Mystic Congregational Church, UCC

Mystic, Connecticut

Sermon from December 11, 2005

“Setting the Tone”

Rev. Thomas Ratmeyer

Scriptures:

Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11

Luke 1:46-55

The sermon title may make it seem as if I was setting the tone.  The Scriptures are setting the tone. When Isaiah prophesies good news to the people of God and when Mary sings to the glory of God, they both have very real expectations of justice and righteousness that are linked to their notion of joy.  Isaiah begins with his proclamation of good news with:  “The spirit of God is upon me”.

We invoke the guidance of the Holy Spirit often in a rather personal way.  “May the Spirit of God be with you” or “May you walk with God.”  When we say these things, we often talk about a very personal connection with God so that we may know what to do in a conflict situation, or feel God’s care and guidance in a crisis, or even just get help in making the right decisions.

Yet, according to Isaiah, the presence of the Holy Spirit does not just give us guidance for our own lives but changes reality as we know it.  He writes about “Good news to the oppressed, liberty to captives, release to prisoners.”

The presence of God brings about a quality of change in the world beyond what we would expect in our wildest dreams, in our most extravagant hopes.  The logic of this world is being turned around, by a God who turns judgment into sacrifice, who goes on the cross so that others might live, who becomes the servant to those he leads, and who preaches forgiveness for those who torture him.  I think of this as preemptive grace.

There is a notion that has become my personal challenge this Advent season.  I have said it last week, and I continue to think about it.  It is the thought that we don’t live according to the world as it is, but according to the world as it is to come.

I tend to be realist when it comes to the world as it is.  I believe in compromise and the lesser of evils.  I actually enjoy those committee meetings that labor to find a common denominator, even if it is a ways from anyone’s goal.  I believe in picking one’s battles and letting some go.  I believe that the way you say something is half the journey to helping someone else agree with what you think.  Yet, there is a risk of cynicism is taking this world for what it is.  There’ll always be war, in one place or another.  Someone is always going to grab the position of power.  And power invites opportunism.

If we don’t have Scriptures like today, we might go right from realism to cynicism to complacency.  But complacency doesn’t make for particularly memorable sermons, and it doesn’t make for particularly memorable Christians either.  These Scriptures say that we have to look at the world as the world that God intended; the world that is to come as God’s promise unfolds.

Isaiah writes, “I will greatly rejoice in the LORD, my whole being shall exult in my God; for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation, he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.” 

With salvation comes righteousness.  No part of our faith is entirely inward.  There is an outward transformation that follows.

Let’s talk about Mary’s song.  It was sung after she was visited by the angel and the angel has told her that her sister Elizabeth, older and considered barren, was in her sixth month of pregnancy.  The song resembles that of Hannah in 1 Samuel 2.  Hannah was older and considered barren like Elizabeth.  She prayed to God for a son and promised that she would give him to the service of God.  God heard her prayer, she got pregnant, and she sang this song after the birth of Samuel who would become the prophet.

Elizabeth might have as easily been the woman singing the song, which is remarkable.  As mother of God, Mary had a unique song to sing of her own.  Yet she speaks as much for her sister, the other mother who received God’s grace in ways not conceivable to the logic of this world.

“His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.  He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.  He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.”

Mary is setting the tone in a very profound way for the ministry of Jesus Christ, her son.  It’s even more powerful because she speaks in the past tense:  “He has shown strength.  He has scattered the proud.  He has brought down the powerful.”  Mary’s song is not a celebration on behalf of herself—her new status as the mother of God, or even just as the mother of someone sent by God, but instead that, with this child, God’s promise of justice and righteousness has become reality. 

Jesus is the incarnation of God’s promise, and Mary, who has grown up as a Jewish girl, a member of the people of God, knows exactly what that promise is about.  It is the very promise that Isaiah talks about:  “Good news to the oppressed.  Liberty to captives.  Release to prisoners.”  As long as we live in this world, not all captives are prisoner, not all prisoners will be released, not all rich and powerful are bad.

But maybe the mark of the one who is too proud is to think they can do without God, or without faith, or without a conscience.  The mark of the ones too timid is that they don’t dare call the oppression by its name, they don’t dare take the promise seriously, they don’t dare “rock the boat”.

Our joy in the incarnation of Christ is not complete until the incarnation is visible by what we do to the world around us.  Until we change the logic of oppression and injustice, we are stuck in Advent and cannot graduate to Christmas because we have not made a way for the coming of God. The incarnation—the promise taking on flesh and blood—continues in our place and in our time.

There are times when we are too afraid to tackle issues of oppression and injustice.  We will need to have a conversation about death penalty—to give one example—from a perspective of faith and Scripture.

·         not just whether it is an effective tool in preventing crime,

·         not just whether it is “just” in that the person on death row is actually the one who committed the crime,

·         not just whether it is more cost effective than life imprisonment,

all of which I believe it isn’t.  But we should be brave enough to discuss with one another the basic underlying question of whether a society has the right to decide that a person has forfeited his or her right to live.

Economic justice, property taxes—is there something we can and should do as a congregation?  We have been, at times, too careful not to politicize the pulpit.  I am the first to admit to that.  I promise that I won’t tell you for whom to vote, but I also promise that we will talk about some of these issues.

Christmas is going to be as meaningful this year as it ever has been.  We all need the assurance, the healing, the sense of wonder that it has to offer.  I want very much for all of us to be able to say, “My soul magnifies the Lord”, and then to share some of faith and some of that blessing with the world around us.

I wish you Advent blessings.  Amen.