When God Comes to Us

Readings: Luke 1:39-56, True Christianity 394, 395, 403 (see below)
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Photo credit: Felix Mittermeier on Pexels

We began Advent with the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth. Today we fast forward a little in the gospel of Luke, past the angel Gabriel visiting with Mary and offering her the invitation to be the mother of our Lord. We will hear this text in our Christmas Eve service, but for today, we recognize that it ends with Mary saying “I am the Lord’s servant, May your word to me be fulfilled.”

And here is the where the two narratives in the first chapter of Luke converge. We heard three weeks ago about, how after many years of waiting, Elizabeth found herself pregnant with a child who would go on to be John the Baptist, an important prophetic precusor to Jesus himself. Elizabeth and Mary are related, and Mary rushes to Elizabeth to tell her her own good news. Their bond is so touching, underscored by the joyful leaping of Elizabeth’s baby in her womb upon seeing Mary, itself the first fulfillment of what the angel told Zechariah, that his child will be filled with the Holy Spirit.

Elizabeth proclaims that Mary is blessed, and then Mary herself speaks, giving us a window into how she understood what was happening to her, what she would be giving birth to. This section of prophetic text is referred to as The Magnificat, from the first line where Mary says my soul glorifies, or magnifies, the Lord.

Within this beautiful hymn, we hear about the effects of God’s coming. What is it that happens when God comes to us, then and now, in body or in spirit? The answer is three-fold. When God comes to us we experience blessing, reversal, and the fulfilment of promises.

First, a state of blessing. God will only ever regard us with love and care. Indeed, God is not capable of anything else, it would be against the nature of Divine Love. So, the first thing that comes into being when God comes to us is a blessing: worthiness, dignity, hope. We might think of Psalm 139 - we are fearfully and wonderfully made. God sees us: sees all our sacred potential, sees all our flaws, sees all our longings, sees all our striving and our mistakes and our misunderstandings, our apologies, our hard work. God sees it all, and values us. God in particular saw Mary’s humility, her grit, her determination, her loyalty, and in that moment of being seen and of being treasured, Mary’s soul rejoiced in her God.

Now, we might not always be capable of seeing this state of blessing and love for ourselves. There are many things that might get in the way, psychological things like our perspectives, learnings, trauma, self-esteem, or earthly things like our busy-ness or distractedness. But the reality is that God always comes first with blessing because God’s basic stance is always our worthiness. Perhaps we don’t always live into that. But God doesn’t waver on it. 

The second effect of God’s coming is reversal. It’s a good thing we started with blessing because now things get gnarly. Mary casts a vision of God’s power to change things. She spoke of those who are proud and superior being dispersed, scattered. Those who seek to rule over others are thwarted. Those who have accumulated riches at the expense of others ultimately experience emptiness. This is an earthly vision, yes, but we can easily see the personal spiritual levels upon which any earthly embodiment of this vision depends. For those who are proud in their inmost thoughts, as Mary says, proud or superior in the way the understand themselves, they will often act in ways that harm or disregard others. Those who rule because of the seductive personal power of the throne itself, as we see clearly in these days, rule capricously and cruelly. Those who are devoted to the never-ending accumulation of wealth for whatever personal reason often create the conditions of want in many many others.

We human beings get things mixed up, its just what we do. So God has to help us get things the right way around. Where we are proud and superior and avaricious and selfish God will help us cast that down and out and away. God will do this for every person who wants it, and the more people who want it, the greater chance the shape of our world will reflect it. 

Swedenborg puts this in terms of the four kinds of love that shape our lives: love of God, love of others, love of the world and love of self. When we have these loves in the right order within ourselves, then God can truly flow through us without impediment. Love of God doesn’t have to mean how much we go to church, but rather, how much we look to a higher power of love and wisdom to guide us, in whatever tradition, leading us towards growth, meaning, and purpose. Loving others is a natural extension of this, recognizing that divine love and wisdom confers worthiness, dignity, and connection upon us all. Love of the world is not so much affection for our earth, which is good thing, but rather a love of worldly things: wealth, prestige, reputation, power, and getting more of all. And the love of self is not a healthy sense of self worth, but rather the constant practice of putting our own needs and desires above everyone else, making ourselves the center of the universe where no one else matters. We can see that when this kind of love of self and love of the world are our highest ideals that it creates a world in which many will suffer. Mary could see this in her time, and we likewise see it in ours.

