Bringing Love to Birth

Luke 1:39-56

Advent 4, December 22, 2024

Holy Trinity Cathedral

“Bringing Love to Birth”

I clearly remember the first time I felt my child move in my belly.  It was a dark Advent evening.  I was driving from the Vancouver School of Theology to my student field placement in the West End of Vancouver.  Navigating the traffic lights in Kits, there was a strange body sensation: a literal shifting of my world.  Pregnancy, which had been so far only discernible by a bump, went from anticipation of a future event to recognition of a present reality.  “This is really happening!” I then understood in a new way how Elizabeth could cry out at Mary’s visit: “As soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leapt for joy!”  And how Mary, in her turn, could express the surge of love that welled up in her at the affirmation of God at work within her.  In the presence of love, something new comes to birth. 

Love isn’t new.  From the very beginning, God brought the universe into being through a divine desire for all creation to be in community.  Time and time again, God reached out to humanity to invite them to walk a good way in relationship.  But the Lord also gave humans choices so that nothing about our love would be forced out of us.  The world is broken and hurt; it is messy and sometimes chaotic because God has given us the power to choose.  But love doesn’t give up even when things go very wrong.  So God decides to immerse Godself in the life of the humans God created.  In a tiny baby, God meets us, as Archbishop Rowan Williams puts it, “in the depths of our own selves in their need- but also in the depths of God’s love; in the depths where the Spirit is re-creating and refreshing human life as God meant it to be.” (Being Christian).  Love motivates the Divine to do something incredibly risky: to enter into the human condition in order to save us.  And the vessel for this rescue mission is a young woman named Mary.

Mary is a very ordinary person.  She is not perfect, although the Church has often tried to reduce her to a saintly image.  For God to choose an unmarried, lower-class, marginalized female as someone who becomes full of grace is scandalous.  And it is perfect!  Nothing that Mary is or does readies her for the role of mother of the Lord, except that she is willing to say “Yes”.  She agrees to become one with God in bringing to birth one who will show God’s love to the world in a new way.  Now, agreeing to do something in principal and actually following through are very different things.  And it’s not until she hikes up the hills to visit her cousin that the potentiality becomes very real to her. 

The one who kicks it off for Mary is not the previous visit from the angel Gabriel, but the encounter she has with Elizabeth.  More specifically, the kicker is the baby who is to be John the Baptist.  He boots Elizabeth into exclaiming “blessed is she who believed that there would be/will be a fulfillment of what was spoken by the Lord!” (Luke 1:45).  The grammar the gospel uses can mean what will happen and what has already been done.  Both are true.  God is continuing to work in love, as God has done from the beginning.  And God will not stop until all is accomplished.  Mary is so filled with affirmation in hearing Elizabeth’s words, that she responds with a song that expresses this love in action.  We call her words “the Magnificat”.

The opening line, “my soul magnifies the Lord” points to Mary’s confidence in what is happening within her.  She sees herself having a role in making God’s love larger.  She is the focus of God’s salvation power; which overturns the powers of the world.  The Magnificat is a revolutionary anthem, a cry of liberation for all who need to hear good news.  It is for those who are in need of help: women, the oppressed, the poor, the marginalized in every society.  And it is for those who need a corrective to their actions: those who choose for themselves without considering the rest of creation.  This is the commitment of a woman to love in the face of all that is wrong in the world.  She knows herself blessed by the trust that God is putting in her, an ordinary person, to bear witness to the love of God. 

Because Mary said “Yes”, we are part of the story.  What is God stirring inside us to help magnify the Holy Name? 

Old collect from the Book of Common Prayer for Advent:

Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people; that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may of thee be plenteously rewarded; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.