliated? How do you deal with feelings of

shame? In the book “Safe People”, Cloud and Townsend list Biblically based qualities of “safe people.”

How safe are you in your relationships? Like Joseph, do you choose not to humiliate others?

Christianity’s central claim is that Jesus was not just a great and noble teacher. He was God—Emmanuel,

God with us. How does this claim shape your faith and your life? How can you honor the Bible’s claim that

Jesus is God in ways that follow his example, extending love and grace even to people with different world

views than yours, rather than condemning or mocking them?

Prayer: Lord Jesus, in Joseph’s story (as in your own life) you painted a very different picture from our human ones of what it means to be “a real man.” Help me to reinforce that in myself, or in the men in my life. Amen.

Friday, December 19 – Read Luke 1:46-50 – We often call this passage, "The Magnificat," which is the first word of Mary’s song in the Latin Bible. Tradition said Mary sang these words, making them another early “Christmas carol.” The first part of Mary's song was full of pure joy, excitement, anticipation, and hope. Mary would bear a son--God's Son Jesus—and had found encouragement and confirmation from her relative Elizabeth. This was her praise-filled response.

Mary's song was full of allusions to Old Testament promises that God would one day deliver Israel from

oppressors (Romans in her day). Mary not only celebrated that she would be a mother, but that through

her child God would deliver on his promise to defeat all that is oppressive and evil in the world. What

promises do you rely on to keep your faith strong? In areas where your faith is less strong, consider

searching the Scriptures for promises of what God wants to do and be in your whole life.

Mary began her song with words of gratitude and thankfulness. As we enter this season when we

celebrate the birth of Christ, who or what in your life are you thankful for? What aspect of your life leads

you to glorify the Lord with all your heart?


Prayer: Lord Jesus, when Mary grasped that you would be her child, she celebrated with gratitude and thankfulness. Help us to celebrate you this Advent season, to glorify you with all our hearts. Amen.

Saturday, December 20 – Read Luke 1:51-55 – Mary also rejoiced that her child would fulfill God’s promise to bring justice to an unjust world. In Jesus, God would care for the lowly, hungry and oppressed. The coming of the eternal king sent by God would turn upside-down many of the human values that had always tended to rule the world.

Many stop at the opening line of the Magnificat and fail to realize how subversive, even revolutionary,

Mary’s song really was. Mary’s words should make us uncomfortable. They point to a concern God has for

the poor, and a sense that the rich have received theirs already. Since the income of the average American

puts us in the top five percent in per-capita income in the world, most of us are “rich.” We have the

obligation and calling to be used by God to, “fill the hungry with good things.” In what ways are you rich?

In what ways “lowly”? How good are you at accepting help in your “lowly” areas? How willing are you to

use your God-given ability to lift the burdens of those who are lowly in areas where, by God’s grace, you

are strong?

Prayer: Lord Jesus Christ, I choose you to be king in my life. I gladly take up the freedom and challenge of living as a citizen of your kingdom, even if it means I’ll have to wrestle to live by your values, which are so different from ours. Amen.

Family Activity: Through the ages, God has used women in powerful ways to help fulfill God’s purpose. God chose Mary in particular to be the mother of Jesus knowing she would be faithful to God in countless ways. Share stories with your children about women in your lives who have been faithful to God. Talk about grandmothers, aunts, neighbors, church friends and teachers who have been examples of God’s grace and love. Identify ways you can grow to become more faithful to God and share God’s love and grace with others. Pray and thank God for Mary, the mother of Jesus, and for each woman of God who has touched your life.

Theme: The First Carols of Christmas “The Magnificat”

Sermon preached by Jeff Huber December 13-14, 2014 at First United Methodist Church, Durango

Luke 1:46-55 46 Mary responded, “Oh, how my soul praises the Lord. 47 How my spirit rejoices in God my Savior! 48 For he took notice of his lowly servant girl, and from now on all generations will call me blessed. 49 For the Mighty One is holy, and he has done great things for me. 50 He shows mercy from generation to generation


to all who fear him. 51 His mighty arm has done tremendous things! He has scattered the proud and haughty ones. 52 He has brought down princes from their thrones and exalted the humble. 53 He has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away with empty hands. 54 He has helped his servant Israel and remembered to be merciful. 55 For he made this promise to our ancestors, to Abraham and his children forever.”

