Mary
Pastor Marq Toombs • December 20, 2020
Sermon Overview
LUKE 1:26–38, 46–55
In this passage we look at Mary’s song called the Magnificat. It’s a song that celebrates God’s goodness and provision for his people. In this sermon we ask what song does your life sing? Is the song of your first mother Eve or the song of Mary?
Sermon Transcript
Grace and peace be with you from the Lord Jesus Christ. It is good to be back in the land of the living after being quarantined away in the room known as the myself for the last couple of weeks. But I'm happy to announce that I am now immortal and immune and I can do anything. And so I'm happy to be back with you after being away for so much time.
Today is one of those days that you experienced just two weeks ago. Remember two weeks ago when Zach got up to preach he mentioned how it was my time to preach and yet due to some circumstances beyond our control he ended up preaching on my behalf and he asked at that time for my sermon notes, so he could preach from my sermon notes a sermon on Rahab, and he added a few things to it. And I told him that he took a mediocre sermon and he made it quite good, and so I was very pleased with the end result.
Well, today we've had a change and so Zach has written this magnificent sermon that he is unable to preach today. And so he handed it off to me and as I made my way through this, I realized I'm dealing with a gourmet dish here. So what I'm going to do is just add a little bit of parsley to the edge, and give him full credit for what has happened or what will happen in this sermon. But I'm very thankful to that. Zach and I are able to work together that we had similar training and background and that we have the same love and appreciation for the story of God and for his church that we can share and collaborate in this way. And so what you're going to hear is a collaboration from the Holy Spirit, Pastor Zach and yours truly.
Now some of you might be wondering why it is that over the last several weeks, you have not seen Zach and I together in the same space at the same time. And some of you are beginning to ask questions about that, and the best that I can say, the best answer I can give you is that if you think about it, you're never going to see Clark Kent and Superman in the room at the same time. Never gonna see Bruce Wayne and Batman in the same place. Now, the real answer is that Zach and I realized that this church just cannot handle that much glory at one time. And so, I'm gonna stop while I'm ahead.
This morning we come to the end of our Advent series on the mothers of Jesus. And what that means for us is that we are coming to the mother of Jesus, the blessed Virgin Mary. There's something extra special about Mary, not only in the Scriptures, but in the history of the Church, as Christians from all traditions have at one time or another paid attention to Mary, given her thought and consideration. And granted, there are some traditions that go too far one way and they will idolize or even deify Mary. There are some traditions that go too far the other way, where they will dehumanize or even demonize Mary. But I want us to pay close attention to Mary today and give her the praise and the glory that is due her because she is the mother of our Lord.
The truth is that the Virgin Mary was the blessing mother of Jesus, the God-Man. And that makes her the second most important person in the history of the world, and in the story of the gospels. In many ways if I could channel Kevin Durant, I would say of Mary, she the real MVP. Mary's story teaches us something important about us, about God and about the world. And it's especially important in these times in which we find ourselves, when we're all quite aware that the world is not quite what it should be.
Contrary to popular imagination, Mary did not live in a world that was very much different than our own. She lived in a world where the powerful were jockeying for more power, where some called for war and others for compromise, where some were for globalization thinking that was the answer, while others pushed for nationalism saying that should lead the way. She lived in a world where the powerless were forgotten, where the common man and the common woman felt left behind. Where religious leaders were arguing over what God was doing and therefore what the people of God should be doing. It was a world filled with lots of white noise, conflict and tension between the powerful and the powerless. If they'd had TV or social media, back in those days the headlines blazing across their screens would not have read much differently than our own. And it's in light of all of that that we enter into Mary's story and this story shows us that God entered into all of that global mess, but not in some proverbial abstract metaphorical way but in real flesh and blood, he entered into our world because he entered into her world. And when we say he entered into her world, we get very specific to say, he entered into her life and into her womb.
When Mary receives the news from the angel, she does the unimaginable, this is her response. She sings a new song, she sings what we have come to know as the Magnificat. The invitation that we set before you this morning is to let God teach you this new song through his servant Mary, the mother of Jesus. Now, traditionally Mary song is known as the Magnificat because in Latin the first line of the song reads, "Magníficat ánima mea Dóminum" - "My soul magnifies the Lord." And it is a magnificent song. In fact, it is the longest set of words spoken by any woman in the New Testament, and when you see that kind of thing in the Bible, you should know the Holy Spirit wants you to pay close attention to this woman and to her words. This song echoes the song of Hannah from the Old Testament. It echoes the songs of the prophets and the Psalmist. It's in that great tradition of pulling together, the promises and the power of God and bringing it to bear on the stuff of life.