So the purpose of God coming to us is disruption. Birthing something (or someone) new is an incredible disruption to our status quo, as any parent knows, as anyone who has worked to create something meaningful knows. We cannot create newness in the ways that we were. We cannot create newness when we are stuck in harmful and selfish patterns, or when our priorities are upside down. But when we understand what we truly owe to each other as human beings, as Jesus’ ministry during his life worked to show us, these spiritual reversals within us will ultimately lead to earthly reversals.

And so the third effect of God coming to us is the fulfillment of God’s promises. For Mary, that took the form of thinking back to the promises that God made to her ancestors, in particular to Abraham, the father of her people. It prompts us to likewise think of the broader promises that God had made to us through that promise and many others. Such as the rainbow in the story of Noah, a promise that God will never harm us. Such as the invitation to journey to Abraham, a promise that God will help us grow. Such as the person of Jesus, promising that God is with us through everything we might encounter and that whatever feels like death and chaos can ultimately lead to resurrection. God promises us the peace of a heavenly life; we start with God’s essential blessing and we move through change and growth to get there.

Which brings us to the question of timing. Now, you know I like a list, but unfortunately, these effects don’t happen like on a list. They don’t even happen just once so they can be ultimately finished. They happen again and again, they happen in small terms and in broader terms, because yes, God came to us in person all those years ago, but God also continues to come into our hearts and minds even now. So, it might be helpful to recall our sermon from Ben Gunter two weeks ago, that lifted up Mary’s partner in this story of God’s coming, Joseph. Joseph is not recorded as saying anything in the biblical narrative, and this may well be because his spiritual gift was patience and listening. Of course we might want to rush through to the end of this list of effects, to open the present before Christmas as Ben shared, to get to fulfilment because surely that must be the best part! But only God knows how much time we need to spend at each stage, or how many times we might need to circle back, and this is true for ourselves as much as it is true for our world. 

Which finally brings us back to Mary, and what she brought to the picture. There is a modern Christmas song called Mary Did You Know? which always causes me to bristle, because yes, Mary clearly knew what Jesus was working towards, her Magnificat demonstrates this without a doubt. Which makes the courage of her almighty yes that much more inspiring. She was on board with God’s purposes, and gave of her very body to bring those purposes to fruition. But what Mary herself highlights here as being key to her rejoicing is her humility, her openness, her readiness to serve. The humility of both Mary and Joseph made them the ideal people to shepherd God’s coming, to receive blessing without twisting it into self-aggrandizement, to face disruption and reversal without discouragement or mistrust, to encounter fulfilment without with joy, gratitude, curiosity and patience. In all things, may we do likewise.

Amen.

Readings:
Luke 1:39-56
39 At that time Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea,
40 where she entered Zechariah’s home and greeted Elizabeth.
41 When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit.
42 In a loud voice she exclaimed: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear!
43 But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?
44 As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy.
45 Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her!”
46 And Mary said: “My soul glorifies the Lord
47 and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
48 for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant. From now on all generations will call me blessed,
49 for the Mighty One has done great things for me— holy is his name.
50 His mercy extends to those who fear him, from generation to generation.
51 He has performed mighty deeds with his arm; he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.
52 He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble.
53 He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty.
54 He has helped his servant Israel, remembering to be merciful
55 to Abraham and his descendants forever, just as he promised our ancestors.”
56 Mary stayed with Elizabeth for about three months and then returned home.

True Christianity 394 

There Are Three Universal Categories of Love: Love for Heaven; Love for the World; and Love for Ourselves. Love for heaven means love for the Lord and also love for our neighbor. Love for heaven could be called love for usefulness, because both love for the Lord and love for our neighbor have usefulness as their goal.

True Christianity 395
[3] When these three categories of love are properly prioritized in us, they are also coordinated in such a way that the highest love, our love for heaven, is present in the second love, our love for the world, and through that in the third or lowest love, our love for ourselves. In fact, the love that is inside steers the love that is outside wherever it wants. Therefore if a love for heaven is present in our love for the world and through that in our love for ourselves, with each type of love we accomplish useful things that are inspired by the God of heaven.
True Christianity 403

When the Three Universal Categories of Love Are Prioritized in the Right Way They Improve Us; When They Are Not Prioritized in the Right Way They Damage Us and Turn Us Upside Down.