“Wrong Will Be Made Right”

Luke 1:46-55

The words of this morning’s reading from James are those of a pastor to a congregation. They are words aimed at Christians. According to William Barclay, “[James] is an intensely practical letter and is the very essence of practical Christianity… it [contains, among other things] a special sense of the dangers of the rich.” Verse 9 echoes the words of the Gospel text: “Let the believer who is lowly boast in being raised up, and the rich in being brought low…”

Remember, these are the words of a pastor. In James 5:1-6 he picks up this topic again. As I read it I was reminded of something one of my seminary professors said to me when I accused him of not being very pastoral: “Sometimes the most pastoral thing we can give somebody is a kick in the butt.” In the following verses, read from The Message James is doing some major butt kicking:

“And a final word to you arrogant rich: Take some lessons in lament. You’ll need buckets for the tears when the crash comes upon you. Your money is corrupt and your fine clothes stink. Your greedy luxuries are a cancer in your gut, destroying your life from within. You thought you were piling up wealth. What you’ve piled up is judgment.

All the workers you’ve exploited and cheated cry out for judgment. The groans of the workers you used and abused are a roar in the ears of the Master Avenger. You’ve looted the earth and lived it up. But all you’ll have to show for it is a fatter than usual corpse. In fact, what you’ve done is condemn and murder perfectly good persons, who stand there and take it.”

Now that’s a happy thought on this final Sunday of Advent. Let’s see what the Gospel text has to offer. In it the Virgin Mary is celebrating her role as the mother of the Messiah. The great God Almighty himself had chosen her for that eternally significant role. Mary, little old peasant girl Mary, from a backwater town named Nazareth, has been chosen to bear God’s Son. She marvels that someone as lowly as she would be selected for such a monumental task: “Me, Lord, you chose me for this? Me, a nobody.” She doesn’t understand it. She simply, as an act of faith, accepts it. And in today’s text she lifts up a song of praise in response.

One thing the song makes clear is that God uses and looks with favor upon the lowly, the prime example being Mary herself. Another thing it makes clear is God’s disapproval of prideful people, of those who disregard the lowly. “… he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.”

Lifting up of the lowly and bringing down the mighty is a major theme in the Gospel of Luke. In Luke 4 Jesus reads verses from the prophet Isaiah and then tells those listening that the Scripture has been fulfilled in their hearing: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

In Luke 6, during what has become known as the Sermon on the Plain, Jesus said, and I’m reading his words out of order in order to preserve the parallels: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.” “But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.” Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled.” “But woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry.” “Blessed are those who weep now, for you will laugh.” “But woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep.”

That raises a question: What if the poor were truly blessed and the lowly lifted up? What if the high and mighty were brought down? What if the Kingdom arrived in its fullness today? We pray for that every time we pray the Lord’s Prayer – thy kingdom come. Maybe we should heed again these words from Frederich Buechner: “And if that were suddenly to happen, what then? What would stand and what would fall? Who would be welcomed in and who would be thrown the hell out? Which if any of our most precious visions of what God is and human beings are would prove to be more or less on the mark and which would be as phony as three-dollar bills?” What then? Who will be the proud and powerful who are brought down? Who will be the lowly who are lifted up? In which group will you and I find ourselves?

One way we deal with that question is to put everything in the future tense, to say with Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind, “I’ll think about that tomorrow.” Advent is after all a time of anticipation of a future event. The Kingdom has come, but the Kingdom is still coming. It’s here, but not in completeness. For most of us it’s something out there in the unreadable future. And if the truth be told, some folks would be very happy for it to stay there. And maybe, just maybe, some of us dread it more than we anticipate it. We’d rather not know the answers to Frederich Buechner’s questions.

Please note that Mary’s song is in the past tense. She sings it as if it were an accomplished reality, as if the Kingdom has come in all its fullness, as if her soon to be born son’s mission was already complete. From a true Christian perspective it is already complete. Jesus has come. He has inaugurated the Kingdom. He has preached Good News and healed the sick. He has taken upon himself the sins of the world, died on a cross, and been raised from the dead. He has ascended into heaven. Sin, death, and evil have been utterly defeated. The Light has overcome the darkness. The Devil’s as good as dead. If we are in Christ all those things are a reality. That is the Good News of Advent.

But meanwhile, sin, death, and evil are still at work seeking our destruction. The darkness still beckons us. The Devil still tempts us. Horrible things go on in this world: human trafficking in which men, women, and children are bought, sold, and stolen to spend miserable lives in sweat shops and brothels; much of the world’s population subsists on two dollars a day; the powerful maintain their power by exploiting those who cannot fight back; and it seems that the entire world is dominated by a perverted form of the golden rule: those who have the gold rule. Or as Will Rogers said many years ago about our own country, we have the best Congress money can buy.

All that, my friends, negates the purposes of God. Jesus didn’t come to preserve that kind of status quo. And if the Scriptures be true – and they are – his return will put an end to it. When he comes some people, to their shock and dismay, really are going to be thrown the hell out. “But Jesus, I said, Lord, Lord.” His response, “I never knew you.” Or to look at it from the perspective of Matthew 25, “You never knew me. You didn’t feed the hungry, house the homeless, provide clean drinking water to the thirsty, visit the sick and those in prison, or welcome the stranger. You were happy with the status quo because you benefitted from it.”

What does all that have to do with us? We’re not rich. We’re not powerful. We’re not dictators. We don’t own sweat shops and brothels. None of us has a member of Congress in our pocket. We’re not counted among the 1%. We’re proud members of the 99%. We love Jesus, he loves us, and all is right with the world.

Or is it? How often do we use Jesus’ words about the poor always being with us to excuse ourselves from working to eradicate crushing poverty and hunger? How often do we use Paul’s admonition that those who don’t work don’t eat to justify our condemnation of those who are out of work through no fault of their own? How often do we stop and consider that in terms of the world’s population we are the 1%? How often do we stop and consider that many of the products we buy are made in sweatshops, often by children?

I try not to think about such things because to do so leads me to examine my life and my lifestyle. Such an examination leads me to wonder if I’m one of those rich Christians James addresses. Or ponder the truth of these words from William Barclay: “A Christian society is a society where no [one] dares have too much when others have too little, where [everyone] must get in order to give.” And these words written by Andrew Purves: “The ethics of the kingdom of God lead to a certain ordering of action and values: to raise up and bless the poor, the weak, the hungry persons among us, and to denounce and bring down those who perpetuate such hurt and disadvantage.”

I have to be honest here. I like the way things are. I don’t want to change my lifestyle. I want to go through life merrily singing, “Me and Jesus got a good thing goin’.” But then I hear those pesky words from the Lord’s Prayer: “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” On earth as it is in heaven. Amen.