Mary's melody: a revolutionary hope III

2. An upside down God
A little later, once she’s met with her elderly cousin Elizabeth, herself also amazingly pregnant, Mary’s trusting response finds eloquent expression in a song known to us as the Magnificat, after its first word in Latin, and found in Luke 1.46-56:

My soul glorifies the Lord
   and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour,
   for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant.
From now on all generations will call me blessed,
   for the Mighty One has done great things for me—
   holy is his name.
His mercy extends to those who fear him,
   from generation to generation.
He has performed mighty deeds with his arm;
   he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.
He has brought down rulers from their thrones
   but has lifted up the humble.
He has filled the hungry with good things
   but has sent the rich away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel,
   remembering to be merciful
   to Abraham and his descendants for ever,
   even as he said to our fathers.

Mary knows her Bible. Her song is saturated with references and echoes from the Hebrew Scriptures. From these stories, she has learnt that in choosing a nobody to pursue his plans, God is doing what he’s always done.

God chose Abraham, a nomadic herder, a nobody, to begin a family based on a grand promise. As our first reading reminded us, God chose the children of Israel, a racial underclass helping build the riches of the mighty Egyptians, an enslaved mob of nobodies, to witness the humiliating defeat of the prime and pride of Pharaoh’s army. God chose Rahab, a foreign prostitute, a nobody, to protect Joshua’s men in a hostile city. God chose Ehud, a left-handed freak, to perform a crafty clandestine operation to rescue his oppressed people. God chose David, an unknown shepherd boy, a nobody, to defeat the champion of the Philistine army and establish a Israelite dynasty in Jerusalem. God chose Esther, a young orphaned Jewish girl in a strange land, a nobody, to stand up to an emperor and foil a genocidal plot.

Mary knew these stories and more. She realised that in choosing a nobody like her to work his upside plans, God was doing what he’d always done. And so she praises his upside down wisdom, which raises the humble and thwarts the proud and lofty.
Twelve points for naming the building whose ceiling is pictured here.
Series: I; II; III; IV; V; VI; VII.

Fearless service III

In earlier posts, I started laying out some thoughts for a sermon I would have preached on Luke 1.67-80. Having been liberated from a divinely-imposed silence, Zechariah bursts into song over the divinely-acheived salvation of Israel. Such salvation means not simply deliverance from the hands of enemies, but more fundamentally "light to those who sit in darkness, in the shadow of death".

This is all of us. None of us by worrying are able to add a single hour to our life. None of us can guarantee tomorrow. We are all dying, giving birth astride a grave. Although some might be more aware of being close to death, this is a matter of quantity rather than quality. The universally deadly future casts its grim shadow back upon all the living. Our society either obsesses over death, or refuses to look or think about it. Either way - whether in explicit fixation, or implicitly through resolute denial - we live as though death is the definitive reality in life, colouring all existence.

It is this morbid situation that Zechariah realises God is addressing. How does God execute this salvation from the shadow of death? By raising up a mighty saviour in the royal line of David. Of course, this points forward to the rest of Luke's narrative. By the end of the story, that a saviour has been "raised up" (now with an extra and more direct meaning) makes all the difference to those who pale at the approach of death. Zechariah puts it like this: "By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.” The resurrection of Jesus dispells the gloom of death. Death is still there, but its terrors melt away in the breaking dawn.

And what is the intended goal of this salvation? God doesn't simply remove the negative, but replaces it with a positive design. From sitting in darkness, we can now rise and walk "the way of peace". Having been saved from enemies, especially the last enemy death, we are liberated to fearless service.

Service seems risky. So often, we are anxious that if we pour our lives out in service of God and neighbour, we might miss out. Our attempts to bless might be repaid with curses. We might be left forgotten. But the one who remembered his holy covenant with Abraham will not forget you. And the one who has dawned upon us will bring everything to light.

Daylight is come, our saviour is risen, the path of peace lies gleaming before us. Let us follow our master in service without fear.
Series: I; II; III.

Fearless service II

When we left him at the end of an earlier post, Zechariah's months of divinely-imposed silence were finally broken and he bursts into thanksgiving. For what does he give thanks?

For the salvation of Israel that has come from the hand of her god Yahweh. This salvation has an impressive pedigree. It is in line with the royal promises to David, and ultimately goes back to the binding promises God made to Abraham. Just as the prophets of old kept this promise alive to each generation, so Zechariah's son, born in his old age, will also 'be called a prophet of the Most High' and will 'give knowledge of salvation to his people'.

But what is this salvation from? Most directly, 'from our enemies' or 'from the hands of our enemies'. This is a regular theme in the books of Judges and Samuel: God appoints a warrior to lead Israel in battle against her oppressor. To Israel under the sandal of Rome, such stories expressed yearnings at once tantalising and dangerous. Until the pagan empire of Caesar gave way to God's rule expressed through a commissioned Israelite, Israel knew she continued to suffer for the sins that had led to her sorry condition in the first place. Thus, salvation from being ruled by enemies would be the concrete sign that her sins were now forgiven.