The Magnificat features centrally and the prayers and the liturgies of Protestants and Catholics alike. The great Protestant reformer Martin Luther on his way to the Diet of Worms where he was to be tried for heresy, wrote a reflection on the Magnificat and he said these things to the princes and the leaders and the rulers of his day. "I do not know in all the Scriptures anything that's so well serves such a purpose as this sacred hymn of the most blessed mother of God, which are indeed to be learned and kept in mind by all who would rule well and be helpful lords. Truly she sings in it, most sweetly of the fear of God what manner of Lord he is and especially what his dealings are with those of high and of low degree." Undoubtedly Luther understood the spiritual and the political ramifications of Mary's song. And in order for us to grasp the heart of this song we need to enter into it, and let it work as magic on our hearts and on our minds as well.
But in order for us to truly appreciate the song that Mary sings, we need to hear her song in light of another song, a song that is as old as creation and as natural to you and to me as his breathing. It is a song that you learned to sing before you could even remember. So let's start from the beginning with this very old song. There was once an angel that came to a young woman, the angel was a special angel and he came to a special woman who was blessed and favored by God. The angel came with a message because he knew God and he knew God's words very well. And the angel knew what God desired and what God commanded.
So this angel came to this young woman and he came to her unexpectedly and he caught her off guard but he came to her with this fresh new slant on an old message that had already been worked into her life. The young woman listened to the words of the angel and she believed and she trusted and what that angel was telling her, and what that angel was telling her in so many words was something like this: "God doesn't really love you. God hasn't been truthful to you. He told you not to eat of that special tree, but here's why, because he knows that when you do, you will be glorious and you will be beautiful just like him. It doesn't sound to me like you can trust God, it doesn't sound like he wants good things for you or that he wants what is best for you."
And that young woman treasured these words in her heart, and she started humming the tune to that song and she started buying what the angel was selling. The words of the this fallen angel replaced the words of the truth the living God that were already written on her heart deep within her. And it was in that moment when she switched from singing the song of God to singing the song of the serpent. That the queen of creation became a commoner. That a princess became a popper and you see in her story, the tragic tale of riches to rags. In response to this, the Lord God, the Creator of the woman, of the angel, of the tree, and of the man who were present, drew near and overshadowed all of them, he overshadow the woman and he's singing a new and better song to her.
If you go to Genesis 3 and you read through the narrative there, you find God speaking poetry to this woman who has just wrecked her life and wreck the world. You see God responding by singing a dirge, a fitting song for the occasion. Because in it, God is singing a dirge not only over her, but over all of the world. And he tells the woman that cursed will be her childbearing, it will be a source of pain and sorrow, curse will be her marriage, curse will be the ground she walks on. And from now on, death will rule in the world. The tragedy of the moment can only be understood through the vast expanse of history.
As we see kingdoms rise against kingdoms, bloodshed and betrayal, of war and famine, of broken families, of heartache and accidents and of injustice. It's in the aftermath of this song that that young woman who was blessed and favored by God truly became the mother of all the living who will find themselves waking up in the midst of sin and death. Eve was our first mother, and she treasured the words of a fallen angel that had taught her how to sing a song in her heart, but not a true song. It was a song she believed to be true, a song that deceived her to feel that God did not love her, that God did not care for her, that God did not want good things for her, that God's good words to her were not true, but bad words.
And you know the song as well as I do, it is a song that we've all sung, it's a song that perhaps you were even singing today. We sing the song all the time and we sing it in unconscious ways. We sing it in conscious ways. We sing it when we fail. We sing it when we mess up. We sing it when life turns upside down. We sing it when we're lonely. We sing it when we're angry. We sing it when we're afraid. We sing it when we look in the mirror and we don't like the person staring back at us. We sing it and when we stare at one another and gaze at each other across the room with judgment in our hearts because we don't like what we see in each other. We sing it when we remember the pains of our past, or when we remember the problems of our present.
It is a song that makes us feel that God doesn't love us. He doesn't want good things for us, he doesn't see us or notice us. It's a song that tells us you will never change, your life will never change. It's a song that categorizes you to look at the world with cynicism, and look at yourself with condemnation. And to look at God with contempt and say, "All things are impossible with God, so why should I pray? Why should I hope, why should I press on? Why should I not complain or criticize instead?"