VIDEO The Magnificat – Sermon Starter

SLIDE The Magnificat

Today we continue in a series of sermons on the First Carols of Christmas. Luke gives us the most extensive telling of the Christmas story in his gospel and four times he tells us about the songs that people sang surrounding the Christmas story. Maybe you remember that song, “If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands. If you’re happy and you know it, stomp your feet.” When the Israelites were happy and they knew it they sang a song. When they were sad or terrified, they sang songs. This is why throughout the entire Hebrew Bible you will find songs showing up during various narratives and in many stretches of poetry. These are the kinds of songs that we find taking place in the birth story of Jesus in Luke’s gospel and they are really the first Christmas carols. They actually precede the birth of Christ which is why we look at them during this season of advent as we prepare for Christmas, and they prepare us as they did those in the first century, for the birth of our Savior, Emmanuel who is God with us.

Today we turn our attention to the best known of all of those first songs of Christmas that Luke records and it’s called the Magnificat, or Mary’s song of praise. As we look at this Christmas Carol I want to invite you to take out of your bulletin your Meditation Moments and your Message Notes. You will see the Scripture text from Luke’s gospel which contains the Magnificat and then blank lines that you can use to write things down so you can remember and reflect


upon them in the days ahead. If you’re watching at home or online you can download this resource right off of our website. You will then find daily Scripture readings as we encourage you to read the Bible daily. These passages tie back into today’s message.

We learned last week that the Virgin Mary was probably 12 or 13 years old. She is grown up in a village of Nazareth which in essence is the low income housing section of the greater area of Sepherus. Sepherus was a town of 35,000 people and was considered the jewel of the Galilee at the time. There was great wealth and schools and theater and shopping. Outside of the walls of the city was where he would find places like Nazareth. It had the least expensive form of housing which were caves in the first century. Some caves were pretty nice but others were very modest in the town had maybe 100 people, 200 of the most.

Mary grows up in this town of Nazareth and 10 days before this text that we are looking at today which contains the Magnificat, the angel Gabriel has announced to her that she is full of grace and the Lord is with her. She is going to have a child which was conceived by the Holy Spirit. This is a revelation to Mary because she is not yet married and she is only engaged. We learned last week that girls are engaged in the first century typically after their first period because the life expectancy for women was 35 to 40 years old. This means that Mary was probably 12 or 13 years old because she is now engaged to be married and is in at the beginning of a one year engagement waiting period before the actual wedding.

Mary is frightened and in that fear she decides to go meet up with their elder cousin Elizabeth, who may be as an older aunt. Elizabeth has also experienced a surprising and miraculous kind of pregnancy. She is too old to have children and yet she and her husband Zechariah become pregnant. Mary goes to see Elizabeth to find out if she is going crazy. She’s probably wondering if she made it up in her head or if it’s really going to happen. It probably doesn’t make any sense to her because she could be put to death if she is found to be pregnant by someone who is not her engaged fiancé. Mary doesn’t tell anybody but goes directly to Elizabeth who lives a 10 day journey away on the other end of the country down near Jerusalem.

She enters the home of Elizabeth and Zachariah in the town of Ein Karam and before Mary says a word to Elizabeth, Elizabeth shares with joy, “Child, you


are blessed among women. Blessed is the fruit of your womb.” In this moment, Mary knows that what the angel said is true and she is not going crazy. Mary feels like she doesn’t have to be afraid anymore and joy finally seizes her heart. 10 days after she has learned that she is going to have a child, Mary announces in Elizabeth presence, the Magnificat which is a song of praise.

There are several things that it’s good to note as we look at this piece of Scripture from Luke’s gospel. If you have had a chance to study the Old Testament Scriptures you might see some similarities between the Magnificat and different passages in the Hebrew Bible. Hannah, who was the mother of Samuel the great prophet of Israel in the Old Testament, was too old to have a child but she also ends up pregnant. She has her son Samuel whom she dedicates to God at an early age and then she breaks out in song and sings words that sound very much like the Magnificat. You can find this in 1 Samuel chapter 2. That song was likely learned by every Jewish girl when they were a child. For Mary, that song to her was kind of like “Amazing Grace” is to many of us. Most of us can sing at least the first verse of Amazing Grace without a hymnal open. You know it by heart because you have sung it so many times. Even if you don’t normally go to church you can probably get out the first line or two because it is in many ways a part of our culture.

