Magnificat — Andy James

Our Song of Joy

November 15, 2015 By Andy James

a sermon on 1 Samuel 1:4-20; 2:1-10
preached on November 15, 2015, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

It could have been the middle of the summer, but the days were dark and gloomy in Israel. The governmental structures to lead and guide the people had broken down, the religious institutions had become more focused on self-preservation than anything else, and the threats from the outside were as strong as ever.

It was not a time for singing songs of joy of any sort, especially not for Hannah. Beyond the struggles of the world around her, she bore the great weight of being childless. She had a faithful and loving husband who cared for her quite well, but the world around her demanded that she have a child of her own in order to be fully human. One truly inconsiderate person kept bugging her about it over and over again, and she entered a deep depression. Not even the gentle and loving presence of her husband—or extra gifts from him!—could comfort her.

She finally went up to the temple to pray. “O Lord, look on me! See my misery, and do not forget me. Give me a son, and I will offer him to be your faithful servant even from the first days of his life.” She continued in prayer, her words emerging silently from her heart with such great longing that she could not help but mouth the words. She sought a way out of her predicament, a new possibility for her life in those dark days, a chance to sing a song of joy for herself and for the world.

We know what it is like to be Hannah. Our pain and hurt may not be exactly the same as hers—we may not struggle with the same issues of being barren in a culture where bearing children was central—but we certainly know what it is like to struggle to sing songs of joy. When the world seems to be breaking down around us, when violence and terror strike so often, when friends and family die before their time, when we become paralyzed with fear, we join Hannah in those heartfelt prayers that things will be different, that the darkness will end, that the world will come together, that joy can be our song.

Hannah walked away from her prayer at the temple with uncertainty and confusion. She didn’t really know what to expect in response. Would God grant her petition? Would God give her a son that she would then give back to God as she had promised? Even the priest at the temple had confronted her while she was praying, concerned that her heartfelt prayers were an expression not of her strong spirit but rather some strong wine! When Hannah explained her anxiety and vexation to him, he sent her on her way with his own prayer that God would grant her petition. When Hannah returned home, her mind was more at ease. Something was changing. She and her husband soon conceived a son, and when he was born, she named him Samuel. Hannah could finally make joy her song.

Hannah raised her voice after Samuel’s birth to offer the song of joy and praise that concludes our reading this morning. She began by offering praise to God for the particular gift she has received—“My heart exults in the LORD; my strength is exalted in my God,” she exclaims—but her thanksgiving for the presence of God in her own life was only the beginning. Hannah moved beyond her own life to lift up words of praise for all that God does in the world to make things different and new and to show God’s way of peace, justice, and wholeness to all. “The bows of the mighty are broken… those who were hungry are fat with spoil… the barren has borne seven… the LORD raises up the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap.”

In her song, Hannah praised God for her gifts but made it clear that God was and is doing so much more beyond her, bringing justice for all people and offering a new way of life to the world, with a particular preference for those who are poor or in need. She sang because new life had emerged out of what seemed to be her barren womb—and because God continues to bring new life in all places that seem so barren and empty. Hannah responded with this song of joy because she had been a beneficiary of this incredible love, and her song expressed her deep gratitude for this incredible gift of a son and for God’s amazing power that is making all things new. Because of the blessings she received, because of God’s incredible work in the world, and because of God’s new thing that begins anew each and every day, Hannah made joy her song.

Even with the distance of several millennia, we too have the gift of sharing this song in our world and our lives. Amid the difficulty and challenge of our lives and our world, we can offer our praise to God as we see God’s presence revealed in new and deeper ways. Hannah’s song has been the model for countless others over the ages, most notably Mary’s song of praise as she fully embraced the gift that would come to her in being the mother of Jesus, and it can give us a basis for our praise, too. Just like Hannah, we too have had moments of incredible joy and blessing in our lives. We too have known God’s gracious and merciful response to our prayers. We too have seen God doing incredible things beyond our lives in all the world. And we too can sing a song of praise for God’s new thing beginning anew each and every day.

Our songs of praise in this place are a great place to begin, but they truly are only the beginning, just as this song was for Hannah. She not only sang a beautiful song—she took incredible and faithful action in offering up Samuel to the service of God. Like Hannah, our songs of joy need more than beautiful and catchy melodies—God calls us to sing praise with our heart and soul and voice, with the whole of our being, with all the gifts that give us life and breath, so that all creation might join our praise.

In these days, as we prepare for a new calendar year and bring a request for your support of the church in the next twelve months, I hope and pray that you will think of this as an opportunity for a joyous response. God is at work in our midst, and we have the gift of offering our response of joy and praise, not just in our words and songs and prayers here on Sundays but also in the gifts of time, talent, and money that support what God is doing in this place. Like Hannah, we begin our response with prayer for those things that so often seem to be missing from this journey of life together. We long for others to join us on this journey. We long for an end to the violence and strife that mark our world and occupy our attention. We long to be freed from worry about the mechanics of our life together. And we long for God’s new way to take more complete root in our midst.

