The Rev. Frank Logue
King of Peace Episcopal Church
Kingsland, Georgia
December 15, 2002

Note: This sermon was accompanied by a PowerPoint Presentation.
The slides projected with this sermon are included below.

God's Kingdom Breaking In
Luke 1:46-55

Now with this third week of Advent, we hear a little of the Christmas story breaking in to our time of anticipation. Instead of a portion of the Psalms, we read together the Magnificat, Mary’s song about the Incarnation. This beautiful New Testament Psalm puts on Mary’s lips the first of the Gospel of Luke’s statements about what the Kingdom of God looks like.  

Mary sings, “He has mercy on those who fear him in every generation.” Godly fear is what the Old Testament declares to be real wisdom. The fear of the Lord is called the beginning of wisdom in the Bible. That godly fear is a reverence, a worshipful awe, for who God is and how God acts. Mary tells us that God’s love and mercy is for those who reverently make room for God in their lives in this age. Mary should know. No one has had to make more room in her life for God than Mary did. 

But, the most intriguing thing for me in Mary’s Song is the way she takes the ideals of God’s kingdom and presents them as if they are already accomplished facts. The song uses an amazing number of past tense verbs. Everything is already accomplished for Mary. For some things, that is not so surprising. God has already look with favor on his lowly servant Mary. The almighty already has done great things for her.  

But as Mary continues to praise God for what God is doing in becoming human, she moves beyond what God has done for her, broadening to include the whole world. Even then she sings of things to come as if they were accomplished facts. Mary, taking a page from her unborn son’s ministry, proclaims that the Kingdom of God is at hand. 

Listen to these words of Mary’s song and ask yourself if the changes in the way the world works have even yet occurred 2000 years later: 

He has cast down the mighty from their thrones,
and has lifted up the lowly. 

He has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty. 

There are few kings in the world today, but the seats of power still belong to the mighty. The lowly rarely if ever get lifted up. The hungry often continue to go hungry, while those who have seem to get more. Yet, Mary speaks of lifting up the lowly and filling the hungry with good things in the past tense.

It would be possible to see Mary’s song as naïve. She sings of these things without knowing what the world is really like. For example, the cowboy humorist Will Rogers used to say, “I never met a man I didn’t like.” That makes me think that Will didn’t get around a lot. I’ve met some people who were pretty difficult to like at best. Is that what is going on with Mary? Is she just so unaware of the way of the world that she thinks God has already brought down the mighty from their thrones? Cleary not. Not even the densest Jew living in Roman-occupied Israel could think the lowly were being lifted up.

Instead, Mary has come to see that what God is doing through her is a sign that all of God’s promises are as good as fulfilled. God is faithful and the old way of doing things is as good as gone now that God is becoming human through her child Jesus. God’s kingdom is breaking into our world in a new and marvelous way that makes it clear that the lowly are as good as lifted up and the hungry are as good as filled with good things.

Mary’s way of looking at the world in her song shows a biblical view of how this age—the time we live in relates to the afterlife—the age to come. First we have this age, our present time, which includes all time from creation until this day. Alongside that, we can place the age to come. Until Jesus comes in power and glory to usher in the end of the age, the only way to pass from this age to the age to come seems to be death. When we die, we pass from this age into the age to come. These ages seem to be mutually exclusive. If you are not God the Father, the Son or the Holy Spirit, then you can’t pass from one age to the other.

All time is working its way toward the end of this age and the ushering in of the age to come. There is a forward trajectory pushing us toward eternity, but the two ages seem separate. In the Magnificat, Mary points to the reality that there may be a way in which these two ages intersect. The age to come may break into our present age. The age to come is not present in our own time in its fullness, but as a foreshadowing of what is coming.

Mary seems to know intuitively that the birth of the Messiah to her, a lowly Jewish peasant, is a very important sign of what God’s kingdom looks like. Incarnation is the religious word for God becoming human. It is in the Incarnation that we get our clearest picture of the age to come.

God became flesh, not in the person of Julius Caesar or a great Egyptian Pharaoh. God became flesh in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, the son of peasant woman in an occupied land. Without the mighty getting wind of it, they were as good as cast down from their thrones. If the newlywed wife of a carpenter is to give birth to God’s son, then the hungry are as good as having their bellies filled, for God is not only ready and willing to bring about the age to come. God is in fact already breaking the age to come into our world in acting counter to the ways of this present age.

Mary goes on to sing that this is not some new thing God is doing, but it is in fulfillment of all that God has promised Israel. The God of Israel is now acting in human history in such a way that it will not just break the kingdom of God into this age for the Jews, but for all humanity.

As begins his ministry, Jesus will affirm the very things his mother now sings. Jesus continually reminded his disciples in different ways that the last would be first and the first would be last. He preached that those who exalt themselves will be humbled. Jesus said blessed are the poor, the hungry, and those who weep for God will give them the kingdom, fill them with food and exchange their tears for laughter. Jesus told his followers that he came to serve and those who follow him must also be servants.

Jesus’ whole ministry lived out the words his mother sang, but he did in a way that no mother could find joyful. For it was in his willingness to show power through powerlessness that he most clearly showed how God’s kingdom is radically different from our present age. The most powerful way that God has broken into the present age with the age to come was through Jesus death on the cross and his resurrection from the grave.

Jesus would rather face death than alter the rules of this present age in his own favor. Jesus died to show God’s love, and rose from the grave to show that death is not the final answer. There is life in the age to come and it has already broken into our own age through God’s son Jesus.

I want to pull the various threads together. We have found that in Mary’s Song, the Magnificat, we see in hymn form that the kingdom of God has broken into our present age. Yes, it is still a fallen and flawed world. The powerful still crush the lowly. More times than not, the rich get richer at the expense of the poor. Those with food, have more than enough while others go hungry.

Yet, because of the ways God has broken into human history we have had glimpses of a different world. Through the life of Jesus and rarely through his followers, great saints through the ages, we have seen how wonderful the upside down world of the Gospel really can be. No one is too lowly, too weak, or too undesirable for God. There are no outcasts in God’s kingdom. God does not look to the outward signs of status and success, but rather God looks at the content of your heart.

Use these last ten days of Advent to make more room in your life for God. The more you allow God into your heart and life, the more you will find ourselves loving those whom God loves. Every time you reach out to others to share God’s love, you are bringing the age to come to life in the here and now. Then the mighty are as good as cast down and the hungry are as good as filled. For God has never forgotten for one moment his promise of mercy to you and to all who love him.

Amen.