Musical Prelude and Service.

Luke 1:39-56
When I first started the discernment process for ministry somewhere around 20 years ago, I must admit I didn’t know much about the process or the resources available to candidates for ministry.
So while I was meeting with a discernment committee over the course of a year, I was also learning about education expectations and opportunities. It was around this time that seminaries were starting to experiment with different ways of providing that education, but exactly how that would work was not easy to discover.
As a result about six months into the discernment process, I was quickly getting the notion that my only real option was to quit my job, move to Toronto and attend Emmanuel College full time for two years followed by a year of student ministry and a final year of in class studies.
As a man with a full-time teacher for a spouse, she was also easily the primary wage earner in our household, and two daughters who were under the age of 10 at that time, this didn’t just seem unappealing, it also seemed pretty much impossible. In one of those moments I have come to call our kitchen conversations, I told Ellie that as far as I was concerned if ministry meant moving to Toronto to attend school full time, then I am not meant to be a minister. In my head, I had at this time pretty much resigned myself to the notion I was mistaken in my sense of call.
Less than two months later, I was meeting with a faculty member at St. Andrew’s College in Saskatoon, and he was explaining their new program that combined part time and distance education and a longer student ministry, that left me thinking, “that might work.”
It was this moment – and a number of other experiences along the way to ordination, that left me with the following insight: Be very careful speaking in terms of absolutes about what you have planned for the future. Or to quote Woody Allen, who is playing on a Yiddish proverb, “If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.”
This is my long, round about way of saying, God if full of surprises and nothing in God’s world is going to last forever; expect God’s presence, God’s mercy, God’s grace and God’s love.
We can frequently be tempted to take for granted our current place in the world. We can be left assuming whatever it is we are experiencing right now in this moment will never come to an end;
be it a sense of security and fulfillment, of comfort; or a sense of despair, heart ache and pain.
But God has a remarkable way of turning things around.
And this season, when we celebrate the coming of God in the person of Jesus, an infant born in the humblest of circumstances to an unwed mother, this I think is one of the most powerful parts of the story, which Mary declares in remarkably powerful words.
God can and will turn your world upside down. Celebrate this fact.
In Luke’s gospel, the declaration of the coming of Jesus is put in the words of two pregnant women; one of an age when bearing a child is no longer considered possible. The other a young unwed woman and thus creating a scandal.
Elizabeth’s husband, the priest Zecharia, has been silenced by God for questioning what was about to happen. Mary’s betrothed, Joseph, isn’t even a part of the story yet. He has nothing to say.
Those left to tell us what is happening are those all too often ignored or kept silent.
And they have something to say. Jesus is coming to save us. What does that mean to them? What does salvation look like to Mary and Elizabeth?
Scattering the proud.
Bringing down the powerful.
Lifting up the lowly.
Filling the hungry with good things.
And sending the rich away hungry.
And coming to the aid of Israel, an occupied company oppressed by and invading army.
For Mary and Elizabeth, salvation is a pretty concrete thing. It is not about what is to come in a life after death. It is about changing their lives here and now.
I think it is significant to note that because Jesus is born into the family of Joseph, he is part of the line of King David. But, as we are told in scripture and we celebrate it in I have lost track of how many Christmas hymns, Jesus is born in the humblest of circumstances. This is where the heirs of King David now find themselves. They are no longer the rich and powerful. The wealth and the power of King David and his descendants has come to an end. Joseph, a carpenter, will watch his child be born amongst farm animals, far from the seat of power.
And yet, God is there. God’s love for Joseph for Mary, and for all of humanity is evident and praised in that moment.
Mary’s words are radical. They are world changing. They shout out loud and clear that no matter how powerful, how privileged, how proud of your station you might be; it’s not forever. God can and will bring you down. And not matter how much you are pushed around, how weak you may feel, how hopeless your circumstance may seem; God sees something new for you. These circumstances too can end.
Rulers over the millennia have attempted to edit or silence Mary’s song. They have seen it as a threat to their power. But her words carry on. We still hear her telling us we live in God’s world. We are subject to a God who has created and is creating. A God who loves us and who sees and hears us and responds to our cries and our songs of praise.
Our God is with us, and has experienced all this world has to offer. Was born amongst the poor and the humble. Grew up in a community under the heel of oppression. Lived and worked with the poor, the fishermen and the labourers. A man who sat and listened to women, to tax collectors, sinners. Who shared the message of God’s steadfast love and desire to see us live out that love in our own lives. A man who called us to work with him to feed the hungry; give voice to the voiceless and raise up those who are constantly put down.
In three days, we will join our voices in proclaiming Jesus Christ born amongst us. We will sing Emmanuels, proclaiming God with us. God desires that we live lives of Joy. God’s love for us is evident in the person of Jesus and in the words proclaimed by Mary. May we live our lives with that love celebrate the Good News that the heartbreak and the violence we seem to always witness is not forever. We can and we do have faith that what is forever is God’s presence, God’s grace, God’s mercy, God’s justice. God’s love.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Warner Bloomfield

Music provided with permission through licensing with CCLI License number
2701258 and One License # A-731789