Still, this is only the beginning of our response, for our prayers of deep longing soon turn to joy amid the great gifts that we have been given and are even more privileged to share. As we join in mission and ministry in this community and around our world, our joyful and faithful response empowers the church to bear witness to God’s love in so many times and places that go far beyond our imagination. And as we walk together, we find incredible signs of what God is doing in us and in our world to make all things new—and the astounding possibilities for where God invites us to join in!

The incredible thing about Hannah’s song —and our song of response—is that God uses these words of praise as a beginning for something new and something more. Just as Hannah offered the exultation of her heart, strength, and mouth, God works in and through the incredible gifts of our time, talent, and treasure to make all things new. God takes the little gifts we offer and expands them into something more. God joins our songs of praise in so many varied forms with those of others around us to continue the incredible things that God is doing in the world. In the coming week, you’ll hear a bit more about this story in your mailbox, about how you can join in Hannah’s song of joy and hope in our life together, and you’ll also receive a pledge card asking for you to consider what you can offer as part of a commitment to our song of joy and praise in this place.

As we consider our response to all these gifts and our commitment to our life together in this place over the coming year, may God give us strength to join with Hannah, Mary, and countless others across the ages, lifting our song of joy, thanksgiving, and praise for all that God has done and is doing in us and in our world to make all things new. Lord, come quickly! Amen.

Making the Story Our Own

December 21, 2014 By Andy James

a sermon on Luke 1:26-56
preached on December 21, 2014, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

As some of you know, I am a collector of nativity scenes. Over the past seven or eight years, I’ve managed to assemble a collection that includes a depiction of Mary, Joseph, and Jesus from every continent except Australia and Antarctica. I’m still trying to complete those last two, though I suspect that anything from Antarctica might be nothing more than a puddle of water by the time it gets to me!

The incredible thing about all these nativity scenes is the variety of different ways that they depict the same story. The materials vary based on the things common to that part of the world, and there are cultural differences in dress, look, and even skin color. Even beyond this, though, these different nativities show Mary, Joseph, Jesus, and others with a variety of different expressions and feelings. Sometimes they are shown with great seriousness and piety, other times with a bit of happiness and satisfaction. One setting has nothing more than the name of each character in a simple typeface on a block of wood, and there’s even one where Mary looks so peaceful and prayerful that I think she may be asleep!

All these different depictions of the nativity remind me that this is ultimately the story of God coming into our world, taking human form just like us, coming to us to relate to us as one of us. While Jesus was certainly born into a particular time and place, bearing the cultural, religious, and personal markers of his human identity, all these different depictions of the nativity remind us that we are constantly called to make this story our own.

The pre-birth story that marks our reading this morning is filled with so many wonderful moments that can touch our lives: the visit of the angel Gabriel to Mary, the news that the young virgin Mary will bear a child by the power of the Holy Spirit, the visit of Mary to her relative Elizabeth, the songs offered by Elizabeth and Mary as they sort out what these strange events mean for one another and the world, and the extended conversations between these two very blessed women about the children they are bearing into the world. All these different elements of this story connect to our lives in different ways based on our individual experiences, our cultural backgrounds, the circumstances of our time, and even our varied spiritual experiences. As we sort out what all these things mean for us, all those different nativities might help us a bit, for just as they give us so many different depictions of the same story, so we can remember that we will carry even among us gathered here today many different connections to this story behind the birth of Jesus.

Even with our varied interpretations and connections, there are I think two particularly important elements of this story for us to carry with us in these final days on the journey to Christmas and beyond. The first is the vision of holy friendship that we see in the encounter between Elizabeth and Mary. Our Advent Bible study lifted up this theme beautifully, and so some of you have talked about this with me before, but there is something truly incredible that we see in the encounter between these two pregnant women. Elizabeth and Mary are connected by many things. They both thought that they could not bear children—Mary because she was too young, Elizabeth because she was too old. They both were wandering through the uncertainties of pregnancy in a day and age when the health of mother and child were at far greater risk than today. And they both knew through an encounter with the divine that the child each was bearing would be special and set apart for God’s incredible purposes.

These common experiences brought Elizabeth and Mary together in a bond that only they could understand. In reflecting on this connection, author Enuma Okoro observes, “It is a testament to God’s care and provision that each woman has someone to journey with as she navigates the peculiar seasons in which she finds herself.” (Silence and Other Surprising Invitations of Advent, p. 67) As we reflect on this story and make it our own, we can think about the holy companions that we have on our journeys. Who can open our eyes to a deeper understanding of how God is at work in our lives and our world? What sorts of people are among us—or should we seek to be among us—who can remind us of our blessedness and challenge us to help others to embrace their blessedness? How can we be ready to welcome people into our lives—and into the life we share in this place—to be the kinds of companions that we need to journey with us?

