SUNDAY SERMON
A STABLE LAMP IS LIGHTED
Advent IV, Yr C
December 21, 2003
Gospel: Lk. 3.7-18
Advent means coming. Advent is meant to get us ready for what's coming. Advent points to one particular coming. We know what's coming…or do we?
Mary knew what was coming. She knew she was pregnant. Women know these things, often long before doctors and pregnancy tests. She knew she needed to get away from Nazareth, away from her parents and away from Joseph, her fiancé. People looked down on girls who had babies out of wedlock. So Mary went away-went out to see her country cousin, Elizabeth.
It turned out Elizabeth knew what was coming, too. She herself was pregnant. When she heard Mary's voice at the front door, the baby inside her leapt for joy. Did her baby know what was coming, too? Did Elizabeth or Mary really know what these two pregnancies would mean?
When a baby is born in a family, do we know, can we ever know all that it will mean?
These two babies of Elizabeth and Mary would grow up to be John the Baptist and Jesus of Nazareth, two cousins whose lives were linked before birth when their mothers spent three months together getting ready.
Right after Mary arrived for this visit, Luke tells us she sang a song. It is known as the Magnificat (opening line, My soul magnifies the LORD). Mary's song teaches us a lot about what's coming. She praises God her Savior, recalls his mercy, then goes to great lengths to describe a complete reversal of human values.
God has scattered the proud in their conceit; 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.
Luke
1.51-53
Somehow this reversal is connected with the baby inside her. Mary knows this. Her song, Magnificat, is precious and priceless not just for its poetry. It is priceless because of what it reveals of Mary's heart. She senses a great reversal is coming. Peace on earth and mercy mild…upheaval, scattering the proud, casting down the mighty, lifting up the lowly. A reversal that hinges on a manger…and a cross.
This movement from a manger to a cross is captured in the hymn we just sang, "A stable lamp is lighted." Please open with me your hymnals to Hymn 104. Together Mary's Magnificat and "A stable lamp is lighted" can open up the meaning of this fourth and last Sunday of Advent.
The hymn begins with a stable bathed in the light of a baby's birth. (READ stanza 1)
A stable lamp is lighted whose glow shall wake the sky;
the stars shall bend their voices and every stone shall cry…
And straw like gold shall shine; a barn shall harbor heaven, a stall become
a shrine.
The tune has the feel of a lullaby to it but also a haunting, foreboding quality which meets the text. You might notice that none of the characters from the stable scene is mentioned by name. Mary, Joseph, and the child are implied, not named. Yet we supply their names because we know the story…or do we know the whole story?
The stanzas jump ahead like fast forward on your VCR. The stable image fades and suddenly we have palm branches in stanza 2 and then death in stanza 3.
One minute there is a stable with stars singing; the next, a cross against a black sky. We know the story but can we take it in?
Before looking at the last stanza, I want to speak about the repeated phrase: and every stone shall cry. At the poetic level, the writer chooses the impossible to make his point. We know stones; they are heavy, dull and dumb. Lifeless, hard, silent.
And yet, why do I pick up a greenish pebble on the Isle of Iona where St. Columba landed bringing the gospel to Scotland? Why do I treasure a piece of black volcanic rock which someone brought me from Patmos where John wrote the Revelation? And why on occasion have I weighed down my pockets and suitcases with stones from hiking or beach-combing? Heavy, dull and dumb? No. Tangible, tactile stones-telling part of the story of my life. They speak. When I don't look at them for a while in the bowl in my bedroom, they cry to be heard, to remind me of other shores and the wideness of God's creation.
There is a direct connection between stones and Jesus entering Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. As the people proclaim him King and shout "Hosanna in the highest," the Pharisees are infuriated. They tell Jesus to silence the people. Jesus replies, Nothing can silence them; even if they were silent, these stones (pointing to the roadway) would cry out.
Now we turn to stanza 4. The end of the hymn echoes the ending of time when Jesus will come again. This is the "great reversal" described by Mary in her Magnificat: He has put down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of low degree (Lk. 1.52).
The hymn simply says, But now as at the ending, the low is lifted high… The reversal begins with what's coming at Christmas: the birth of the Child. The reversal is complete when Christ returns in glory and the worlds are reconciled. Between the first coming and the second coming stand Jesus' cross and resurrection. Between the first coming and the second coming is where we live and move and have our being.
This hymn helps me know what's coming: a manger and a cross…and one day a second coming. It reminds me that for Christians, Christmas is not an isolated event. This hymn points us to what's coming in the fullest sense. But we don't have to wait til the ending to know the Child. Worlds are already being reconciled.
Graciously as we live in the "in-between time", God brings hope and healing to strife between nations and strife between family members; God brings peace and courage to people who dread this season, who are lonely, who are destitute, if not in finances, in friends. God brings unexpected joy in the face of a toothless woman who is thrilled to have a job as a Salvation Army bell ringer and a little girl receiving a purple bicycle through Operation Joy.
Every Advent and Christmas and for that matter, every Good Friday and Easter,
are meant to get us ready for what is coming when Christ returns.
Sermon preached Advent IV, December 21, 2003, at Church of
Holy Communion, Memphis, by the Rev. Blair Both.