Mary no doubt had this song in her heart as a young Jewish girl and it becomes a part of her song in Luke’s gospel. There are parts she has left out and she has added a few things but it becomes her song of praise to God. Sometimes we hear this song and we think about it is a beautiful song to be listen to her song at Christmas and while it is beautiful, there is much more to the song. If all we hear is something beautiful and docile then we probably haven’t listen to the song very well. It’s not just some touching and beautiful and lovely little song. It is actually a dangerous song.

In Guatemala in the early 1980s under one of the most oppressive regimes in the history of Central America, it was forbidden to read the Magnificat aloud. The regime recognized that its words might lead people to revolt against the government. In Nicaragua, when peasants were being oppressed, they carried copies of the Magnificat with them and would read them regularly because of the promise that it held for them as those who were poor and downtrodden. The words of the Magnificat were encouraging to slaves in the United States in the early 1800s. In many places in the world today, those who are living under


oppressive governments, learn these words because they speak to us about God’s mercy for people who have been pushed down and made to feel small.

The Magnificat speaks to us about how God lifts up the lowly and it warns us that God humbles and tears down the proud. Today we are going to listen to this dangerous song and listen for what God might say to us through it some 2000 years after Mary sang it upon discovering her pregnancy.

The song is easily broken into two halves and so let’s listen to the first half from Luke’s gospel in chapter 2 beginning at verse 46.

SLIDE 46 Mary responded, “Oh, how my soul praises the Lord. 47 How my spirit rejoices in God my Savior! 48 For he took notice of his lowly servant girl,

and from now on all generations will call me blessed. 49 For the Mighty One is holy,

and he has done great things for me. 50 He shows mercy from generation to generation

to all who fear him.

The young girl who was frightened is now filled with exuberance as she says, “My soul praises or magnifies the Lord.” That word praise actually means to magnify or make things bigger. She’s not literally making God bigger but she is expanding her understanding of God and declaring how great God is because of what God has done in her life. She then says, “How my spirit rejoices in God my Savior!”

SLIDE rejoice = “to jump high”

That word “rejoice” literally means, “to jump high.” Mary is in essence leaping for joy. Why is she leaping for joy? Why is her heart filled with joy at this moment? We often think that Mary is singing for joy because she is going to have a baby, but that’s not really the case here. If you want to have a child and you become pregnant then you are going to jump for joy. You were going to call all of your friends and tell them, “Guess what, I’m pregnant!” But if you were not expecting a child and you are not yet married and you don’t know what your fiancé is going to say when he discovers that you’re pregnant and you have no idea where your parents are going to do or if they’re going to disown you and if you are wondering if you will be stoned to death, you probably are not leaping for joy because you are pregnant. Why is she leaping for joy then?


Mary goes on to tell us the next few verses, “For he took notice of his lowly servant girl, and from now on all generations will call me blessed.” What she is declaring is that even though she is a nobody from nowhere, a place where people look down their nose at it, God has chosen her for this task. Mary has been chosen to bring forth the long awaited messianic King and she is marveling at the fact that God does what God consistently does in the Bible. God chooses the least expected to be as instruments. God cares about the people who were pushed down or made to feel small and those who the world doesn’t even see. This is a consistent theme with God as he chooses the unexpected.

Abraham and Sarah are too old to have a child and yet God comes to them and tells them to go to a land that they have never been to before and that he will give them children. God tells him he will bring forth a whole new clan of people, the people of Israel, through this older couple and Sarah even laughs because it sounds so silly and ridiculous. God chooses Moses to set the Israelite slaves free. Moses stutters when he speaks and he is in hiding because he has committed murder and yet God chooses him. God chooses the Israelites even though they are slaves in Egypt and he sets them free. God chooses David who is the scrawniest and youngest of the sons of Jesse to be the greatest hero and King that Israel would know. This is what God does. God chooses the least expected and the nobodies, and Mary is celebrating this truth.

SLIDE lowly = “powerless, unimportant, insignificant”

The word she uses to describe herself which we read as lowly means to be powerless, unimportant and insignificant. Mary says, “God saw my powerlessness, my insignificance and the fact I was a nobody and God lifted me up.” That word “lowly” means to be as low to the ground as you can possibly get, almost laying flat. Mary’s social status is as close to the ground as it can get. She is not even a rung on the ladder, but God has chosen her.

