The Fourth Sunday of Advent

22 December, 2024

Luke 1: 39-55

The Rev’d Devin McLachlan

Since love is a kind of movement, and there is no movement except towards something, when we ask what must be loved, we are asking towards what we ought to be moved.[1]

There is Mary, not yet showing but expecting, trekking (uphill most of the way) through bandit country, perhaps as far as a hundred miles — from here to the outskirts of Sheffield — to visit her elder cousin Elizabeth. She’s married to that priest, Zachariah, and they’re both getting on in years. But Mary has heard that her cousin is pregnant, expecting a child long after she and Zachariah had given up hope.

I suppose Mary could have just sent thoughts and prayers.  After all, she has her own problems to worry about.

But an angel had told her… —  did that really. happen? Mary might have wondered, somewhere at the start of the second day of her journey, Did the Angel Gabriel  really show up at my house to say I would conceive and bear a son,  And that he’d be … be…

And then she might have thought: Well, if I imagined it,  old Elizabeth is going to be very confused when I say an angel also told me she was pregnant!

But this is Mary, Mary who faced down Gabriel and said: Here am I, the servant of the Lord;  let it be with me according to your word

So if she was given to a moment of self-doubt along the road, I don’t think it slowed her down at all.  For Mary didn’t saunter to Elizabeth.  She “went with haste”, Luke tells us, meta spoudes  (μετὰ σπουδῆς)  Not just “haste,” not a disorganised hurry, "Less haste, more speed…” Spoudes is a positive trait — diligent, speedy zeal, earnestness for the Greeks one of the virtues of a good citizen or a dedicated servant.

Mary, first citizen of the Kingdom of God and handmaiden of the LORD, isn’t franticly sprinting. Meta spoudes, she is striding in great, zealous steps, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. Luke’s language makes me imagine young Mary kicking Elizabeth’s door down in her joyful hurry to see her.

Since love is a kind of movement, and there is no movement except towards something, when we ask what must be loved, we are asking towards what we ought to be moved.

And here all is in movement in Luke’s Gospel:  Mary, racing up the road to Elizabeth, Elizabeth crying out in joy, John leaping in his mother’s womb, and Mary breaking out into that great, magnificent, dangerous song. And the movement does not stop but keeps going, a cascade of motion:

Because God has come to the aid of his child Israel, in remembrance of his mercy: The proud are scattered, the lowly lifted up, the rich sent empty away and the mighty pulled down from their kathedra, their thrones. [2]

Since love is a kind of movement, and there is no movement except towards something, when we ask what must be loved, we are asking towards what we ought to be moved.

Yes, it is all moving. But this is no earthquake of chaos, no madcap Brownian motion.  Unlike my cats  at two in the morning, this is not the Holy Spirit with the zoomies. With Mary we are not just going.  We are going somewhere.

We are going somewhere with Mary today, because She. Is. In. Love.  She is in Love with God.  Fiercely, dangerously, in love with God.

“My soul magnifies the Lord,

and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour!”

Mary sings out with all her heart.

Since love is a kind of movement, and there is no movement except towards something, when we ask what must be loved, we are asking towards what we ought to be moved

For Mary, that’s an easy answer:  Love.  Love is what Mary has been running towards.  Love is what makes John leap for Joy.  Love is what Elizabeth cries out.  Love is what will lead Simon and Andrew ,Mary Magdalene and Joanna,  and all the rest to leave behind any thought of security and follow the road that Jesus is travelling.  Love is what will lead Benedict to the mountains south of Rome, and perhaps Love is what led you to church today.

Dangerous stuff, mind you, dangerous stuff. For while there are thrones and dominions and powers that I can’t wait to see cast down,our Advent Prose cautions us that, well…All of us have sometimes been proud. All of us have been lost in the imaginations of our own hearts, or have lorded it over others, in thought or word or deed.  All of us have, at one time or another, run not towards love but towards illusions of power and pride.

If we are to run in love, towards love — as Mary does — then first we must let God cast down all pride and all power, let God throw down all self-deceit and self-satisfaction.  We must do so as individuals, and God knows we must do so as a Church.

We cannot run towards love if we run over the vulnerable.  And we cannot run the race set before us if the hungry are not fed and the lowly not lifted up, lifted up so that together we might all run in love towards Love.

That is the journey we have been on this Advent, running in love, towards love.  Love who was born that night in Bethlehem. Born to Mary, not notably meek nor mild but in motion from day one, magnifying the Lord, rejoicing in God our saviour. Blessed is she who believed. For there will be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.  Amen.

[1] Augustine of Hippo, Eighty-Three Various Questions, 35.1

[2] Mary in fact uses the Greek “thronon” θρόνων (throne) and not “kathedra” καθέδρα (seat of authority). But perhaps some of the thrones in Mary’s song might well be episcopal.