Tender Mercy
Luke 1:46-55,
68-79[1]
If you’ve been listening to this year’s Gospel
readings during Advent, you know already that the way Luke presents the birth
of Jesus has an “edge” to it. Zechariah’s
sings at the birth of his son, John the Baptist, that will he prepare a people
for the Lord to come. His “preparation”
for them would be to lead them into the “way of peace” (Lk. 1:79). That may not sound “edgy,” but if you read
on, you find that he was to do that by calling the people to repentance. And in
his ministry, John would call the people to real, heartfelt, life-changing
repentance.[2] Repentance
that resulted in “bearing fruit worthy of repentance” (Lk. 3:8).[3]
And he made it specific: those who had more than enough were to share with
those who didn’t have enough, and those who had power were not to abuse it. That
seems pretty challenging to me.
Mary’s song of praise has even more of an “edge” to
it: we hear that one of the ways God’s work of restoration would come about is
through the “Great Reversal”: the proud humbled, the powerful pulled down from
their thrones, those who are stuffed go away empty-handed, while those who are
disempowered are lifted up and those who are hungry are filled with good things
(Luke 1:51-53).[4]
Mary describes the overturning of the current system of destruction and
oppression and violence by the ways of God’s kingdom: mercy, justice, and love.
There’s just no way to avoid the fact that there is
a barb in the good news that God is working to restore the human family.[5] That barb is this—those among us who flourish
on the backs of others, those who wield power through violence of any kind will
be overthrown and overturned. It’s a
message that may seem inappropriate for a Christmas Eve sermon. After all, this
is a time when we’re supposed to feel good about ourselves. We come to
Christmas Eve expecting to hear good news, not to be challenged.
But the truth of the matter is that we can’t have
the one without the other. The Good News of the birth of Jesus is challenging. It confronts us and all of
the ways we live that are contrary to God’s grace and mercy and love. And this
contradiction begins with the fact that the one who is the King of Kings and
Lord of Lords, the Savior who will bring new life to the whole world, was not
born in an ornate palace, but very likely in a cave that was used as a pen for
livestock! Those of you who’ve been around livestock know what kind of place
we’re talking about—not the sanitized version of the nativity we usually see! I
think the reason for this is that in the birth of Jesus, God made it clear that
he was doing something that was very different from the way our world works.
And that’s the challenge we face—if we want to be a part of it, we have to be
willing to change our ways to match up with God’s ways.
And yet, even here there is good news—the
restoration that God promises is one in which some of us may suffer loss, but
in the end we will all gain immeasurably more.
The future Mary and Zechariah looked forward to is a vision of the
restoration of the whole human family. Mary
saw in the birth of her son the beginning of God’s saving plan that makes it
possible to experience the joy and the vibrancy that God intends for us all.
What that means for those of us who are “full” and
“rich” here and now is that the only way for us to sing Mary’s song with the
same kind of joy—the joy of the “lowly” being lifted up—is if we actually work
at lifting up the lowly, filling the hungry, and restoring those who are
disenfranchised.[6] That
was what Jesus came to do: God’s work of making all things new, of setting
right the wrongs and lifting the burdens we all carry. That’s why we celebrate Christmas. It is a time for us to focus our attention on
God’s work of healing this broken world.
It is a time of looking for the salvation that God has promised, and a
time of singing for joy over what God is already doing among us. And it is a time for us to join that work.
The Good News of Christmas is that we can look
forward to something better than the violence and suffering and injustice all
around us. We can look forward to the
kindness and generosity and compassion of our God being fulfilled for all the
peoples of the world. We have this hope
because of the good news that in Jesus the Christ God has entered this world
definitively to set everything right and to make all things new. It is this
Good News, and the hope, peace, joy, and love it brings to us, that enables us
to look past our fears and our hurts and our suspicions and view those around
us with God’s compassionate love.[7]
This joyful faith is what gives us energy to join in God’s work of transforming
all creation by making a difference in our corner of the world.[8]
Jesus’ birth and life and death and resurrection constitute a challenge to the way we live our lives. We can no longer
simply go about our lives wrapped up in our own concerns, ignoring the needs
and suffering and hopes of those around us. We can no longer simply love those
who love us back. We are called to give our lives away just as he did by loving
others, all those we may consider other. But in the midst of that challenge
that will very likely take all the faith, hope, and love we can muster, we can also
remember that the birth of Jesus is Good
News for us all. Because of that Good News we look forward to redemption,
salvation, and forgiveness. We can
experience right now, in the midst of the difficulties of life, “the dawn from
on high” through the “tender mercy of our God” that will bring the hope, peace,
joy, and love God promises to us all (Lk. 1:78-79).[9]
[1] © 2015 Alan Brehm. A sermon
delivered by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 12/24/2015 at Hickman Presbyterian Church,
Hickman, NE.
[2] Cf. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 3.2:461: “Μετάνοια [repentance] means a complete
re-orientation, both inward and outward, of the whole man to the God who in a
very real sense has turned to him in time. Πίστις [faith] means the unquestioning
trust in this God which is the positive side of this re-orientation; the new
life which is the only possible life after this event in the time which follows
it.”
[3] Cf. R. Alan Culpepper, “The Gospel
of Luke,” New Interpreters Bible
IX:87: “To say that we can never be worthy of God’s grace is to miss the point
of John’s challenge. John calls instead for a change of life-style that
reflects the genuineness of our repentance. Just as false love is not love at
all, so also repentance that is not sincere is not repentance. There is an
integrity to the repentant. … Their way of life, their priorities, commitments,
personal relationships, passion for peace and justice, and their unplanned acts
of compassion all give evidence of their compassion.”
[4] Cf. Ruth Ann Foster, “Mary’s Hymn
of Praise in Luke 1:46-55,” Review and Expositor 100 (2003):451-463. She says (p. 458), “Mary acknowledges God's
mercy and love for the lowly and a radical reversal of normal human values in
the coming messianic kingdom.” Cf. also
R. Alan Culpepper, “The Gospel of Luke,” New
Interpreters Bible IX: 55.
[5] Cf. Letty M. Russell, “God’s Great Reversal,” The Christian Century (Nov. 20, 1991):
1089. She says, “God's
great reversal may come too close to home as we hear that Christmas is about
lifting up the ‘lowly,’ filling ‘the hungry with good things’ and ‘sending the
rich away empty.’ Yet it is by joining in the their desire and work for
deliverance that we find out the meaning of the good news of great joy.”
[6] Cf. Stephen Shoemaker, GodStories, 217-18: “There are only two
ways you can enter the kingdom and experience its joy. One is to be among
the poor, oppressed, bruised, blind, and brokenhearted; those to whom God comes
as healing, comfort, justice, and freedom. The other way is to be among
God’s people who are going to the poor, oppressed, bruised, blind, and
brokenhearted and bringing God’s healing, comfort, justice, and freedom.”
[7] Cf. Henri Nouwen, Here and Now, 62: “Only when we claim
the love of God, the love that transcends all judgments, can we overcome all
fear of judgment. When we have become completely free of the need to judge
others, we will also become completely free from the fear of being judged.”
[8] Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope, 338: “Faith can expend itself in the pain of
love, ..., because it is upheld by the assurance of hope in the resurrection of
the dead.
[9] Cf. Fred B. Craddock, Luke, 23-24, where he reminds us that
Luke frames his account of the “new thing” God is doing in terms of “old stories”
from the Hebrew Bible to establish a continuity in God’s work of redemption. He
says (p. 24), “The new is at the door, to be sure, … . But for now, it is
enough to be reassured that the new continues and fulfills the old, with the
same God remembering covenants kept and making good on promises made.”
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