Text: Luke 1:46b-55
Theme: “Purple Gives Way to Pink”
3rd Sunday of
Advent
December 14, 2014
FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
Denton, Texas
Rev. Paul R. Dunklau
+In
the Name of Jesus+
46 And
Mary said:
“My soul magnifies the Lord
47
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
48
for he has been mindful
of the humble state of his servant.
From now on all generations will call me
blessed,
49
for the Mighty One has done great things
for me—
holy is his name.
50
His mercy extends to those who fear him,
from generation to generation.
51
He has performed mighty deeds with his
arm;
he has scattered those who are proud in
their inmost thoughts.
52
He has brought down rulers from their
thrones
but has lifted up the humble.
53
He has filled the hungry with good
things
but has sent the rich away empty.
54
He has helped his servant Israel,
remembering to be merciful
55
to Abraham and his descendants forever,
just as he promised our ancestors.”
Purple gives way to pink, to begin with, on our Advent
Wreath. Thanks to Alan and Melissa who
lit the candles this week and to everyone who has participated so far. Today we fired up the pink candle. Candle one, lit on the first Sunday of
Advent, is purple. Candle two, lit on
the second Sunday of Advent, is purple.
Candle three, lit today, is pink.
Next week, it’s purple again, and then it’s Christmas and the Christ
candle!
Why a pink candle on Advent III? Wouldn’t another purple one be fine? Well, it’s the lectionary’s fault. Pink, in our culture, is popularly thought of
in conjunction with breast cancer awareness and support. This is all well and good. But traditionally, Pink was associated with
joy, and the Scriptures appointed for our hearing today sound a note of great
joy. In contrast, the purple symbolizes
royalty (as in, a King is about to be born), but it also denotes
penitence. And here we are reminded that
the season of Advent was originally a penitential season -- a time of
preparation that isn’t limited to trimming trees and hanging lights while the
sound of carolers filling the night. We
prepare by taking a look inward to see if our hearts and
minds are ready for the good news that is at the heart of Christmas. Stated differently, Advent is a time – or
should be a time – of spiritual housecleaning.
Instead of looking for deals online, we look for everything – inline, if you will – that we
inadvertently use to keep Christ out of our lives. We repent of that; we change our mind about
that; we sweep that away, and we focus, once more, on the joy of knowing that
Child of Bethlehem’s manger.
Today’s Gospel is actually not the Magnificat of Mary, the mother of the Lord, that I just read. A passage from John’s Gospel, featuring John
the Baptist, is appointed for today. But
the Magnificat is given as an
“alternate reading”. Without the
alternate, we’d get two weeks in a row of John the Baptist and only one week of
the Mother Mary – and that sounds rather sexist. But
this year, I’m going with two weeks of the Mother Mary.
We Protestant Christians tend to not pay a whole lot of
attention to the Mother Mary. Our Roman
Catholic friends, though, are a different story. Devotion to Mary (or Marian piety, if you
will) is strong. There are even
extra-biblical teachings – the immaculate conception and the blessed assumption
of Mary – that have become feast days.
For us, Mary is that lovely figure of the manger scene. There she is, kneeling down and wrapped in
colored robes, looking on lovingly at the child in the manger. That’s so nice, so sentimental.
Then she sort of disappears from the radar screen. Later on, she does accompany the grown-up
Jesus to a wedding at Cana. In addition
to that, she was there when her son was violently executed. She saw it all; she watched the lifeblood
drain out of Him. What’s it like for a
mother to lose a child?
Most scholars think that Mary was a teenager when the Angel Gabriel
announced to her that the Holy Spirit would overshadow and she would give birth
to a child. She was not married at the
time. Thus, it was an unwed pregnancy,
and there was, of course, a stigma attached to that. There were stigmas then as there are various
and sundry stigmas now. What does it
feel like to be stigmatized for any reason?