The holy friendship that Mary and Elizabeth shared can take so many different forms in our world. For some, it may come in the relationships of marriage and lifelong commitment. Others may find it in friends who can walk together amidst the many changes of life. Some may find it within their families, with siblings or even between parents and children. And some holy friendships may even last for an extremely short season of life and yet still show the kind of divine presence and holy imagination that emerged so beautifully between Elizabeth and Mary. Whatever form these holy friendships may take, they all can build on the kind of connection that Mary and Elizabeth shared, for just as they found support in one another as they waited to welcome their children into the world, we too can deepen our faith and find new hope as we share our joys and struggles with one another along the way.

Just as holy friendship can open us to one way of making this story our own as we find a new and different way to live together, the great song of Mary that follows in their encounter can show us to a new way of being in the world. Mary offers this great song known as the Magnificat after her initial encounter with Elizabeth, as the impact of their shared joy settles in all the more. Mary’s Magnificat, so named because of its first word in the Latin that was the primary language of the church and Bible for so many years, builds on the tradition of the psalms and canticles of the Old Testament, especially the Song of Hannah, mother of Samuel, to give praise for God’s great works and the promise of justice and righteousness for all creation that is being fulfilled in Mary’s life as she bears Jesus into the world.

But this is more than any old song. Mary’s song here is the song of a mother who realizes that her child will change the world, of a woman who recognizes the deep blessing that has come to her and the world through her because of the child she is bearing, of a person who can see the transformation that God is making real in the world. Mary gives praise to God for the things that she is experiencing and the blessing that she is finding, but she clearly knows that this is ultimately not about her. She continues her song beyond this personal understanding of blessing to give praise to a God who brings favor when the world would never dream of such, shows mercy from generation to generation, scatters the proud from their places of privilege, turns the tables of power upside down, offers a strange but real preference for those who are poor or in need, fills the hungry with good things, and remembers promises of mercy and hope.

Empowered by the gift of holy friendship with one who understands the challenge and blessing of her life, Mary proclaims the greatness of a God who turns the world upside down, and we can echo her words of praise not just in the gift of our next hymn based on her song but also by living our lives in ways that further God’s justice, peace, mercy, and grace in our world. The incarnation of Jesus that we celebrate at Christmas becomes real when we find ways to make this story our own, when we discover how God has not just broken into the world of first-century Palestine but twenty-first century New York City, when God’s presence is not just something that we experience in our hearts but that we see taking root around us in the transformation of our world.

In the holy friendships of our lives that give us space for fear and hope amidst uncertainty, in the joyful songs that challenge us to make God’s work more real in our world, we encounter the one who comes in these days, the one who turns everything upside down in a baby born in the most humble of circumstances who yet reigns over all the earth, the one who makes all things new through death and resurrection to new life. So as we journey these final days toward Christmas, may we find ways to make this story our own, whether it be in nativity scenes that help us to see these characters as people like us, in seeking holy friendships that open us to God’s presence in our lives in new ways, or in the ways we join all that God is doing in our world to live out the joys of Mary’s song. And as we go along this way, may we be ready to welcome the fullness of Christ’s gift into our lives and our world both this Christmas and when he comes in power to finish making all things new. Lord, come quickly! Amen.

Speaking Up and Singing Out

December 23, 2012 By Andy James

a sermon on Luke 1:26-56 for the Fourth Sunday of Advent
preached on December 23, 2012, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

Music is an integral part of this time of year. We’ve been hearing holiday songs for most of this month already if not longer, and there is incredible variety in style and subject. Nearly every popular music artist makes an album of holiday songs, but the subjects of holiday songs stay pretty much the same. The secular songs talk about winter, cold weather, snow, family, and friends, and the religious ones tell popularized and shortened versions of the various Christmas stories from the Bible along with some material from legends and history.

One of the greatest and most common subjects of these songs is Mary, who is also the main subject of our reading this morning. While we may not hear these songs quite so frequently on the radio, these songs about Mary are some of the best holiday music out there, if you ask me. They take a lot of different forms and focus on many different parts of the story. A lot of these songs are settings of the Magnificat that we just heard read and will sing ourselves in a few minutes, and at our Taizé prayer service the other night, we sang another very simple setting of it that managed to show the spirit of joy in Mary’s song in only a couple lines. Other songs about Mary simply attempt to tell the story of how Jesus came to be born, like a well-known carol from France that tells the story of Mary’s encounter with the angel Gabriel or the song I just sang by John Bell from the Iona Community in Scotland. Still other songs reflect on Mary’s reaction to the news that she would bear God’s son, with one I heard this year even taking a very earthy view of Mary’s encounter with the angel as it depicts in word and song the strangeness of this very intimate encounter between an angel and a young girl.

