Sermon: Mixing Up Our Verb Tenses

Luke 1:39-55

Mixing Up Our Verb Tenses

James Sledge                                                                                       December 23, 2018

Here we are on the Sunday before Christmas, and finally the scripture readings appointed for the day feel a little Christmassy. Three weeks ago we heard Jesus talk about his second coming, and the last two weeks we heard about John the Baptist. But today, finally, here is Mary, and she is pregnant with Jesus.

Of course the lectionary that lists the scripture readings for each Sunday isn’t trying to be a Grinch. In part it is letting Advent be Advent and not an extension of the Christmas season. But also, the Bible does not really share our fascination with Christmas. Of the four gospels, only Luke actually narrates Jesus’ birth. And Luke seems more focused on the events surrounding the birth, things like the prophetic speech we just heard, than on the birth itself.

It might help for me to go back and recall what has happened to get us to Mary’s prophetic song today. Luke is not only the sole narrator of Jesus’ birth, but he alone tells of John the Baptist’s birth, and he weaves the two stories together. John’s father, Zechariah, and Jesus’ mother, Mary, both receive visits from the angel Gabriel who tells them of miraculous births to come. And both Zechariah and Mary speak prophetically about these births.

Luke loves to use patterns and rhythms from the Old Testament as he tells the story of Jesus. Mary’s song is very much like the song offered by Hannah after she has given birth to Samuel. But more than that, the angel’s visits to Zechariah and Mary follow a formula for divine appearances that repeats throughout the Old Testament.

The formula works like this. An epiphany, the appearance of God or God’s emissary, prompts fear by the one being visited. This is followed by reassurance that the divine is not there to do harm. Then comes the reason for the visit, a call or commission. This is typically met with objection. God then gives a sign, and cooperation ensues. In the Old Testament, deviations from the formula sometimes alert the reader to a special focus in the story.

You can clearly see this formula with the parallel experiences of Zechariah and Mary. When Gabriel appears, Zechariah is terrified while Mary is thrown into confusion, but Gabriel reassures them both, saying, “Do not be afraid.” Then each learns of unlikely births. Zechariah and Elizabeth will have a son who will be filled with the Holy Spirit and turn many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. Mary will  have a child named Jesus, the Son of the Most High, who will reign over the house of Jacob forever.

Both would-be parents object. Zechariah asks for a sign, because he is an old man whose wife is getting on in years. Mary’s objects even more forcefully. “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” Gabriel then provides signs to overcome their objections, but here the nearly parallel stories diverge just a bit.

Zechariah is struck mute, unable to speak until after Gabriel’s promises come to pass, and he returns home to his wife Elizabeth who miraculously conceives. Mary, on the other hand, is simply given further information about how her pregnancy is to occur, along with the explicit sign of her cousin Elizabeth’s seemingly impossible pregnancy.

It is tempting to think that Zechariah’s faith is somehow deficient while Mary’s is acceptable. Yet both object, Mary more vehemently. Luke must be making some point by silencing Zechariah yet reassuring Mary who then responds, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord,”  sounding a bit like the prophet Isaiah at his prophetic commission.

Perhaps it has something to do with the very different stations of Mary and Zechariah. Mary is female, and likely a teenager, someone of little importance in her day. By contrast, Zechariah is a respected, experienced priest, a mediator for God. But now his officially sanctioned voice is stilled. God instead speaks in a most unexpected manner, through this yet to be married, teenage girl.

It is perhaps fitting, given how Jesus proclaims a new day, the reign of God that turns the world upside down, that the first prophetic voice we hear is from someone with so little status. In due time, Zechariah’s voice will return, and he too will prophecy. But the honor of proclaiming what God is about to do goes to Mary.

He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,

and lifted up the lowly;

he has filled the hungry with good things,

and sent the rich away empty.

Typical of prophets, Mary gets her verb tenses a little mixed up, speaking of a world already turned upside-down, the lowly already lifted up and the hungry supplanting the rich. Prophets see with the eyes of the Holy Spirit, and so what God will do becomes so vivid that it becomes their reality. God’s presence is so intense that the promised future feels present, and they start to act as though the world has already begun to change.

Most of us aren’t prophets. If you’re like me, your experiences of the Spirit are fleeting and not so intense. And so our vision tends to be more narrow, limited to cold, hard reality. And if the world has jaded us enough, even that may be clouded and distorted by cynicism.  But sometimes Christmas is able to expand our vision.

There are a lot of things wrong with the 21^st century edition of Christmas in America. I wouldn’t want to go back the Puritans’ Massachusetts, where celebrating Christmas was illegal and you could be jailed for missing work on Christmas day. But I wouldn’t mind something shorter, simpler, less commercial. Yet for all its problems, Christmas can soften people’s hearts.

I’m not entirely sure why, but sometimes Christmas cuts through the cynicism. Sometimes it lets people hope a little more, lets them believe in possibilities a bit more. It may be cheesy and not at all connected to Christian faith. Not everyone experiences it. But still, many become a little more open to a vision of what could be, a little less tied to how things are. We may not get our tenses mixed up like Mary does, but we may be able to catch a glimpse of that vision that has become her new reality.

But Christmas will be gone soon. The church calendar says it lasts until January 6, but for most people, it’s over before next weekend. Cold, hard reality and cynicism will reclaim their places. But not for Mary, and not necessarily for us.

If something about the season – the lights, the candles, the music, the giving, or something else – has somehow opened your hearts or eyes to things you cannot usually perceive, it is possible for visions of newness to remain. It won’t happen by keeping the Christmas lights up or continuing to play Christmas music. It can happen when, like Mary, you open yourself to the power of God, to the presence of the Holy Spirit. Who knows, we might even start mixing up our verb tenses.