An un-named donor has provided Texas Health Presbyterian
Hospital here in Denton with a wonderful piece of technology. Designed for what is called the “Nicu” – or
neo-natal intensive care unit, the device will enable parents and loved ones to
look upon their newborn child in intensive care. Although the child, for health reasons, will
be in isolation from any visitors, he or she will still be able to hear the
voice of mom or dad and see his or her picture on a screen.
For Mary, there was no modern technology or convenience. If Jesus was a preemie, there was no Nicu
unit for him and no warm bassinet – with monitors and all – in the maternity
ward. There was no room for Him. There was no such thing as a hospital as we
know it. There was an inn there in
Bethlehem, but it had no vacancy. So
Mother Mary would have to stick it out in the elements. The child was laid in a manger – likely a
stone feeding trough for animals. There was no word given on whether or not
there was mid-wife or facsimile of a nurse.
Certainly, many women, throughout the annals of history, have
earned the right to say it. But it is,
perhaps, Mary who can declare it the loudest and most clearly: “I am woman!
Hear me roar!” Her child, as
Simeon said, was “destined for the fall and rising of many.” He said that “a sword would pierce” her own
soul too.
The more you study her life and the more you meditate upon
it, the more astounded you become. What
a range of experience! What a life! BOTH women and men could and can benefit from
the kind of moxie, if you will, exhibited by Mary!
This past week, I heard the story of a young man who works at
Christian Brothers Automotive in Corinth.
On Saturdays, the business opens for what he called “Single Mother Oil
Change.” Any single mother can come in
and get their oil changed for free. He
told about how he had an ideal childhood, but then his parents were divorced
when he was five years old. After that,
his mother raised him. She attended to
his every need and then held down a full-time job too. He marveled at her. This young man, a Christian, wanted to devote
his calling to service of some kind, and he did. Specifically, he decided to help out women
in one area that could really help: auto
maintenance. Think about how we all
depend on our automobiles and trucks, etc., to get us from point A to point B.
This gentleman spoke of one client – a single mother with
three children under eight years of age – who came in for an oil change. They did a complimentary system check on her
car which brought forth some unpleasant news.
To her dismay, it would cost her $1,800.00 to repair the auto and make
it road-worthy. This mother – a full-time worker who was
raising three children on her own – depended on that car. Something goes wrong with that car, and she
can’t get kids to school and herself to work, and life comes crumbling down on
something more than a small scale!
Well, this young man has some friends with deep pockets. They told him, “If you have someone who needs
help getting that car fixed, give us a call.”
Without the woman knowing it, that’s what this man did. He called his friends. He called the woman back. She said, amid tears, “I just cannot afford
eighteen hundred dollars.” He said,
“Bring it in anyway.” In a little over
an hours time, the tears of sadness in that woman’s eyes turned to ones of happiness. Her purple, if you will, had turned to
pink. Her sorrow over her predicament
had turned to joy. And there was no
charge. That’s grace, my friends.
USA Today reported, last week, that Americans are more
pessimistic about the future than they have ever been. Their polls and statistics bear that out, and
we probably agree with the assessment.
What is it, then, I ask, that will turn our pessimistic purple into
pink?
We’ve heard bits and pieces of the incredible life of Mary
today. I shared a story of grace in
action at Christian Brothers Automotive.
But we’ll need more than mother Mary’s example and an eighteen hundred
dollar repair job. We need our Lord; our
incarnate Lord born that first Christmas; our crucified, risen, ascended,
coming-againg-to-judge-the-quick-and-the-dead Lord.
Our souls do not need examples so much as they need to become
magnifying glasses. Mary exclaimed:
My
soul magnifies the Lord
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for
he has been mindful
of
the humble state of his servant.
From
now on all generations will call me blessed,
for
the Mighty One has done great things for me—
holy
is his name.
His
mercy extends to those who fear him,
from
generation to generation.
His mercy extended to you and to me – and from generation to
generation. And that’s how purple gives
way to pink, guilt to forgiveness, sorrow to joy, death to new life. Amen.
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