Mary then says that, “God has done great things for me.” The phrase, “great things,” is the word megala. The word “magnify” is megaluna and in both of those you hear the word, “mega.” When you hear that word, what does he usually mean? Mega usually means big or giant! Mary is literally saying, “My soul magnifies the Lord because my God has magnified me.” This is what she is praising God for in this song.

This whole idea of God showing grace or compassion toward those who are


made to feel small or bullied or push down or oppressed or insignificant, is captured by a Greek word in the New Testament. The word appears twice in the Magnificat.

SLIDE Eleos = mercy

This idea of mercy is one of the major themes of the Magnificat. We learned last weekend that Mary was full of grace and if we are following Christ we are meant to be grace filled. The God that we serve is a God of grace. This week in the Magnificat the idea is that the God we serve is a God of mercy. God is merciful and God exalts people and blesses people who are also merciful. So here’s the question I want to ask you today.

SLIDE Are you merciful?

Are you growing and mercy? Are you more full of mercy today then you worth this time last year? Even if you are not, are you committed to be more full of mercy next year then you are this year? We are never more like God than when we are full of mercy. Mercy means concern and compassion. Mercy means to care for people who were pushed down or bullied or made to feel small or oppressed or week or the least of these, as Jesus describes them. The New Testament was written in Greek but remember the Old Testament was written in Hebrew, which is why I call the Hebrew Bible when I refer to it on many occasions.

When the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek from Hebrew there is a word in Hebrew I have taught you before that became this word in Greek, eleos. This Hebrew word is used 240 times in the Hebrew Bible.

SLIDE Hesed = “loving kindness, covenant love, compassion, mercy”

One of my favorite passages in the Hebrew Bible comes from the prophet Micah what he says, “What does the Lord require of you? Do justice, love kindness (hesed, eleos, mercy), and walk humbly with your God.”

The Scriptures tell us that this is a requirement. What it means to be human is to mirror the attributes that you see in God and that God is merciful and has compassion on those who are made to feel small, pushed down or insignificant.

There were five business men running through O’Hare Airport in Chicago trying to catch a plane. They have been in business meetings all day long and if they can catch this flight they will get home in time to have dinner with their


families on Friday night. They have their laptop bags and their travel luggage dragging behind them as they run as fast as they can. When you are running fast, those bags can swing all around in the airport and as they ran past a fruit kiosk one of those bags swung over and hit the fruit stand and knocked all the apples off the applecart as well as several other baskets of fruit. There was fruit rolling all over the concourse and they realize what they had done and they stopped briefly and looked back and said, “We’re so sorry. We didn’t mean to knock over your fruit. We are running late and going to miss our flight, but were sorry and wish we could stop to help.” They kept running through the airport.

As they made their way down the concourse, this interaction began to bother one of the business travelers. He looked back and noticed the young girl who was in charge of the cart and she was trying to grab all of the fruit that was rolling all over the concourse. He yelled to his friends, “Go on ahead, I have something I have to do.” He didn’t tell them what it was, but he just headed back to where the girl was and said to her, “I’m so sorry. I was one of the dorks who knocked over your fruit and I just want to come back and help. Are you okay?”

He really looks at her for the first time and he notices that there are tears in her eyes and she is blind. He then feels horrible and says again, “I am so sorry. We didn’t know when we were just being stupid and inconsiderate. We were in a hurry and trying to catch this plane. Are you sure you’re okay? What more can I do? ”

He begins to collect all of the apples and other fruit and begins to stack them back on the fruit stand. He notices that some of the apples are bruised as are some of the other fruit and so he says, “You know I really love fruit and I’m really hungry today. Can I buy the rest of your fruit?”

He gave her $40 which was more than enough to cover the fruit and then he apologized again for what happened. He told her he hoped she had a great day and then she looked at him and said, “Can ask a question?”

“Sure,” he said.

She asked, “Are you Jesus?”

He said, “No, I am most certainly not Jesus. Jesus never would’ve bumped your fruit cart and then kept running. A nothing like him but I wish I was. Why do you ask?”


She said, “Because when I was on my knees on the floor trying to find all of my fruit I just cried out, ‘Jesus, please help me!’ And he sent you.”

That’s what mercy looks like and we are never more like Jesus than when we are showing mercy. Let me ask you this question again.

SLIDE Are you meric-ful?

Do you have compassion and care for those who were bullied, made to feel small or who have been wounded in some way? Do you have a heart for those who have been made to feel invisible? If not, are you willing to cultivate that heart this Christmas season? This is what Mary is teaching us in the Magnificat.

