Community Church Sermons
December 14, 2008
Luke 1:46-55
Rev. Martin C. Singley, III
Listen to this Sermon!
I love Christmas music, don’t you? On the day after Thanksgiving each year, Sandy and I drive home after spending the holiday with our daughter Bethany and her husband Keith who live in Lexington, KY. And as we pull onto I-75 southbound, Sandy will say, “Let’s put on some Christmas music!” So we’ll find one of those “all-Christmas-all-the-time” stations on the radio and sing along with “Jingle Bells,” and “Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer,” and “I’m Dreamin’ of a White Christmas,” and all our favorite Christmas songs.
I don’t know if they hit you this way, but the songs of Christmas lift my spirits. They are songs that inspire joy!
But as you travel further south on I-75 – down toward Jellico Mountain - the radio reception gets a little spotty and the Christmas music fades in and out. So we’ll hit the scan button on the radio and listen for a strong signal to come in and rekindle our Christmas joy – but invariably, the only stations that come in up there are the ones reading the local obituaries, or playing re-runs of Rush Limbaugh’s greatest hits, or telling the news of a terrible tragedy somewhere in the world.
How depressing when reality is all you can pick up on your car radio!
But…just over the top of Jellico Mountain…something wonderful happens! The scanner stops scanning on 97.5 on the FM dial and we can faintly hear a familiar melody…”Chestnuts roasting on an open fire, Jack Frost nipping at your nose…” and the further south we drive, the stronger the signal becomes…”Hark! The Herald angels sing, glory to the newborn King!”…and as we get closer to Knoxville, we can even switch back and forth between 97.5 and 88.3 and actually be selective about what Christmas songs we listen to…”Oh, you better watch out, you better not cry…”…”Come, they told me, Pa-Rum-Pum-Pum-Pum…”…”Angels we have heard on high…!”
And the harshness of reality is once again invaded by Christmas joy!
Now, I know they did not have radios back in Bible times. But the first two chapters of Luke’s gospel almost sound like an “all-Christmas-all-the-time” FM station putting out nativity song after nativity song with no commercial interruptions. There are no less than four ancient Christmas hymns preserved in those first two chapters of Luke.
The most famous is Mary’s song.
History has given this song a name, “The Magnificat” because “magnificat” is the first word in the Latin Vulgate version of the song in Luke. That word means, “Glorifies.”
Like so many of our Christmas songs, Mary’s song is a song of joy that arises out of the harsh realities of life!
Some of my ministerial colleagues make fun of me for thinking this Mary song is one of the best Christmas songs ever.
“You don’t even know the tune!” they say.
True. But I hear the message, and it is a message of great joy sung out of the experience of someone who knows something about how tough life can be as a woman in the world of her day. Mary has no standing in society. She is the property of her father, the handmaid of her mother, and isn’t it interesting that neither her mother nor father show up anywhere in the story about this frightened, unwed, pregnant teenager. I wonder why that is?
Poor Mary is living in that place along the Interstate where nothing comes in on the radio except for bad news about all that’s wrong with the world – and with people like her in particular.
But then, in one moment, a faint signal is picked up and the dial says the station is WGOD-FM playing “all-Christmas-all-the-time” and some disc jockey named Gabe-something-or-other is announcing, “And the person God has hand-selected to be his partner in the salvation of the world is…drum roll please…Mary of Nazareth!”
And once she gets over the shock of it all, the joy of it all hits her.
And Mary starts to sing!
And her song is a song about how God has reached into the world and pulled up out of the mud of life a little, frightened, unwed, pregnant teenager who means nothing to nobody, but God has pronounced her “blessed!”
God by-passed all the high society women, all the WNBA superstars, Britney Spears and Madonna, all the self-righteous church ladies, all the well-heeled sorority sisters, all the “most likely to succeed girls in the high school graduating class”, all the girls who look down their noses at trash like Mary…God passed over them all and instead reached out his hand to this little, frightened, unwed, pregnant teenager, and lifted her UP above them all!
And better yet, God by-passed all us guys! What do you think of THAT?
So Mary starts to sing this song of joy. It is not a song about those women and men God passed over. It is not a tune of retribution or “see how much better I am than you!”
No, it’s a song about the truly amazing thing God has done for the poor of this world, the rejected of this world, the losers of this world, the people who count for nothing in this world.
In the lifting of Mary, God has lifted all the lowly into the glory of his love.
And so Mary sings, “My soul glorifies the Lord!”
And every year about this time, while songs of Christmas joy are playing on 88.3 and 97.5, that signal from WGOD-FM somehow breaks in with this one more joyful tune.
And all God asks of us is to sing along with Mary!
Our fellow church member Jack Racke sings along, although his voice isn’t all that good!
About ten years ago, I told Jack about a beautiful thing I’d seen at the World Trade Center in New York City. It was a glorious poinsettia tree! Knowing that Jack is an expert metal worker, I asked him if he could make a frame so that we could have a poinsettia tree here at our church. Well, Jack thought about it, and then came up with an idea. He was one of those many church and community members who believe in the work of what was then called the Chestnut Ridge Learning Center. It was a vocational school inspired by our own Bud Berger and created to help kids who were at risk for dropping out of school. Jack taught in the metal shop at Chestnut Ridge, and his idea was to give the poinsettia tree project to the kids he was working with, and to teach them the metalworking skills needed to create such a beautiful thing. So he did!
When you bring your friends and family into our church during the Advent season and they let out a gasp as they encounter the sheer beauty of our poinsettia trees, I hope you’ll tell them the story about how they were made by a group of kids everybody else had given up on - everybody but Jack – and God.
These beautiful trees have come to us through some God-loved kids and their mentor who has learned to sing along with Mary’s song.
And on Christmas Eve this year – no matter where you are – I hope you’ll offer a special prayer for Nancy Grimes and the ministry of Iva’s Place. Just as God reached out to a lowly girl in the city of Nazareth, Nancy and those who work with her reach out to battered women and their children to LIFT them up and bring them God’s love.
You see, Mary’s song is still being sung – right here in our church – out in our county – throughout our nation – and all around the world!
Wherever people of faith embrace with the blessedness of God those who life has brought low, Mary’s song of joy is sung – and Christmas comes!
Can you hear the faint signal of WGOD playing today?
Will you make a commitment to sing along?