But Zechariah sees a deeper reality. There are enemies worse than Romans. Israel is not just occupied by a foreign superpower, but is sitting in the darkness of the shadow cast by the real enemy: death. Zechariah's son will proclaim his prophetic announcement not simply to a nation in search of political autonomy, but to an audience enslaved by fear of death. This fear is what gives every tyrant or Caesar his power. It makes uncertain every plan, ends every dream, silences every voice.

This is where we all sit.
Series: I; II; III.

Fearless service I

Notes for a sermon
Yesterday I was meant to be preaching at all three services, but because of my voice, I missed out. Here are some thoughts on what I might have said. The passage was Zechariah's prophecy regarding his son John [the Baptist] (Luke 1.67-80):

Then his father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke this prophecy:
   “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,
      for he has looked favorably on his people and redeemed them.
   He has raised up a mighty savior for us
      in the house of his servant David,
   as he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old,
      that we would be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us.
   Thus he has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors,
      and has remembered his holy covenant,
   the oath that he swore to our ancestor Abraham,
      to grant us that we, being rescued from the hands of our enemies,
   might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness
      before him all our days.
   And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High;
      for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways,
   to give knowledge of salvation to his people
      by the forgiveness of their sins.
   By the tender mercy of our God,
      the dawn from on high will break upon us,
   to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,
      to guide our feet into the way of peace.”
The child grew and became strong in spirit, and he was in the wilderness until the day he appeared publicly to Israel.

Zechariah, the priest of Yahweh had been struck dumb by an angel for nine months for doubting when he heard that his elderly and apparently barren wife was to bear his first child (Luke 1.18-20). Once the child is named during circumcision, Zechariah regains his lost voice and his first words are praise (1.64). It seems nine months of watching God's promise grow has taken this priest from doubt to new-found faith.

Having been (semi-)silenced myself over the last weeks, I have some vague idea of how many thoughts and emotions must have pressed forward, clamoring for expression at that moment. So many misunderstandings to clear up, so many shared experiences to be acknowledged and clarified, so many plans entertained and formulated.

But before all that comes praise. In enforced silence, cut off from the regular blessing of daily conversation, Zechariah has rediscovered the primary purpose of human speech: to address God. In silence he has re-learned the primacy of God's speech, that God's word made the heavens and earth and everything in them (Gen 1; Ps 33.6), that until God first addresses us, calling us into being, calling us by name, we are voiceless. The gift of human language is one of the ways in which are like God, and just as children learn to speak by being spoken to, humans come to speech through God first speaking to us.

Zechariah therefore appropriately addresses his first words Godwards in response. This reply in the presence of others, who overhear, is praise.

And he gives thanks. For his regained voice? Possibly. But when we turn to the content of his praise in our passage, we find other concerns uppermost.
Series: I; II; III.

Heaven: not the end of the World XIII

Aliens and strangers
Augustine writes movingly of the civitas Dei peregrina, the pilgrim City of God. By this, he refers to that society of people scattered among the nations on earth who love God more than self, who glory in him, rather than seeking their own glory, who confess Christ and yearn for home, finding themselves homeless wanderers in this world. Indeed, the Latin term peregrina, often translated 'pilgrim' might perhaps be better rendered 'resident alien' or 'sojourner'. It is a word closer to the experience of Tom Hanks in The Terminal than the merry pilgrim-cum-tourists of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.

To confess Christ is to put yourself on the wrong side of those powers that crucified him, and so to find oneself misunderstood as a rebel. Misunderstood, because just as Christ was a prophet calling the nation back to its true identity, calling humanity back to its Creator, so those who take up their cross and follow him are doing so out of faithfulness to that Creator and thus in solidarity with the groaning creation.

And like the creation, those with the Spirit - the firstfruits of the future presence of God - yearn for the redemption of our bodies, for a transformed world where death is no more, where Christ's gracious kingdom is unopposed, where the riches of God's kindness are poured out with unspeakable joy. We long for the day when the oppressor is no more and the earth is inherited by the meek.

Because of this, we can never feel at home in a world where the rich devour the poor, where unborn strangers are turned back at the borders of life, where Christ is crowned with thorns and anointed with spittle. We are aliens, citizens of the civitas Dei peregrina.

But this is not because our home is elsewhere. It is elsewhen.

And so I wonder whether when Christians are called 'aliens and strangers', this is less like the Jewish exiles in Babylon, who pined for Zion and could not sing for grief, and more like Abraham. Abraham and his immediate descendents are repeatedly called 'aliens' and 'strangers' (Gen 17.8; 21.23, 34; 23.4; 26.3; 28.4; 37.1), though they are already living in the land that God had promised them. Though strangers, the land belongs to them by promise.

For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future--all belong to you, and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God.

- 1 Corinthians 3.21-23

Series: I; II; IIa; III; IV; V; VI; VII; VIII; IX; X; XI; XII; XIII; XIV; XV; XVI.
Ten points for guessing the country in the above pic.