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| The Visitation, Jesus MAFA, Cameroon, 1973 |
Luke 1:46b-55
Upside Down World
James Sledge December 13, 2020 – Advent 2
Many years ago, in the early 1960s, a small, rental car company begin to run what many consider the best advertising campaign of all time. Some of you no doubt remember this campaign from what was then called Avis Rent-A-Car. In various print and television ads, Avis proudly announced, “We’re number 2. We try harder.” The idea was that because they were number 2 behind Hertz, they had to work harder for your business.
The campaign was a huge success, and Avis just retired the “We Try Harder” slogan in 2012. At the time the ad campaign premiered, Hertz controlled the vast majority of the car rental business, around three quarters of it. Way back in Hertz’s dust were a group of smaller companies fighting over the remaining twenty five percent. But by the late 1960s, Avis was challenging Hertz for number one.
In in one of the first ever commercials to make a virtue out of being the little guy, Avis was very successful in convincing people that they would get better service from an upstart. But “We Try Harder” wasn’t the only message Avis was selling in their ads, even though it was the only clearly stated one. The claim, “We’re number 2” appeared to be a simple statement of fact, but in reality Avis may not have been number 2 at all, It was one of several bottom feeders fighting for the crumbs left by Hertz, but the ad campaign convinced everyone that they were Hertz’s rival. It changed people’s perception of things.
You may wonder what this has to do with Mary’s song. The Magnificat isn’t advertising. It does, however, make a number of bold claims. God is about to turn the world upside down, scattering the proud, bringing down the powerful and lifting up the lowly, filling the hungry with good things while sending the rich away empty. But perhaps unnoticed by us, our attention focused on Mary’s words, Luke’s story of Jesus’ birth speaks of a world already turned upside down.
Take Mary herself. What an unlikely choice for a prophet, or for the one by whom God’s new day begins to show forth. We Presbyterians, and Protestants in general, don’t pay a lot of attention to Mary, an overreaction, perhaps, to Roman Catholics who seem to pay a bit too much attention to her. But in Luke’s gospel, the only gospel that actually narrates Jesus’ birth, Mary is an active participant in the divine drama. She is no mere receptacle by which God gets Jesus a human birth. She must say “Yes” for God’s plans to move forward, and she prophesies, long before Jesus is born, telling what God’s plan is all about.
This is not the way ancient birth narratives work. Biographies of great men, even in our day, are most often told from a male perspective. That’s actually what Matthew does in his gospel, everything told from Joseph’s point of view. But not so Luke. Not so what most of us call “The Christmas Story.”
Joseph is the bit player in Luke’s story. It is the women who speak, not the men. When Mary sings her Magnificat, she is responding to the inspired words of her relative Elizabeth, whose own pregnancy with the child who will become John the baptizer is six months further along than Mary’s. Elizabeth’s husband Zechariah, one of the priests, has been rendered mute by God for the length of her pregnancy. It seems that Luke had pretty much muted all the men, a most upside down setting for the birth story of the one whose arrival is meant to turn the world upside down.
Mary’s song tells of the upside down world that is coming, but in the story of Jesus’ birth, it has already flipped. Women speak while men are silent. It is Mary whom God calls. It is Mary who prophesies, who can see what is to come. It is Mary who treasures the words of the shepherds at the manger and ponders them in her heart. Joseph is nearly invisible. In some ways, the story itself is as outlandish as Mary’s bold prophecy.
But Luke isn’t done craftily drawing us in to an upside down view of things. Luke is not content to let us hear Mary and say, “Yes, perhaps that will happen someday.” Luke wants us to begin seeing things as God sees them, now.
Perhaps it doesn’t seem like much at first, but when Mary sings she says “(God) has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their heart… has brought down the powerful from their thrones… has lifted up the lowly… has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.” Not will, but has.
No doubt I’ve shared this quote from Barbara Brown Taylor before. “Prophets almost never get their verb tenses straight, because part of their gift is to see the world as God sees it…”[1] And so, what God will do is as real as what God is doing and what God has done.
Seeing the world as God sees it. Could we actually do that? Could Mary and Luke pull us far enough into the upside down ways of God, they we start to live them out? A few people do, and I think a lot of us want to.
Maybe we want to a little more at Christmas. At Christmas we sometimes get our tenses mixed up when we sing. “Joy to the world, the Savior reigns!” Not will reign but does. “He rules the world with truth and grace, and makes the nations prove the glories of his righteousness and wonders of his love.” Not will rule or will make but does. “Peace on earth and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled!” Not someday might be, but are now.
Much of the hoopla around Christmas has little to do with Jesus or faith. A lot of it’s about family, nostalgia, Santa, and familiar and comforting traditions, not that there’s anything wrong with those. But along with them, Christmas also feels like a slightly more hopeful time, and I wonder if some of that doesn’t come from getting our tenses wrong, from seeing the world a bit more as Mary describes it, as Luke tries to help us see, as God sees the world.
I wonder if some Christmas, maybe even this one, Mary’s words and Luke’s story might draw us far enough into the upside down nature of God’s new day that we would stay there, even after Christmas. God’s future could become our present, just as it was Mary’s. And we would live by the upside down ways of God’s coming kingdom, joining those other disciples who are doing their part to tilt the world in the direction God is already taking it.
God has acted. A Savior is born. He rules the world with truth and grace. Peace on earth. Can you see it? Can we see it?
[1] Barbara Brown Taylor, “Singing Ahead of Time” in Home by Another Way, (Boston: Cowley Publications, 1999), p. 18
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