Sunday, December 18, 2005

Advent 4 - God Uses the Losers

2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16
Luke 1:47-55
Luke 1:26-38

"Great things come from great people." That's one of the keys to "Seven Steps to Greatness," according to internet columnist Daryl Gibson. Great things come from great people. That's the key to success in the world, isn't it? That if you want to do accomplish something great, you ask a great person to do it? When we're looking for someone to fill the new management position, we look for someone who has been doing a great job in their current place. When we're looking for someone to represent us in court, we look for a lawyer who has won all his cases. When we're looking for a doctor to perform surgery on us, we look for someone who has had successful surgeries and recoveries. When we want to accomplish the near impossible, we look for people who are winners, who are great. And we avoid those people we consider to be losers. We wouldn't hire somebody who has been fired from their last three jobs. We wouldn't hire a lawyer who has lost all his cases. We wouldn't put ourselves in the care of a surgeon whose patients have died. It's pretty simple, really. If we want to accomplish great things, we use great people. We don't use losers.

To a certain extent, that's what we see in the Bible, too. Now, you wouldn't think so at first glance. After all, we have a great many stories where God turns the underdog into the hero of the story. The youngest son, Isaac, gets the birthright from his older brother Esau. The youngest brother, Joseph, becomes right-hand man to the Pharoah and saves his family from starvation. The scrawny shepherd boy, David, becomes the king of Israel and the founder of a royal house that will last for generations. Even Jesus, the illegitimate son of a poor family, becomes the Lord and saviour of the world. So when I say that, by and large, our Bible stories don't concern themselves with losers, it would seem that I'm wrong.

But what we often overlook is that of the two groups of people represented in our Bible, one group is far and away more consistently lifted up than the other. One group appears to be the constant focus of God's attention while the other is barely mentioned. One group is considered to be "great" enough for God to use, while the other is considered too lowly for God's attention. Or at least, when God does use this lowly group, hardly anybody seems to notice, and almost nobody seems to have written it down.

Which means that when we do see God using this lowly group in the Bible, we have to sit up and take notice, because the story must have been exceptional for it to make it in the Bible. And today, we have one such exceptional story. It is a story about women. Yes, the two groups that people get divided into in the Bible are men and women. And, for the most part, it is men who are seen as agents of God's grace, as the ones bringing God's Word into the world. David, John the Baptist, Jesus - they are all men. Great men - I'm not denying that for a second, but men. Not women. The women who appear in the Bible are few and far between, and while it is sad, it shouldn't surprise us all that much. After all, the writers of the Bible lived in a time when women were the lowest of the low, when they were seen as unclean, unworthy, unacceptable, and completely unfit to be graced with God's presence. So, like I said, when we see stories about women in the Bible, we sit up and take notice, because here is God doing something absolutely remarkable - here is God turning the usual way of operating - to accomplish great things you use great people - on its head and here we see God using the lowest of the low to accomplish some of the greatest things ever.


Our story for today - the Gospel reading - is remarkable at the very least because it actually brings us to think about four women, not just one, and it draws both the Old and New Testament into the picture. And the first woman in our story that I want to lift up is Elizabeth. Now, although she doesn't show up until the end of our reading today, she is actually the first woman mentioned in the Gospel of Luke. Elizabeth was the wife of Zechariah, a priest, and was herself a descendant of Aaron, Moses' brother. As far as women went, she actually had quite a bit of status in her community. Or, she would have, if she wasn't barren. Even today, the inability to have children can cause women to feel bad about themselves, but back then, it was even worse. The ability to bear children was the reason men married women - they expected the women to give them children so that their name would be carried on. Without children, the men were considered almost worthless, and their wives even more so. So a woman who couldn't bear children, and who was "getting on in years" as Luke describes it, was a disgrace to her community. Like Elizabeth. She couldn't have children and she was getting old. (And just as a side-note, here we have the second reference to a woman, because here we are meant to think of Sarah, Abraham's wife, who was also old and childless, and ended up being the mother of the nation of Israel.)

