Upside-down Already
Sermon by: Rev. Mary Alice Mulligan, Ph.D.
Scripture: Micah 5:2-5a, Luke 1:39-55
We will be listening to the Gospel of Luke a great deal over the next eleven months, so it is fortunate we spend time this month listening to some pieces from early chapters. The Gospel admits from the first verses that the author is not an eyewitness to the earthly existence of Jesus. Rather, Luke uses other written works as sources, claiming he has carefully investigated them. In Luke, we find more stories about women than any other Gospel. Some scholars have proposed that he had access to a collection of stories and sayings about women (perhaps written by a woman) that the other Gospel writers didn’t have. Today we’ll hear one of those “Luke only” stories: Mary’s visit to her relative Elizabeth. We’ll want to listen carefully, for Mary’s holy secret is discovered here. Elizabeth makes the first Christological confession in the Gospel, then John the Baptizer, in utero, makes his first prophetic pronouncement. The portrayal of Mary’s arrival at Elizabeth’s home has been known through the centuries as “The Visitation.” Mary’s famous response in song has been called “The Magnificat,” from the opening words “my soul magnifies the Lord…” Turn now to Luke 1:39-55.
God’s plan turns everything upside-down. As God intervenes in the world, the status quo gets flipped on its head. The scene painted for us, of these miraculous pregnancies, seems sweet, familiar, even comforting to us. But an ancient hero story should not have had miracles happening to socially invisible women. They are nobodies. Yes, Elizabeth’s husband is a priest, who gets to serve at the Holy of Holies the year he picks the short straw. But they are elderly folks, not top-notch movers and shakers. Elizabeth has long been the pitiable one whispered about. “She’s had no babies.” Pitiable in a society where a woman’s value depends on who her husband is and how many sons she produced for him. Now past “the change,” suddenly, old, barren Elizabeth is bulbous with life. Meanwhile Mary, young, engaged, maiden teen-ager, is suddenly pregnant, too. The story is that the Holy Spirit empowered her to bear a child. Mary travels something like 80 miles to visit Elizabeth, perhaps to see if her story is true, which may help her believe her own story. When Mary walks in the door, Elizabeth’s unborn child leaps, announcing that Mary is carrying the Lord.
But the scene is totally wrong. Women could not be legal witnesses. And fetuses are not recognized as viable corroborators. If God wants to spread the news about the Messiah’s coming, men should get the word first, not vulnerable, oddly-pregnant females. Society would only believe men with power or wealth. Not common women. Yet God tells them the Lord is about to be born. Then, as many biblical women in a moment of victory, Mary breaks into song, praising God, acknowledging she, a lowly woman will be called blessed forever. But then her song proclaims God is already flipping normal life through this child. The powerful have been brought down. Lowly folk have been lifted up. God has empowered the powerless. The hungry have been fed and those who already had plenty have been sent away empty. How crazy! Wrong-side up. Through a baby of questionable parentage, God is fulfilling ancient promises. Things are going according to God’s plan, which turns everything upside-down.
Why? Because God loves the world. Out of infinite love for all creation, God is coming to earth as a human person. But how do we know love is the source of God’s coming? The first passage in the Bible shows God, creating the world out of love. And when the process of creation was complete, what is God reported to have said? God looks out over the universe, and at humanity just finished, and says, “This is really, really, very good!” God loves creation.
What does it mean to love with divine love, as God does? For one thing, it means we can’t do anything to earn God’s love. But more importantly we can’t do anything to lose it. Goofy, imperfect, sinful human people. Every single one, loved unconditionally. Scripture is full of places that discuss God’s love. I bet some here heard one of the famous passages at their wedding. 1 Corinthians 13. We might be able to recite parts from memory. “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.” In the New International Version, one line is translated, love “keeps no record of wrongs.” (13:5b) As messed up as we get, God’s love doesn’t keep track. That’s what unconditional means.
Philip Gulley and James Mulholland explain: “The Bible doesn’t say God can be loving or God is often loving or even God is usually loving. It says God is love.” 1 John 4:8b and 9, “…for God is love. God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him.” God’s love for us is extravagant, overflowing, divine grace spilling out over all creation. No wonder we focus our greatest celebrations during this season of preparing for God’s arrival among us. Christmas! God comes as one of us, to live among us, because God loves the world.
Which means, our upside-down is God’s right-side up. What seems topsy-turvy to us is actually God’s making the world right. When the pregnant, unmarried, teenage girl sings the Magnificat, the world would see a country-bumpkin, a nobody who should be ashamed of her situation. But God uses her testimony in song to establish key ideas of the Gospel which Jesus will preach decades later. Mary sees God’s world right-side up and proclaims good news to the poor. She understands that through her son, Jesus, those who appear to be in the highest power positions will be unmasked. They will be revealed as self-serving and callous. Jesus says, the truly powerful are those who humble themselves to become servants of others. Those who only worry about delicacies for their own palates, luxuries for their lifestyle, and whatever new amusements are available, deserve to be sent away without any more. While those who do not have enough to live, need to be welcomed with plenty. Anyone who looks at the world through God’s perspective is able to see that everyone deserves to have enough, everyone deserves to be treated as a person, and that those who oppress others must be stopped.
Some years ago, a PBS show reported an experiment about how the retinas in our eyes receive images upside down and our brains invert them. A scientist theorized, our brains could be trained to re-invert images if somehow they were received upside down from normal, so he assembled an elaborate headgear of mirrors and glasses which turned the wearer’s vision upside down. He wore the headgear glasses for several days, stumbling around, seeing everything upside down. Then one morning, headgear on, he awoke with the stunning realization that his brain had done its work. He was seeing the world right-side up, even though the glasses turned it upside down to his eyes. His brain had indeed inverted his perception of the world.
2000 years earlier, Mary sang an invitation to our brains to correct how we see the world. Society may say: “The one who dies with the most toys, wins,” but God says, “Boy is that upside down!” Possessions do not make winners. Power does not make one person more valuable than another. Instead serving the least, respecting the personhood of all, making sure everyone has enough, those are indications that we are seeing the world correctly. When our vision of the world turns topsy-turvy, we are getting it right. The world’s values turned upside-down become right-side up in God’s view.
As Mary and Elizabeth have their famous visit, they are declaring that because of love, God is working salvation for us in Jesus. They invite us to share God’s perspective of caring for the least, the broken, and the lost. As Christmas approaches, we have the wondrous opportunity to remember the pregnant teen-ager and her no-longer-barren relative were invisible nobodies to the world’s eyes, but they recognized the approaching birth of God’s chosen One was already setting the world aright.
God’s powerful topsy-turvy love was already in motion throughout the world long before Jesus was born. And now, holy topsy-turvy love continues to set things right today, whenever people of good will sacrifice their own luxuries to make sure fewer Afghan children are starving, to make sure seemingly powerful companies are not allowed to pollute Earth to make more profit, to make sure more of our unhoused neighbors have a warm place to sleep. Those are the actions that magnify God. That’s getting it right side up.