What do you think of when you hear the phrase “American Dream”? All of us here are immigrants, one way or another.... Some have been here for two or three hundred years - or more! I think some of mine came in the 17th century. What did your ancestors come here for? Was it for religious freedom, or economic opportunity? Or did they come as indentured servants or on the prison ships that first colonized Georgia? Did they come as refugees or adventurers or visionaries? Whatever your ancestors' reasons for coming here, as a nation we descend from a lot of dreamers. Even the ones who came against their will - prisoners, slaves, indentured servants, and the long-suffering wives of men with wanderlust, may have eventually caught the prevailing sense of possibility that permeated the very idea of America.
Nowadays it seems to me that the “American Dream” - at least when politicians use the phrase - means pretty much one thing, and that is economic success. Not that there`s anything wrong with economic success, mind you, but it’s a little narrower than the whole range of possibilities that the vast sweep of our history suggests. What about religious or political freedom? What about simply the idea of a new start on life? It’s not just con artists, ne'er-do wells, and misfits who occasionally need to change their names and move out of town. I consider it myself on a fairly regular basis! But our history, our beginnings, have left us a culture more accustomed to pulling up stakes and moving on to greener pastures than any other non-nomadic society in the world...
What’s your dream? What would it take for your dreams to come true? For some of us, the simplest things will be enough. Home, family, work that’s worth doing and pays enough to provide for all the basics and an occasional luxury, or adventure... What would it look like, if your dream came true?
Even today some dreams are simply beyond our reach. And, of course, in the past, color, gender, class, and ethnicity all eliminated a lot of options. And most people simply learn to live - even to dream - within what is possible.
But now narrow it down even further. Go back beyond the few hundred years when America and her possibilities beckoned to dreamers around the world. In the places our ancestors came from it was even harder to dream of a different life, a better life. And in first century Palestine, the choices for a teenage Jewish girl were more restricted than most of us can begin to imagine. Her only choices were to marry well or to marry badly. And even then, she hardly had a choice, because usually it would be the parents of the prospective couple who would make the arrangements. You could dream of a kind, handsome, and prosperous husband, you could dream of a houseful of healthy obedient children - mostly sons, of course - and you could even dream of moving to another village or even a city - if that’s where your husband’s business took him. You could dream, but there was almost nothing you could do to make it happen.
So Mary, like most of her friends, had no doubt learned to dream small long before her marriage to Joseph was arranged. We don’t know if they knew each other before the betrothal, in a small town no doubt he had seen her and she had at least heard of him, or even perhaps giggled and speculated with his sisters and cousins about what kind of husband he would be. But still, you never knew how it would turn out. God willing, she and Joseph would have a good life together, and children would come in time, and the simple round of feeding and clothing her family would fill her days. Nazareth was a small town, in an unimportant province, and Mary could hope that none of the political unrest would spill over on them. So perhaps her dream included the expectation that no Roman soldiers would be garrisoned there, no rabble-rousers would try to stir up trouble, no foreign armies would come sweeping through on their way to conquer a richer prize. This was possible. This could happen. It was safe to dream that dream.
But God had other ideas.
"The angel Gabriel was sent ... to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph ... [named] Mary. And he ... said, 'Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.' But she was much perplexed ... The angel said to her, 'Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and... He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.' Mary said to the angel, 'How can this be, since I am a virgin?' The angel said to her, 'The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God.'" [Lk 1:26-35]
Now, everybody knew that God had promised to send a savior, a redeemer, a great king to sit on the throne of David and rescue Israel from all the cruelty and oppression and injustice that they had suffered over the generations. And a lot of people expected him to come fairly soon. There were cults who went apart to set up communities fit to recognize and receive the Messiah, there were revolutionary movements that promised to restore the kingdom by force, there was an absolute ferment of expectation and speculation about when and how God would fulfill his promise.
And no doubt many little Jewish girls dreamed of being the one God would choose to bear this boy-child who would become the king. For after all, hadn’t Isaiah said, “Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” But my goodness! He would never pick a simple little village girl like Mary for that honor! No, surely he would choose the daughter of the high priest, or someone else whose family had wealth and influence! Even if the thought had crossed her mind, like the good, obedient, well-trained young woman she was, she would no doubt have put it out of her mind and concentrated on what was possible.
Mary never expected an angel. She wasn’t ready for God to tap her on the shoulder and say, “Come. I have work for you to do.” And most of us don’t, either. But has God changed, from that day to this? I don’t think so. And so I think we can learn, from Mary, what happens when we are ready to say yes to God, no matter how or where he calls us.
We could look at how Mary reacted. She was surprised, or, as the text says “perplexed.“ But I think that’s got to be an understatement. It’s more likely that she was stunned speechless - and that just by Gabriel’s appearance. He hadn’t even told her yet what her mission was going to be! But then Gabriel goes on, saying, “Do not be afraid,” and then he gives her the details. I suspect she’s silent for another moment, as she takes it all in, but then she asks just one question. “"How can this be?” He answers her, and with great simplicity she bows her head and says, "Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word." [Lk 1:26-35]
What a contrast with Moses! Do you remember when God spoke to Moses out of the burning bush? His first surprised response is very like Mary’s: "Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?" [Ex 3:11] But then remember how Moses argued with God? First he says, “But who shall I say sent me?” And then he asks, “But what if they don’t believe me?” And finally he just flat out says, “Not me, God, please send someone else.” It takes quite a lot of pressure before Moses gets on board with God's agenda.
