December 18 -- Fourth Sunday of Advent

A young girl, maybe 14 or 15 years old. Living in poverty. Some have speculated, but we really don’t know anything about her family or her background. Luke was writing this story down some 70 years later. All we know is that she was young and poor…and her name was Mary.

Matthew’s Gospel doesn’t include this episode that we read today. Matthew’s Gospel is really all about Joseph and his fears. Mary is really more seen in Matthew’s Gospel as a virus, that could get Joseph infected with shame in his community, for she was with child, and it wasn’t his. The angel there, talks Joseph down. Calms him down.

But a different thing is happening here in Luke. Here the angel is lifting Mary up. “Blessed are you, favored are you,” the angel says, lifting up a member of society who is a nobody. Lifting her up by announcing God’s coming-down. And this is the real miracle of this season: that God is choosing to dwell with the poor.

Let me put that in different terms, because I think we can either forget or romanticize what being Mary’s being poor means at this time of year: God is choosing to dwell with the sick, the mentally unstable, the drug-addicted, the jobless, the hopeless, immigrant, the stranger, the rejected, the ridiculed, the voiceless…the totally forgotten. I’m afraid we tend to think of Mary more as a porcelain white immobile doll, a cute, little Precious Moments figurine, rather than a dark-skinned immigrant girl working in a clothing factory, and scratching her head constantly because of the lice she’s got in her hair. Endlessly coughing because of the chemicals and bacteria she’s got in her lungs...and can’t afford to see a doctor. Who wants “that” in their nativity scene holding the baby Jesus?

God does.

That’s the wonder and the hope and love of God in this 4^th Sunday of Advent Gospel reading. God’s care for this world is so great, that God chooses a poor, itchy, coughing teenager. (Sometimes I want to throw out all my nativity scenes, and the nativity scenes that are shaping the imaginations of my children, and replace them with a set of outcasts and immigrants, exiles and rejects—all poor, like Mary.)

And we know what’s about to happen to Mary: flash forward about 9 months and she’s about to do what all pregnant women love to do in their 3^rd trimester: walk 35 miles only to find there’s no vacancy at any resort or hotel or even the Motel 6. “[They didn’t] keep the light on for [her].” 35 miles—that journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem! That’s like walking from here to the Wild Animal Park in Escondido. Same kind of terrain too…but no cars and no Starbucks at every corner…and no name to the rest of this world at that time. She was only a number, to be counted by the Roman government, with all the rest.

She was a nobody to this world, but to God, she was Mary.

Watch for Christ to come from below, watch for Christ in the least of these, sisters and brothers in Christ, not the greatest. And when Christ peaks out from amongst the poor and hurting in our lives and in our world, then together let us bear witness to that tiny Christ. Sometimes we’re Mary, in this story, and sometimes we’re the angel, bearing witness, announcing, a Christ among the least of these.

This final week of Advent and this Christmas season, may we joyfully bear witness to Christ for a world that too often has not heard this good news—that God is incarnate with pain and poverty.

Are you hurting in any way? Broken by tragedy, addiction, frustration, or hopelessness? Sometimes we’re the angel in this story, bearing witness for others, and sometimes we’re Mary—broken or outcast ourselves.

Here’s where it hits home: God is not just stooping down from on high, with a pat on our heads and a kind word: “Ah, you poor little thing.” No, God is growing inside the “poor little thing.” Blessed are you, favored one, God says. (“Our God becomes small.” Martin Luther’s courageous statement, amid a church and a state that had made God into a golden image.)

You are Mary, through Christ’s death and resurrection, through the Holy Spirit’s infusion in your baptism and this Holy Meal. You are Mary, both women and men – pregnant with the divine to share with a world in need. You are Mary, sisters and brothers bearing Christ, lifted this day by a God whose name is love. Named. Marked. Overshadowed by the grace of the Creator of the stars of night. You are Mary, hurting and yet filled with hope. You are Mary, forgiven and freed. Open once again, with all evidence to the contrary, open to the radical voice of God, which comes in many and mysterious ways. You are Mary, pregnant with God, who is at the center of your pain, and the center of your joy. You are pregnant with God who is at your center. You are Mary. AMEN.