This Week's Sermon:

       Fourth Advent

                 December 24, 2006:

     An Episcopal Bishop landed at La Guardia, picked up his bags at the baggage claim area, strolled outside, and hailed a cab.  It just so happened that the taxi driver was originally from Dublin, Ireland.  In his thick Irish brogue he said, “Where to, Father?” 

     The Bishop said, “Christ’s Church, midtown, kind sir.”

     The cabby chattered away on the trip into town and stopped in front of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral.  “I said to you very clearly, ‘take me to Christ’s Church.’  This isn’t the place.”

     The cabby replied, “Your grace, if he ain’t here, he ain’t in town.” 

     Our Advent journey is almost complete.  We have attempted to be faithful in our preparations, we have listened to the prophetic word of God, and we have hope that we will find the one called Jesus the Christ.  On this final Sunday of Advent the Gospel from Luke is offered as another road-sign along the route. 

     The Gospel tells about an important visit between cousins.  A young woman named Mary, pretty far along with a pregnancy, calls on her cousin Elizabeth.  Elizabeth’s greeting would become one of the central affirmations of faith for those of the Roman Church---“Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you.  Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus.”  It is Mary’s response to this greeting that provides a road-sign for our Advent journey.  It is called the Magnificat, Mary’s Song of Praise.”  What Elizabeth said was the final affirmation that this young fourteen, fifteen-year old Mary needed to be assured that she was indeed the “theotokos,” the God-bearer.

     This coming birth becomes an explosion in the history of the world.  The arrival of Jesus the Christ in the world, by the very nature of the case, is a revolutionary event.  His arrival puts into stark relief the difference between God’s intention for this world and the perceived reality of the human condition.  Mary said, “God has scattered the proud in the imaginations of their hearts.”  That is intended by God to spark a moral revolution.  No matter how good we think ourselves to be it can never be good enough.  We have absolutely no reason to be prideful.  If we place our lives beside the one whose Advent we await it must, if we are truly listening, rip the pride from us.  Christ’s coming sheds the light that enables us to see ourselves as we really are and, most often, the reflection is not a pretty one.

     Mary’s song goes on to say, “God has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly.”  This leveling of the playing field brings about a social revolution.  Christianity is intended to put an end to the world’s labels and stereotypes.  Every person is of infinite worth when we accept the fact that each person is the one for whom Christ came to save and one for whom Christ was willing to die.  It is no longer possible, as we will see tonight when we venture over to Bethlehem to “see this thing that the Lord has made known to us,” to call anyone a “common person.”  We do indeed have his birth in common, but that elevates humanity above the beings that can be conveniently categorized.  In the coming of Jesus the Christ all social classes are gone.  Now obviously, we still live in a world of “haves and have-nots,” but attaching degrees of human legitimacy to the number of trinkets one has accumulated or the square footage of a dwelling, or the amount of money one has, is indefensible.

     Finally, Mary says, “God has filled the hunger with good things, and sent the rich away empty.”  We are to be in the forefront of an economic revolution.  The question must be asked of every person.  What is our motivation for acquiring material things?  It our sole motivation is to accumulate wealth and material possessions are the measuring stick by which we rank ourselves over against others, we will most assuredly reach a sad end in life.  It our first thought and act in the morning is to check our stock portfolio or recheck the Dow or see how our Mutual Funds are doing, God will have a hard time reaching us the rest of the day.  Those things do not, ultimately, satisfy the longing of the human heart or quench the deepest hungers of the human spirit.  It has been said many times and in many ways, but it remains true.  We make a living by what we earn; we make a life by what we give away.

     In God’s economy and in the best understanding of Christian ideals, we are allowed to accumulate in order to disburse.  We acquire in order to be able to give away and leave a blessing.  In Christ we are given a new way to look at profit and loss statements.  And we must always and in every situation place people above profits.  Jesus did not die for profits.  Jesus died for people!  I am fully aware that such a view runs contrary to the prevailing notions of our consumer-driven culture.  I even heard a conversation recently between two fellows about the number of storage units each had and what they had in each.  If you find yourself disagreeing with this, I invite you to take it up with God, and ask Mary to intercede in your behalf.

     There is loveliness in Mary’s Song of Praise, but in that beauty there is a type of dynamite.  It is the kind of explosive that can blow us to bits or it can blow us to a higher level of living.  It can elevate us from physical living to spiritual living.  We can add our weight, our voice to the moral, social, and economic revolution so desperately needed in the world and join with the Blessed Virgin Mary.  We can close our ears and act as if none of it applies to us.  It is both our burden and our potential glory that God loves us enough to allow us choose.  I pray we choose well.  Amen.