Fourth Sunday of Advent 2024

In the final days before Christmas, James reflects on the Annunciation — Mary's yes to the angel, the overshadowing of the Spirit, and the courage required to carry the word of God into the world.

Transcript

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Heavenly Father, in these next few moments, as we come to reflect on your words to us, would you open and soften our hearts to hear what you have to say? Amen. You won't be getting uh any high-falluting cathedral sermon from me this morning. I do apologize. I had plans to uh offer up something particularly deep and profound, as per usual, uh, but instead I found myself uh just wanting to reflect on a very simple question. What has the Virgin Mary got to teach us so that we might survive the next six days or so? What has the Virgin Mary got to teach us that we might survive the next few days? Our reading today, you'll have noticed in the order of service, has been split into two sections. So just so you're aware, the gospel reading uh that uh Canon Jenny just read for us finishes with a song of Mary known as the Magnificat, which the choir sang for us beautifully uh a moment ago. So you might want to turn back to the Magnificat, because that's what we're going to be spending our time uh reflecting on this morning. If you're a regular attender of Evensong, you will know that the kind of the two pillars of Evensong around which the whole service revolves are the Magnificat and the Nunt Demitis. The texts of those uh two pieces of music are found in the opening chapters of Luke's gospel. And uh the first one, the Magnificat, we've just heard, and uh is the song that Mary sings in the house of Elizabeth. I said at the start of Advent that this is a season for wide-eyed prophets as they foretell the beginning and the end of all things, and this song absolutely fits that description. And when you hear it sung as beautifully as you did today, it sounds like this magnificent, huge and kind of cosmic-sized piece of music, a song about the fulfillment and the recreation of all things. But I'd like us to reflect slightly differently on that song today. I'd like it to become a song that we can sing, a song that you could sing this week. I want to take this approach this morning because I must confess I've had a real problem with Advent this year. And it happens every year, I suppose, to a lesser or greater degree, but I've really experienced it this year. Serious bouts of cognitive dissonance with what with the messaging that I'm seeing in the world around and how I'm expected to experience this Christmas season from society around us. It seems to me that on one hand, we are constantly being told the degree to which the world is literally on fire, and then we are encouraged to just keep shopping and manufacture some sort of Christmas fuzzy feelings by engaging in the usual pageantry of this month. Every time we turn on the news, there is some new catastrophe taking place. We seem to live in a season of permacrisis, and yet the same old adverts are being churned out by this worthless piece of tat, and it will make you feel better. I appreciate in comparison to the other clergy in this cathedral team, I'm a spring chicken, but I find in my old age I'm getting groucher and grouchier about this sort of stuff, and I would like permission for a few minutes to rant. And then we will ask the question: what does the Virgin Mary's song have to teach us that we might survive the next week or so? So I wonder if any of these cultural dynamics are something that you have noticed, maybe subconsciously, maybe consciously. These dynamics of destruction and consumption, desolation and consumption. More wars in Syria, across the Middle East and in Ukraine, not to mention across the African continent, less familiar to us in the news, but still there very much. We have strong men across America, Russia, and China engaged in populist politics with lowest common denominator thinking. And in our own country, this kind of general malaise and pessimism that seems to have seeped into our society. Nothing gets better and nothing can be fixed. We all know there's a problem with the system, and no one seems to know how to make it right. We're told of climate change, and certainly for me, I cannot think of a warmer Christmas in my living memory, and of the unincoming immigration crisis, these huge global catastrophes that just leave us with a sense of impending doom as they unfold, and we sit in our armchairs with very little that we can do about it. That's on the national and international stage, but what about in our own personal lives? So many of us dread, dread this time of year as we wait for the inevitable argument that happens over the family dinner table, be it to do with politics or religion or some historic grudge where we've forgotten the inciting incident, and all we have remaining is the decades of resentment. Or we dread this time of year, not because of the family and friends that we'll argue with, but because we have few or no family or friends left. They've passed away or they've gone. A difficult time of year, these experiences of desolation and destruction. And what are we given as a solution to these litany of problems? Consume. Consume, we're told. I don't know if you remember this, but um President George Bush in the days after 9-11 was asked by a journalist, what can the average American do to support the country in this time of crisis? Do you know what he said? Go out and shop. That was his advice to the average American. And I understand it, it's the economy stupid, but it's at moments like that when you get to see the heart of a system. We live in a market economy. And so our advice, the thing that we're told to do, encouraged every time, consume. And this is for me where the cognitive dissonance really lies. Apparently, the world is