That might be a beautiful sentiment for the Christmas season, the idea of being merciful and what God does on behalf of those who are feeling low. But the song becomes a little unnerving when you look a bit deeper at what happens to those who are merciless. The song becomes a little dangerous at this point. Mary goes on in the second half of the Magnificat to say these words.

SLIDE 51 His mighty arm has done tremendous things! He has scattered the proud and haughty ones.

52 He has brought down princes from their thrones and exalted the humble.

53 He has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away with empty hands.

This is the disturbing part of the song, that God is actively engaged on behalf of those who need mercy and God is actively working against those who fail to show mercy. Mary uses a phrase which is used repeatedly in the Old Testament. We read about God’s, “mighty hand and outstretched arm.” This is an anthropomorphism, which is describing God in bodily terms even though God doesn’t have a body. We have this picture of God with a strong arm which can do one of two things. The arm can help and be strong to save, or it can destroy and fight against those who are merciless. Mary mentions both of these things.

I don’t personally want to experience God fighting against me and I would love to know that God comes alongside of me, so let’s see what Mary says about this and here it might be helpful to look at some other versions of the Bible to help us understand what this means in verse 51. Here is how the New Revised Standard Version puts it.


SLIDE He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.

God has scattered the proud and the thoughts of their hearts. I think of that phrase that we use sometimes, “scatterbrains.” There are times where our thoughts become clouded and we don’t see very clearly. I think Mary is reminding us that this happens to the proud when we come to a place where we are not thinking clearly. The “not thinking clearly” becomes their downfall. God typically works through human ways and one of the things that happens to us humans is that when our thinking gets cloudy because we are proud or full of ourselves, we can begin to make mistakes.

Jim Collins taught it the Stanford School of Business and he has a laboratory where they study business practices and he has written several best-selling books that many of you have read. Good to Great, Build to Last and in 2009 he wrote this book that I read called, How the Mighty Fall.

GRAPHIC 1 How the Mighty Fall

Collins was writing about American businesses and how some American businesses which were once great have fallen off a cliff. You can think of some of those companies. Circuit City has disappeared and it was once a large electronic superstore. General Motors went bankrupt. Kodak no longer makes cameras. We wonder how these kinds of things can happen and that’s what Collins set out to explain in his book. He lists five stages that lead to the decline and fall of a company. The first two stages are captured in this idea that Mary has laid out for us.

SLIDE Hubris born of success

The first stage of the fall of a company is hubris born of success.

SLIDE The undisciplined pursuit of more

The second stage is the undisciplined pursuit of more. Let’s talk about this one first. Collins gives a great example of this in the book of a pharmaceutical company. When the founders started their company they said, “Our driving passion and mission is to create drugs which will save people’s lives. This is what we exist for and if we do that well then everything else will take care of itself.”

By the 1990s, the president of the company had forgotten what the


founders had said about the driving force behind their business. Instead, he had said to the shareholders, “Our driving passion is to increase shareholder value and to maximize profits.” There is a huge difference between existing to create drugs which save people’s lives and being successful at that, and saying that our driving passion is to increase shareholder value and maximize profits.

Collins says that when companies get confused in the thoughts of their hearts about what they really exist for, their downfall is inevitable. That’s true for churches and individuals and companies. I think about how our tendency as humans sometimes when we become successful is treat other people like we deserve the success. We forget that half of being successful at whatever we do is usually luck. It wasn’t all about you and how skilled you are and the best CEOs know that.

When I lived in Denver I played basketball at a community recreation center much like the one here in Durango. There was a guy who came into play with us one day who are recognized in the newspaper and he was very wealthy and ran a large corporation worth hundreds of millions of dollars. We were in the locker room after and we began chatting a bit and he said several strange things that didn’t make much sense to me. After he left, another guy that we play with who is sitting next to me just began to shake his head. I looked at him and I said, “That seems kind of strange. How did he become so successful? I’m kinda surprised that he is filthy rich. How in the world did that happen?”

My friend said to me, “Jeff, it happened the way it happens to almost everybody. He was pretty lucky. He had an idea that was a pretty good idea and he was in the right place at the right time. He had certain skills that he brought to the table, but half of it is luck.”