What’s the lesson here? Well, it's clear that God calls both the stubborn and the pliant, the skeptical and the trusting, the simple girl and the complex, disillusioned man. And he doesn’t stop loving you just because you argue for a while. If you belong to God, and God wants you to do something, he’ll wear you down, never fear.
No, the lesson is not in the call itself, or even in our response, as important as that is. The message to focus on is what God can do through us when we say yes. Moses doesn’t quite believe what God is going to do through him, because he doesn’t have the history Mary does with God and his promises. Sure, there are the stories about Abraham and Isaac, Jacob and Joseph, but here are all the Hebrews slaving away in Egypt and how on earth is God going to pull it off? And hadn’t Moses himself tried to do something about it forty years before when he had killed an Egyptian who was beating a Hebrew slave? And just look at all the trouble he got into! But Mary... Mary knows what God has done. Mary knows what the Messiah will do. And Mary believes that God not only can, but will come through. The only surprise is who he chose to do it. All of a sudden, the small safe dream of a simple country girl has burst out into a vision of astonishing hope and beauty. And it knocks her socks off. So to speak. They didn’t wear socks back then.
"My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name." [v. 46-48]
Now, some people think that Luke prettied up the language a little bit, since when does a fifteen-year-old teenager talk like that? On the other hand, whatever education Mary might have had would have been the law and the prophets and the Psalms, and when we can’t think of words to express our own feelings, it's natural to fall back on quotations. And this whole passage is simply packed with a tumbling medley of Old Testament allusions. But even if he - or even Mary, telling Luke the story years later - did turn her first incoherent utterances into poetry, the meaning is clear. “Wow,” she says. “How lucky can I get! This is so huge! Everybody in the world will remember forever what God has done for me. Oh, God, you are awesome!”
But the implications go far beyond that. This is not about Mary. This is about God. This is about who God is, and what God is going to do in the world through Mary. There are three key ideas to keep in mind, as we look at Mary’s praise song.
First, God keeps his promises. “He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever." No matter how bad things look, God has not forgotten his people. His timing is not the same as ours, but his faithfulness is the only changeless certainty we have to cling to in a chaotic world. As he told the prophet Jeremiah, “The days are surely coming... when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah.... I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.” [Jer 33:14-15]
Well, the Righteous Branch has sprung up, we celebrate his birth during this season, and still we wait for righteousness to rule. We wait for the Holy City lit by the glory of God and shining with the beauty of the Lamb, where corruption and falsehood and injustice will have no place. But we can be certain, because God’s acts in history, even his acts within our own living memories, prove to us that he keeps his word.
Second, God turns things upside down. Do you ever look around you and get outraged or despairing over all the injustice in the world? Look at the widening gap between the rich and poor, look at the incredible sums paid to corporate executives even as they loot their companies and lay off their employees, look at the billions squirreled away in offshore accounts by thugs and criminals like drug barons and third-world dictators. But these injustices pale in comparison to the corruption, injustice and cruelty of first-century Mediterranean society.
And yet Mary can speak with confidence about what God has done in the past and can be expected to do in the future. “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.” That’s something we can always count on: God’s past actions are just a foretaste of what his future plans will look like. In the past, God rescued the Israelites from Egypt, brought them back from their Babylonian exile, preserved them in the faith of every kind of pressure and coercion imaginable - and yet in this act, of naming Mary the mother of the Messiah, he is announcing even greater liberation and justice in the future. Man’s injustice doesn’t last. God’s justice - even if it arrives late by our reckoning - will endure forever.
And third, God knows each one of us by name. “Greetings, Mary,” said Gabriel. God cares about us, no matter how humble, no matter how poor, no matter how impressive or credentialed or connected. Every single one of us matters to God. “He has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant,” acknowledges Mary, or as Paul would say fifty years later to the Corinthians, “Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose 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.” [1 Cor 1:26-29]
That the rich will get lose all their stuff is the key idea of liberation theology. But I think that's too simplistic. Yes, the last will be first. But God doesn’t judge anybody by their possessions - whether you have lots of stocks and bonds or not much more than the clothes you stand up in doesn’t matter to God. God does, however, have a preferential option for the “poor in spirit.” God’s standard for judging whether or not he can use you is on the inside. “His mercy is for those who fear him ... he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts." [v. 50-51]
Mary’s dream was a small dream, limited by her time and place and circumstances. Yet when God called her, she became a part of the greatest event the world has ever known. We dream small, but God dreams big. Can you dream big? Can you see what God can do for you, and through you?
God is not bound by time, or place, or circumstance. And he has called us to be part of his dream, his vision of justice, of righteousness, of truth and love and peace and life. God has already tapped you - and me - on the shoulder. Each one of us has had our own annunciation. We have each been chosen, in baptism, by name, not only to be saved, as important as that is, but to serve, to be partners with God in bringing the promises to pass. It is through us, through you and me, that God’s will is done, that his kingdom might be displayed on earth as a foretaste of what it is in heaven. The Messiah comes into the world now through us. And he calls each one of us to answer, like Mary, "Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word." [Lk 1:26-35]
Because unlike ours, God’s dreams come true.