In Genesis 3, if Eve had listened closely to the words of that dirge, she would have heard God making a promise, very deep within that sad song. There was in fact silver lining to the dark cloud. It was a promise that through her, through this fallen failed woman, God was going to fix everything. The seed of the woman would one day come and crush the serpent's head, who is the cause of all of this mess. And that was the way that God would bring about his promise and make things new. God would do it in a very similar way into the way things fell apart in the first place. If you think about how God loves to go back to the beginning, he goes back to the beginning but this time to make things right, and to set the world on a different course.
The story that we're in today begins with an angel coming to a young woman, a young woman named Mary. And she's a very young girl in her early teens. She is betrothed, which means she's promised to be married but the marriage has not yet been consummated. This is a young woman who hasn't even been to her first Prom yet. She hasn't worked at her first fast food gig, she hasn't even been kissed, she's a virgin. She comes from a working class family, and she's about to marry a working class man named Joseph, who came from a long line of kings, but he finds himself serving as a construction worker or a builder. And there's no criticism in that line of work, it's simply stating a fact of his life. He's betrothed to a woman, a young girl named Mary, who was a nobody from nowhere because she's from a backwoods little town called Nazareth. It's far away from the temple, far away from capital cities, far away from power and privilege.
And it’s to this young woman that God sends angel, the angel Gabriel, to give her a message. And he brings her the very words of God Most High. He appears to her one day and says, "Greetings, O, favored one, the Lord is with you." And just like you or I would do, if an angel suddenly popped into our room or into our yard and scared the daylights out of us, she becomes afraid. And the angel says, "Do not be afraid Mary, because you have found grace, you have been favored by God. You will conceive in your womb and bear a sign and you will call his name Jesus and he will be great, and he is the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of his father David. And he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end."
Imagine the excitement and the joy in the angel's message, and yet Mary is stunned, I wonder at what point, along the way, she sort of blacked out from being overwhelmed with all of the truth that she was hearing. "Is this real, pinch me, am I dreaming?" And yet Mary's response is not one of doubt or disbelief, it is one of faith, you could read her response like this. Okay, I'll allow it, now tell me how it's gonna happen since I'm a virgin. He was old enough to have gone through enough biology courses to know what happens in the body, and that she hadn't reached that point. And so biology is clashing with theology and she simply wants to know how a God make this happen.
And Gabriel says, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you. The power of the Most High will overshadow you. The child will be called holy, the Son of God." I think Gabriel tells her that her aunt Elizabeth is also six months pregnant, and Mary has known all of her lives that Elizabeth was unable to have her own children. And so suddenly we find storyline after storyline crashing together in the story, and it all says the same thing, God has come into the world and he is doing crazy amazing stuff all over the place, why? For nothing will be impossible with God. That begs the question as you consider what it must have been like to be some of the other characters in the story. It's not like Mary heard the news, she had Jesus, and then a couple of thousand years later we showed up for church and there was no issue, no controversy, no big problem. No, in those days it was a big problem.
Think of how Joseph might've responded when Mary comes home and she says, "Hey, honey, something we need to talk about," and she breaks the news to Joseph, and it's not like Joseph said, "Wow, Mary, this is even better than what I had been planning for us You've certainly given me a lot to think about." No, Matthew tells us how it went and how it went, was it went south and it went south hard and fast. It took an absolute nose dive because when Joseph found out that Mary was pregnant by the power of the Holy Spirit, best excuse ever, he resolves in his heart to break up with her and divorce her quietly. He wants nothing to do with this, he wants to step away and move on with his life and follow a different storyline.
It was then that Gabriel does a u-turn, he goes back to Nazareth because God knows that even though nothing is impossible with God, it's not quite clear that way in Joseph's mind. And so he goes back because he knows that only an act of God will convince Joseph to stay. Well, what about you? The story seems awfully fantastic, doesn't it? It seems unbelievable, made up, too good to be true. I know we're supposed to believe it, but we struggle to believe the details of it.
But here's why you believe it if you believe it, you believe it because it took the same Spirit of God coming to you, to overshadow you, to give you new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. It took the gracious work of the Holy Spirit in your life to bring you to faith in Jesus Christ, to bring you to faith in these promises and then this power of God. It took the spirit of God breathing life into you so that you would have the faith to believe, and what do you believe? You believe that nothing is impossible with God. What has God given us in this story? He has given us a story that scoffs at the cynicism of the world, not the other way around.