People ask me sometimes, “How did you get to become pastor at this great church? Did you get lucky?” The truth is that I don’t believe in luck but do believe in grace and it’s only by the grace of God that I get to do what I do. I tell people all the time that I’m just along for the ride and I try to stay out of the way of what God is doing and if I forget that is when I get the real trouble. Sometimes, when we become successful, we begin to treat other people in ways that we never would’ve treated them when we remembered that is not all about us.

We see this happen all the time in our culture. The great basketball player Lebron James made a social faux pas and how he treated Princess Kate this last


week which was a big new story. It made me think of that news story a couple of years ago you might remember that started out as a funny, human interest story. A pair of disc jockeys from Australia called the hospital where Princess Kate had just given birth. They pretended to be the King and the Queen of England and even though they had bad English accents they managed to get all the way through to the nurse who revealed information to them on the air that she never would’ve revealed unless she thought it was the actual queen of England.

Everybody began to point their fingers at the DJs and how terrible they were for doing this stunt but how did it make it to the morning news shows everywhere that week? All across the globe and the social network people thought it was funny, “Can you imagine that nurse who thought it was the actual queen of England? What a dopey nurse that must’ve been.”

Never mind she just worked 10 hours and it has to be pretty stressful to be a nurse in that situation. Then we learn the next week that she took her own life. Everybody began to blame the disc jockeys and it’s true they did a really stupid thing. When you get to a certain place in your popular and you have a radio program and a large audience, you sometimes forget what it feels like to be picked on and made fun of. What do we call it when a whole bunch of people pick on somebody and make fun of them and laugh at them? We call that bullying in our culture don’t we?

While it’s true that those disc jockeys made a mistake and forgot about human decency, we have no business pointing fingers. Why did this make news everywhere? It made the news because people thought it was funny until it wasn’t funny anymore. Somewhere along the way we forget what it feels like to be the person that other people are stepping on top of, and who is really low to the ground. I don’t know that nurse’s story. I don’t know if she was struggling with other areas in her life. I’m sure she was overwhelmed by having the world making fun of her and laugh at her. Maybe she thought she had humiliated her country or her family. Whatever it was, she decided she couldn’t take it anymore.

So let me ask you a question in light of the Magnificat.

SLIDE Are you merciful or merciless?

Mercy looks like standing with those who are being made fun of and saying, “I don’t think is very funny.” I think a lot of us forget this sometimes and we simply join in with the crowd instead of standing beside those who are the brunt


of the joke. I think this happens at school and in our workplaces and even in our families and even in our churches.

Mary goes on to say that God has brought down the princes and the powerful from their thrones. This is a very dangerous thing to say, especially where she was, just a few miles from Jerusalem. In Jerusalem was a king named Herod who called himself, “Herod the Great.” Can you imagine what the kind of King would be who calls himself, “the Great?” I’m Jeff the Great! How many of us would really say that? While we might not say it, it becomes easy to act like it if were not careful. Maybe you’ve been around folks who expect other people to serve them and treat them like they are, “the Great.” They expect people to fun over them and never challenge them.

Mary tells us that people like that will be pulled down from their thrones. This was dangerous to say because Herod was like many people who were full of themselves and he became paranoid. When you begin to act in this arrogant way you then become frightened that other people want to take your place. Herod killed his favorite wife because he was afraid she was plotting with her family to take over the throne. Herod killed three of his sons because he was afraid they were plotting to take over the throne. What kind of man does that?

You know that when the wise men came to Herod after Jesus was born and said, “We have seen the star signifying that one has been born who is King of the Jews.” Herod wanted to find out where he was born so he could kill him and when he found out the wise men had come and gone without telling them, he sent his troops to Bethlehem to kill all of the babies who were born about that time. That’s King Herod and what Mary said could have gotten her arrested and maybe even put to death. You better whisper words like these that, “God brings down the mighty from their thrones.”

Sometimes this happens at the hands of their own people. We have seen this in our own history as a country and we have seen this in many nations as people get fed up with their rulers who missed treat them. We see this throughout human history as there is no regime which is merciless which goes on forever. Every merciless regime will eventually fall. Sometimes they fall by natural causes. Herod eventually died from syphilis and a host of other diseases which he contracted because of his lifestyle and arrogance. But even then, when you die a natural death, if you’ve been merciless we all stand before the one with a mighty


outstretched arm to save the least of these and who raises his hand against those who are merciless. People celebrate when those who are merciless get brought down, whether you were the CEO of a company or the pastor of a church or a king of a country. Mary tells us in her song that this is what happens.

