Sermon Text: Luke 1:46-56
We are a society of numbers. Numbers determine everything. Numbers determine the value of something. Numbers determine the worth of something. Numbers determine the success of something. It’s everywhere and unavoidable.
A person in our society is regarded as a great success if they have high numbers of dollars in the bank. A business is considered viable if they have large numbers of store or quantity of product on the shelves. A bank is considered stable if they have large numbers of assets in trust. A country is considered strong if it has large numbers of soldiers. Many women and more than a few men regard themselves as of value if the number of the scale each morning is sufficiently small. A church is considered healthy if it has large numbers of people sitting in its pews. Numbers everywhere. Numbers define us, for better and for worse.
Which is one of the things that makes the Bible such an anomaly in our society. We venerate the Scriptures. We hold the Bible in great esteem, but it really doesn’t jive with the way the rest of our society works. The characters in this story often do not have numbers. They are not rich. They are not successful. They are not powerful. And, for that reason, we often times don’t quite know what to do with them.
Mary, Jesus’ mother, is probably the quintessential example of this. We hold her in great esteem as the mother of our Lord, and yet never examine the whole of her reality, the whole of her story. She has no numbers. She does not have large numbers of money or servants or houses or any other mark of great wealth and power. She’s a noboby and the only number we know for her is an educated guess: 13 or perhaps 14, her age as of the time Gabriel chances to visit her.
Perhaps to better understand this, we should play a little game: a time warp. Bring Mary forward to our world, our time. What then? An unwed, impoverished, pregnant teenage girl. Now what we once venerated looks a whole lot more like a scandal.
What would we say to this? Would Bill O'Reilly demand she wear a T-shirt that says “I shouldn’t have gotten pregnant at 14?” Would we be astonished at Joseph for staying by her side, since men in the inner city never stick around? That’s what they do after all, just a bunch of worthless criminals. Just another ghetto tramp, or if you prefer, another piece of trailer park trash.
Is that language too harsh for you? Let’s be honest. It’s how we talk about people who do not have numbers. People of no value. People of no worth. They are often less than human to us; we treat our animals better. Mary, were she living today, would be one of millions that we would either ignore or disdain.
And that’s precisely the point as to why she was chosen.
It’s the same reason an anonymous sheep herder was called to be the father of a Chosen People. It’s the same reason a banished exile was called to be the liberator of an enslaved race. It’s the same reason a ruddy lowly shepherd boy was called to be king, and a fisherman was called to be apostle. The same reason slaves were the first to hear of the birth of Messiah.
It’s not about the numbers.
What matters to God are things like faithfulness, compassion, mercy, justice, love. The intangible things that cannot be measured. Cannot be numbered. These are the things God looks for and where he often finds them so often is in places we never dare look. He finds them among the poor, the criminal, the outcast, the disregarded, the people we’ve abandoned, the people we’ve taught ourselves to hate for their lack of numbers. People we think we are better than because we have numbers.
But are we truly?
Mary sings that famous song we know as the Magnificat in response to all that God has done for her. We consider it a beautiful piece of Biblical poetry, but the lyrics of it should honestly scare the hell out of us. For in it, she talks about the great upheaval when God comes to judge the earth in righteousness. She talks about the things we so often believe give us worth and value will, at best, count for nothing and, at worst, will count against us. The mighty will be cast down from their thrones. The rich sent away empty handed. That’s not good news for those of us who are rich in the things of this world and sit upon thrones of our own making.
What matters to God is not numbers, but the immeasurable qualities of faithfulness, compassion, mercy, and love. Qualities found not just in David or Moses or Abraham or Mary, but in Jesus himself and he had them all (unlike these others) without limit, boundary, or condition. For how else could he then go into the midst of a world that would reject him, mock him, and eventually kill him and not hate that world for it? No, instead he embraced that world, embraced all people, and called them to let go of numbers as being the benchmark of a person’s worth. He loved and loves everyone. He values everyone. All are precious to him, regardless of what we think of them.
So precious, in fact, that it is he who interposes and imposes his own life in our place when that moment of judgment comes. “Look not at their failure. Look not at their blind insistence that numbers mean something.” he pleads, “Look instead to me on the cross, calling for forgiveness and compassion for the very people who put me there. Look to me and forgive them. Look to me and welcome them. Look to me and embrace them.”
That was the plan all along. A child conceived in a nobody would save everybody. From nothing comes everything. Those numbers don’t add up, but they’re not supposed to. It’s not our way. It’s God’s way. It’s his call, his plan, his rules, his salvation. Amen.
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