We often feel defensive about the Christian faith and about the promises and the power of God and how it's too good to be true. But God has given us a story here that scoffs at the cynicism of the world and says, to the world you have something to answer for, why don't you believe that nothing is impossible with the Lord. The angel told her nothing is impossible with God, and Mary responds with the same, almost the exact same words that Rahab the prostitute used when she bid farewell to the spies at her house. Remember as she lowered them down on the road, she said, "Let it be to me according to your word." She responded in faith, she responded in hope, she treasured the words of God in her heart and she rested on his promises to her. Christ came to Mary in the same way he comes to you and me, and he paves his entrance into the world by the power of the Holy Spirit through the promises of the faith.
Do you believe, do you have faith? We're not asking if you simply believe this is happening or you believe the story we're asking. If you believe in what the story means, if you believe in the one that the story is about. Mary believed, she believed in the message of the angel because what did the angel tell her? He told her that she would bear the Son of the Most High God who would sit eternally on the throne of David and rule over Israel, and his kingdom would be without end. The angel came to tell her that all of these hundreds and thousands of years night is ending, day is breaking, the king is coming. And Mary treasure these promises of God in her heart for she knew what they meant. And that is why she composed a new song in response to the power and promise of God in her life, she composed what we call the Magnificat.
This is not a song that tells you about a God that is distant or unloving, it's not cynical about God's intentions. The Magnificat is a song of certain hope that God draws near to you, Mary doesn't just believe in what will happen, she believes in the one who will make it happen. Did you hear her tell you about it in her song, and the reading before the sermon?
Mary told you about one who looks upon the lowly, one who has done great things and given mercy from generation to generation, one who has shown his strength and scatters the proud, one who brings down the mighty from their thrones and exalts the humble, one who fills the hungry and empties the rich, one who will not forget his promises. That Mary told you about a king, about her King, about her Lord, about her Savior. She sung a song in the midst of impossible circumstances. She didn't write this on the spot, it didn't just come spontaneously in reaction to what the angel said.
Several weeks, perhaps months later, sitting in the home of Elizabeth her aunt, reflecting back on all that had happened. Reflecting back on the way Joseph responded, the way her parents reacted, the way the community responded. Mary has a chance to take all of that and what she knows about the word of God then it is by the word of God and the Spirit of God that she composes this magnificent song to the Lord her Savior. I don't know how you would have responded if Mary had come to you, and you'd been a part of her family. But imagine Joseph responding, that things are not working out the way he thought. Mary turns to her parents and has to explain to them that something has gone awry in the storyline. Imagine what it would be like if your daughter had come to you with the same news that Mary went to her parents with. Your daughter suddenly said that she was pregnant. "I'm with child," and everyone knows how these things happen.
What have you and Joseph's been up to? Why have you violated God's law? Don't you know about our traditions and our standards and then she says, "No, no, no, you don't understand, it's not Joseph," "Oh, it's someone else?" "No, it's not even someone else. Well, it is someone else. I don't want really how to explain it to you, but it's the power of the Holy Spirit." I mean, this is a situation that takes his mania up to the next level, you know what I'm saying? I mean, how do you make sense of this?
So Mary goes away and perhaps her parents are ashamed and embarrassed and they want her to go and be with family so they can sort through this. And Joseph needs some space and he needs to work through this as well. But whatever's happening, Gabriel is nudging Mary to a safe place in the middle of the storm, where she can be with someone who is going to rejoice over this baby with her, instead of immediately rejecting this baby. It's hard to know how all of these details played out behind closed doors, but one thing we do know is that Mary wrote the Magnificat, and she wrote it out of an uncomfortable place where the promises of God were colliding with real life, where faith and doubt were slamming together, where hope was trying to break into a hostile world.
The Magnificat is a song for Advent, it's the soundtrack for the already and not yet, when God's promises are made fully then yet, they are not yet fully realized. It's a way to see the world when the world is hard to look at, it's a way to see life when life gets hard and it's in the midst of her circumstances that she composes a song of faith that sees her life and her world through the lens of the promises and the power of God, where she treasures the word of God above all other words, no matter what it is gonna cost her personally. And that is not an easy thing to do, is it?
Maybe it would be helpful for some of you to see this, and the reality of the story, to see that this announcement of the birth of Jesus wasn't all about holly jolly jingle bells for Mary. It was a hard season for her, where the Lord gave her an extraordinary gift that came along with an extraordinary burden. Some of you need to hear that because we know that many of you do not receive the holiday season with joy.