But God took no account of Elizabeth's disgraceful state, and in fact seems to have favoured her because of it. We know this because God sends an angel to Elizabeth's husband, not, sadly, to Elizabeth herself, but to her husband Zechariah and tells him that Elizabeth is going to have a son, John. And not just any son. John will be "great in the sight of the Lord," as the Gospel tells it, and "will be filled with the Holy Spirit.. . . With the spirit and power of Elijah he will go before [the Lord God], to turn the hearts of parents to their children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord." Pretty remarkable, eh? God uses Elizabeth, a woman, a barren woman, the lowest of the low, a loser - if you will, to bring forth God's Word in John the Baptist, the second holiest man in the Gospels. God uses a lowly person to accomplish something truly great.

But as great as Elizabeth's story is, it is nothing compared to the story of Mary. Or rather, to the story of God using Mary. Because let's be clear, here. Mary's story isn't great because it's about Mary, because she was the mild-mannered virgin who happily said yes to what God had planned. Mary's story is great because it's about God, how God used Mary to accomplish the greatest thing of all. The remarkable thing about the story of Mary is that God chose to use a teenage girl from an invaded people, who lived in an obscure town that nobody had heard of, who was nothing in herself, who was special only because of who she was engaged to. God used this lowly servant to bring forth God's Word incarnate, the promised messiah, the heir to the throne of David. In the story of Mary, we see God taking a nobody and making her the Mother of God, the greatest of all humans, men and women, through whom the Saviour of the world comes into the world.

Now, Mary herself acknowledges that what God is doing isn't about her when she sings her magnificat, our psalm for today. (And just as another side-note, here we have a reference to the fourth woman in our story. Mary's song is based on the song that Hannah sang, when she prayed in the Temple for God to send her a baby boy, one who ended up being Samuel, the great prophet whom God used to anoint David as king.) In both Mary's and Hannah's songs, they praise God for lifting up the lowly, for choosing the humble to do great things, for showing favour to the poor and hungry and oppressed. They praise God for showing forth God's Word in losers, as it were.

But that is something that we can count on God to do. We can count on God to use people like Mary and Elizabeth, women who counted for nothing in their time, because that is the epitome of God's grace. God takes people who, according to the world, least deserve it, who have done nothing to warrant it, who are totally unworthy and unacceptable, and God showers them with forgiveness and mercy and favour. That is grace. God "chose," as Paul says in 1 Corinthians, "what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God. He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who become for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption." That is grace - God choosing losers to accomplish great things.

And the ultimate show of God's undeserved grace, that begins at Christmas, well, it's not only Mary's story and Elizabeth's story, but it is your story, as well. That is, it is the story of all the lowly today, of the people in the world considered to be losers. The people who've been fired from their last three jobs, the lawyer who can't win a case, the doctor whose patients have died. To these people, and for these people, God came down to earth incarnated as Jesus of Nazareth, to save the world and to be Emmanuel - God-with-us. Through and with these people, God brings God's Word to the world, to demonstrate whom it is that God loves most. Not the winners. Not the great people. But the losers, the useless, the ignored, the despised.

So if you have ever felt yourself to be the lowest of the low, if you have ever considered yourself to be a complete loser, to be unworthy of attention or love, than take heart because God favours you, and God is using you to show forth God's Word in the world. It may seem hard to believe, especially when the world is constantly telling us that it's only the great who get used, but as Luther wrote in a piece on Mary's Magnificat, ". . . without any wavering or doubt, realize [God's] will toward you and firmly believe that [God] will do great things also to you, and is willing to do so." [Luther's Works Vol 21] That is the story of the Bible, the story of Elizabeth and Mary, the story of Christmas, and the story of Christ's coming kingdom as well. It is what we wait to celebrate, it is why we praise God as we do, and why we proclaim with hope and joy, "Come, Lord Jesus, come!" Amen.

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