But as much as I love all this music about Mary, this year I have realized more than ever before how difficult it is for me to identify with Mary. I haven’t been visited by an angel, so I can’t know what it was like for her to experience Gabriel’s presence as she did. I am not a parent, so I can’t go into Christmas drawing connections between the birth of my own children and the birth of Jesus. And since I am not a woman, I can’t imagine what it is like to carry new life of any sort into the world, let alone a son who would be so special and transformative!

With all these limitations, I think it is very easy for me to miss important things about this story—but all of us stand at a disadvantage here because this story has almost always been told through male eyes. The gospel writers were all men, and although Luke tells this story so beautifully, no man could fully capture the feelings and challenges of a story that is so closely connected to a woman’s experience.

We in the church have too often quieted the voice of women over the centuries. While there have been a number of notable women who have contributed their scholarship and spirituality to the life of the church, it has only been in the last one hundred years that women have been given voice in pulpits in many churches, and those who have a closer experience to this key figure of our faith remain locked out of leadership in so many traditions even today. There is something very much missing when half of the human race is not allowed to offer their own perspective on such an important moment in the story of our faith.

And yet amidst such quiet for women, Mary spoke up—even if we have to hear it through the voice of Luke. Mary spoke up when no one seemed to care, when she faced exclusion from society for getting pregnant before she was married, when her story of divine parenthood for her child just wasn’t believable. Mary spoke up not just to claim something for herself, not just to reclaim her personhood, not just to announce that she too had a voice, but Mary spoke up so that others might hear, so that others could understand what she was going through, so that others could join her in praising God for this new thing that was taking shape in her.

This wasn’t an easy thing for her to deal with in general, let alone for her to talk about—her acceptance of it wasn’t a given. God didn’t ask Mary to sign up for a special trip, give up an evening to go to a sales presentation, or even to make a big donation to a favorite charity. Instead, through the angel Gabriel, God asked Mary to give up nine months of a relatively normal life for the pain and struggle of pregnancy. God asked Mary to take on the responsibility of raising a son at a very young age when it wasn’t entirely clear if she would have to do so alone. God asked Mary to stake her reputation as a virtuous woman on a visitation from an angel that she alone witnessed and that others had no incentive to believe.

But the reality is that Mary didn’t have much else to give—or much else to lose. She herself points out her own lowliness, and it seems that there is not much else she could do to be a part of what God was doing in the world around her. Yet in spite of all the obstacles, all the pain, all the ridicule it could bring, she somehow welcomed the angel, listened carefully, and responded hopefully, “Let it be with me according to your word.”

But her acceptance was not the only way that she spoke up. As she sorted out what all these things meant and talked to her relative Elizabeth, another woman who faced pregnancy in an unusual circumstance, Mary suddenly figured it all out. In talking with Elizabeth, she moved from a meek moment of submission and acceptance to a joyous offering of praise and thanksgiving. As she recognized more of what this child would mean, she was ready to praise God, not just for the gift she had received but for this child who would change everything for everyone.

What is our Mary moment? What sort of request in our lives would bring us to wonder and reflect as she did? What could God ask of us—male or female, rich or poor, young or old—that would challenge us and bring us to this kind of new life? What would make us confront our fears and our challenges and speak up with a word of hope and praise?

Because as a man I can’t know the full meaning of what it would be to give up as much as Mary did, I suspect any comparison I might offer would fall a bit short of the incredible offering that she made. But the great medieval mystic Julian of Norwich wrote of what she learned through her own visions of Mary:

I was not taught to long to see her bodily presence whilst I am here, but [instead] the virtues of her blessed soul, her truth, her wisdom, her love, through which I am taught to know myself and reverently to fear my God.

Perhaps then our words and actions can live out this truth, wisdom, and love of Mary each and every day. We can join in Mary’s commitment to opening ourselves to God’s work in us just as she did—not just being virtuous but living in faithfulness, truth, peace, justice, and love with one another and modeling these things for our world so that God’s new way might take hold in our world. And we can offer our own words of praise for what God is doing in us and around us, for mercy that transforms lives and hearts, for strength that scatters the proud, brings down the powerful, and lifts up the lowly, for generosity that fills the hearts and minds and stomachs of those who are in need, and for promises kept that show us how God has been, is now, and always will be at work in our world.

So as we bring our preparations and waiting to a close and join in celebrating this Christmas, may we do our best to be like Mary, opening ourselves to whatever God may be asking of us, speaking up to call others to join in God’s transformation of our lives and our world, and singing out in joy for God’s wondrous gift of new life born in a manger some two millennia ago and taking hold in our hearts once again this Christmas.

Lord, come quickly! Amen.