The last warning that Mary gives is that God sends the rich away empty while he fills the hungry with good things. This should disturb us just a bit because relative to the rest of the world, even those of you living on unemployment in this country right now, are rich. 1.5 billion people on our planet live on less than $650 a year. The $650 or more that you might get from unemployment each month or Social Security is still 12 times more than 1.5 billion people live on every year on our planet. Statements like Mary’s are meant to help us recognize our relative wealth.

Here in our community, many of us are in the top 20% or 10% or even 5% of wealthy in the United States. You may have recently read the latest statistics on wealth in America which says that the gap between the bottom 20% and the top 20% in income levels is larger than it’s been since 1967. While the economic challenges have been great for many people over the last 10 years, the bottom 80% have found it more challenging while the top 20% have done a bit better, maybe even a lot better and especially that’s true of the top 5% and top 1%.

This makes us a bit nervous when we talk about in church because some of us are the beneficiaries of this and some of you might be getting worried that the pastors going in the wrong direction again but I just want you to know that this is not my sermon. This is Mary’s sermon. If Mary came to sing this song or preach this sermon and many of our churches in America, she would probably get nasty emails from people calling her a socialist. “God sends the rich away empty and makes sure the hungry have plenty of good things.” For some of us, that just doesn’t sound very American.

As people of faith, we have to remember this is Mary, the mother of Jesus, who is saying these things. We can debate about how we deal with the economic inequalities developing our country. Some people think the government is the solution and some people think the government is the problem. Some people think taxes should go up and some people think taxes should go down to spur on economic activity. In this room we would probably be divided on that and we could debate that all we want.


But there are some things we can’t debate. We can’t debate that God cares about the people who don’t have enough to eat. We can’t debate that God cares about the least of these. We can’t debate the fact that if we are among those with the most resources then we are responsible for our brothers and our sisters, those people who are children of God just as much as we are. We have some sort of obligation to be merciful and that’s really not open to debate if you read the New Testament or the Old Testament and if you want to take Mary’s song seriously.

We ignore Mary’s Magnificat to our own peril. Mary says that God lifts up the lowly and he fills the hungry with good things. The question we might ask is in light of Mary’s song what is important. How does God lift up the lowly and fill the hungry with good things? We’ve learned through experience that God very seldom responds to problems in our world by sending angels to miraculously fix things. God is not sending angels to the poor or those who have been beaten or picked on or bullied. If God does something in the world it’s through people in the world who are listening to his Holy Spirit speaking to them and they say, “Here I am Lord, send me.” That’s just how it works.

The church is called the, “body of Christ.” We are meant to be the physical presence of Jesus Christ in the world which is what it says on our bulletins and on the doors as you leave this place. If the lowly are going to be lifted up and if the hungry are going to go away with good things, it’s going to be because God’s people said, “use me to be your presence in the world.”

What’s interesting is that in the process of being used by God to fill up others we find our own salvation. Don’t get me wrong, we are saved by the grace of God and the mercy of his love through Jesus Christ and his sacrifice. But when we act upon his call upon our lives after we have said, “yes,” we are no longer is prideful as we once were. We are no longer mercy less but merciful when we do what God asks us to do. In the process of that we find joy. We find joy ourselves in being used by God.

If we are going to bring the hungry good things and raise up those who are lowly it will require selflessness and sacrifice and conviction and sometimes courage. This is in just about helping the poor but it’s also about finding those people who have been pushed down and then helping to lift them up. Several years ago a film came out which really embody this idea of courage and I would


encourage you to watch the film if you haven’t already. I don’t make lots of recommendations on movies but this one I think is worth seeing and that is the film, Lincoln.

If you have little children, you might not have them watch it because the opening scene is a bit graphic and there is some language throughout, but most older children will be fine. The film is not just about Lincoln’s entire life but really about the end of the Civil War. The Civil War is about to come to a close and Abraham Lincoln is worried because he has used his sweeping wartime powers to emancipate and set free all of the slaves. He realizes that it was probably a stretch and not totally legal to use his powers in this way, but he did it anyway. He’s worried as the war comes to a close that he will no longer be a “wartime president” and have “wartime powers” and so states might choose to reinstate slavery. He basically says, “This is not going to happen on my watch. We are not going to go back to having human beings and slaved anymore in this country. We have got to pass the 13th amendment to the Constitution before we have peace.”