For many of you, the holidays are a sad season that remind you only of the loss and the loneliness that you feel. This week as you gather with your families, you are undoubtedly going to see empty seats at the dinner table. You're gonna remember the way things used to be. You're gonna know they'll never be that way again. You're gonna be confronted by broken family relationships and hurts from the past, maybe you're gonna be sad simply because you're sad and you don't even know why. It's in the holidays that you're going to feel the curse of sin upon this world and the ways you wish life were different. For some of you the holidays are not red and green and gold, some of you the holidays are drab and gray and black.
And it's precisely in that place that you will feel a variety of songs rising up within your hearts. And sadly, for some of us it will be the song of our first mother Mary, the song that sings that maybe God really doesn't love us. That God doesn't want good things for us. That God is too far away to be any good. A dirge that says, this is just the way things are and you need to suck it up and deal with it because nothing is ever going to change. It's a song that will swallow hope and crush joy, it's a song that in the end does not believe that nothing is impossible with God. Maybe you're like some of us who wish that Mary had given birth to a full grown man sitting on a glorious throne of victory. One who crushes our enemies and makes all things new right on the spot, no drama, no conflict, no valley of the shadow of death, no sorrow, just victory. Isn't that what we want?
We want Christmas to be the end of the story. We want it to be the end of suffering and sorrow and hardship, and the reality is that it's not, it's only the beginning of birth pains. It's beginning of birth pains because before God gives us a King on a throne, he gives us a King in a manger. Flesh and blood Hope wrapped in the filth of this world. Flesh and blood Hope wrapped in a day end job or endless depression, flesh and blood hope wrapped in a lonely marriage in difficult children or strained relationships.
So how can you sing a new song in the midst of all of this misery and all of this death? Where does the new song begin? We began with Mary when she heard the promise of God from the angel and treasured, the promises of God in her heart and responded by saying, "I am the Lord's servant, let it be to me according to your word." It began in that moment when her plans changed, when life took a different turn and she entrusted her story to God by faith.
Your new song, your own Magnificat begins in the same way, it began with Mary, when you can say those same words when you can receive God's promise in the midst of difficulty and hardship and loss. This new song is born out of such a place when you say, I entrust myself to your providence and your sovereignty. And even though it doesn't feel like it I choose to cling to your goodness and your promises.
And maybe you can say it as loudly and triumphantly as that, but if you could whisper it at all even through a broken heart, even if it doesn't feel like it that's when the new song begins to rise up in your heart. And you look around at the circumstances of your life and the reality of your world, and even though you wish things were different, you can say by grace through faith, Lord, let it be to me according to your word, I am your servant. It's in those exact moments where your heart wants to sing that old song of sin and cynicism.
The song that our first mother gave us that pushes God away and creeps in when life doesn't go our way. It's a song learned from that fallen angel who's a liar, a deceiver, the accuser, the serpent. But remember what we heard in the assurance of pardon this morning from the prophet Zephaniah, your God sings over you, he rejoices over you with singing. He gathers the morning and he has from the beginning from all the way back to that ancient garden when he promised the One who would crush the serpent's head, this God comes and overshadows you with his song of redemption.
And we've heard that song many times in this season of Advent, haven't we? We heard it through Tamar when God told us that he sees those who are despised, rejected and shamed. He sang it over Rahab, the prostitute had told us that he is a God of mercy and grace. He sang it over Ruth when he told us that he is a God who sees our need and will provide for us because he is a God of justice whose law is written in love. And now he sings it over Mary, that he does not forget his promises, that they will come to pass for nothing is impossible with God, because the virgin has conceived the King who is the God-Man.
And it's in the Magnificat that Mary joins the song of her God and invites you to do the same, to reject that song of cynicism and despair. And to recognize that even though the world is not right, God will put it to right. And even though life is hard, and even though suffering and sorrow grow tired and old, God is in fact making all things new through the Son of Mary.
So rest in this, your promises of your God, and know that he is the God that sings of your redemption, that sings of your restoration, sings of your salvation.
The Advent season asks us all a very simple question: which song do you want to sing today?
The old song of Eve or the new song of Mary?
The song of curses or the song of blessing?
And the way you answered that question depends on who your soul magnifies and what you consider to be a magnificent.
Let us pray.