falling apart, and the only solution is to go and spend $9.99 in an effort to fix it. Maybe you're not much of a shopper, but there are plenty of other ways in which we consume in this season. We eat too much and we drink too much, desperately trying to satisfy a hunger and a thirst which cannot be sated by bread alone. And if it's not that, we consume one another. I need you to be a certain way, to do a certain thing, to perform to a particular standard. And God help us, we consume our children and our grandchildren. They're never allowed to let us down during this season. They always have to put a smile on, they have to provide hugs to the aunts and uncles at exactly the right moment. And if they perform, if they have a paddy, then God help us. Five days before Christmas, uh, three days before Christmas, I apologize for the rant. Rant is now over, but I wonder if you have experienced anything like I'm describing. If you can see in your own life the sorts of emotions that I'm trying to evoke, or have I what have I missed, and what would you want to add? I'd love to hear it. This morning, our scripture readings draw us and our attention elsewhere, away from this cycle of desolation and consumption. And that is why I would like to ask: what can the Virgin Mary's song teach us that we might survive the next few days? My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant. Doesn't that just feel good for the soul hearing those words afresh? My soul magnifies the Lord. There are two types of magnification that the scientist might engage in, and I think it's helpful to see the two types to make sure we're doing the right one. There's the magnification of a telescope, and there's the magnification of a microscope. What a microscope does is take something very small, like the cell of an animal, and it makes it bigger so that we might see it more clearly. So the scientist looks down the microscope, he's looking at something tiny, and to his eye, it looks big. What the telescope does is take something that looks small, but is actually massive, like a star, and it makes it bigger, it brings it closer to us and brings it more into proportion. Do you see what Mary is saying when she says, My soul magnifies the Lord? She's taking something, the Lord, which looks far away and looks small, but is actually massive, and she is saying to her soul, magnify this soul, that it might be as big as it really is. The danger of the cycle of desolation and consumption is we take tiny things and we make them massive, and we forget to do what we should be doing, which is magnifying the Lord, taking something which we are able to forget in our day-to-day lives and make it as big as it really is. And so we fixate on the tiny and we magnify that which we should be ignoring, while we ignore the infinite and leave it minimal. So, step one to surviving this Christmas season. Magnify the right things and minimize everything else. For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed, for he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name, and his mercy is on those who fear him from generation to generation. Friends, God has blessed us by showing us mercy. Oh, that that would be our song this Christmas season. God has shown me mercy. Thank goodness I have not been given what I deserve. That's what justice is. Justice says you get what you deserve, and I'm so glad that time after time God has not given me what I deserve because I know my failings, I know the things I've done wrong time and again. Instead, God doesn't give me justice, he gives me mercy, he gives me more than I deserve, better than I deserve. But the consumer spirit in the market economy in which we live says time and again, don't treat yourself. You deserve it. You deserve it. And so the whole season becomes about what do I deserve? Why don't I have enough presence? Why aren't my family treating me well enough? Don't you know I deserve it? God's mercy gives us not what we deserve, but better than we deserve. And so, step two to surviving this Christmas season is to remember that you have been shown mercy. And maybe as we remember it, we'll have the capacity to show others the mercy. Not that they deserve, but that we offer as a gift. For he has shown strength with his arm, he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts, he has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate. He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty. God has and will use his power to bring down the mighty from their thrones and to care for the hungry and the poor and the marginalized. And again, this is completely counter to the Christmas spirit that tries to put me and self at the center. What do I need? Who's going to look after my needs? Advent is about the renewal and the recreation of all things. It is a season for wide-eyed prophets declaring the truth that God is coming and He will turn everything on its head. But maybe for us this year, the Song of Mary as we sing it on our own hearts reminds us to care for the overlooked. And if that's us, if we're the ones overlooked, to remember that God cares for us. And so, in closing, these final words from the Song of Mary. He has helped his servant Israel in remembrance of his mercy. He has spoken to our fathers, to Abraham and his children forever. This is the promise that God has made to our fathers in the faith, and he will keep it. See, the spirit of Christmas that we are immersed in all day, every day, is relentlessly forgetful. Why? Because only novelty counts, so that you can be encouraged to spend more, to engage as if this has never happened before. Instead, Advent invites us to remember, to remember God's faithfulness to you. A remembrance that leads to trust. So in closing, step four to surviving this Christmas. Remember who God is, and remember who He says you are. A child of God, precious in His sight.