There are leaders in the US government that insist they can have peace now, but Lincoln insists upon using his leverage to get the 13th amendment passed before there is peace. At one point he is sitting with his cabinet and they are debating how they need peace now but Lincoln insists on the amendment. Lincoln says, “Now is the time. Now is the time to stand up for the lowly. Now is the time to fight against slavery and abolish this blight upon our country.” You hear that conviction in this trailer for the film.

VIDEO Lincoln Trailer

The film ends with 13th amendment being passed and then Lincoln’s death. You realize that this man gave his life for a cause that was greater than himself. I was reminded of Christ who came to save us from ourselves and lay down his life to redeem us and show us the way. I remember seeing this film in the theater and at the end nobody moved. The credits came up, and nobody was waiting for some funny outtakes on the screen after the credits. We were struck by what it means to be human and what it means to have courage and conviction and mercy. You get a picture of what mercy actually looks like in this film.

Films like that get me thinking as your senior pastor about what kind of legacy we will leave as a church. How will this community be more merciful because this church is in it? Sometimes there are big battles to fight and epic


places where people are being made to feel small. Sometimes people leave the church because they think the church should just be quiet and peaceful and feed people spiritual lives, but that is only half of what it means to be the presence of Christ in the world. The truth is that much of the time the battles may not be epic or huge, but our day-to-day and small. I’m reminded of what Mother Teresa said.

GRAPHIC 2 Do Small things with Great Love

“Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love that can change the world.” That’s what we are called to do as the body of Christ in the world. We are called to model what it looks like to be merciful. We are meant to encourage people who work with us and for us and alongside of us and our neighbors and our friends and our fellow students, to be more merciful.

One of the reasons we give away our Christmas Eve offering each year is to allow each of us to be more merciful and to lift up the lowly and to bring the hungry good things. One of the ministries that received our Christmas Eve offerings recently was the Spring Valley Slum outside of Nairobi, Kenya where 20,000 people live in one square mile. We made a commitment to provide food for the school which was the only school in the slum and the only source of food for most of the children who come to that school. Here’s a picture of one of our latest teams preparing food that was to be delivered at Spring Valley. This is what mercy looks like.

GRAPHIC 3 Preparing food baskets

GRAPHIC 4 Spring Valley Kids

And here are pictures of kids who were eating the food that you helped to purchase. These kids are shouting and smiling a Magnificat because God has heard their cries for help. There is joy in just eating lunch. They are actually eating the food that you provided. That is just one tiny, small thing that we did together. Imagine the potential and possibilities of all of us seeking to live lives of mercy together every day.

I think that looks like things that aren’t always even church projects, but things you do in daily life. I had a young girl tell me this week that it was her birthday right before Christmas and this year she asked for everyone to bring Operation Merry Christmas instead of for her. She wanted to make sure that kids in our community who don’t have anything or won’t have much of a Christmas


will have one and so instead of bringing gifts for her, her friends will all be bringing gifts to give to Operation Merry Christmas. How cool is that! That’s what being merciful looks like.

Let me ask you this question once more.

SLIDE Are you mercy full?

This is what God is hoping for from us because this is God’s character. Listen to the final two lines of Mary’s Magnificat.

SLIDE 54 He has helped his servant Israel and remembered to be merciful.

55 For he made this promise to our ancestors, to Abraham and his children forever.”

God will be merciful to us, his children, forever. This is the promise that we can count on this Christmas season and is part of one of those first Christmas carols. Let’s pray.

SLIDE Prayer

As we bow our heads, I want to simply invite you to pray to God in your own words something like this in your own words. Maybe just whisper it to God.

God, please make me merciful…

Please help me have a heart of compassion for people who are bullied and picked on and pushed down…

Use me to lift them up and to fill them with good things.

God, we thank you for the Magnificat and its powerful words that unnerve us and call us and comfort us. Help us to be mercy full. As the Senior Pastor of this church, it’s a privilege to work with your people in this place. I see your mercy in them on a daily basis. Help all of us to be more merciful in the future than we have been in the past… to leave a mark in this community and in the world... in Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

Documents

Magnificat - summitdurango.org“The Magnificat” Sermon preached by Jeff Huber December 13-14, 2014 at First United Methodist Church, Durango Luke 1:46-55 46 Mary responded, “Oh,