God Magnified

A sermon delivered by the Rev. Roger Scott Powers at Light Street Presbyterian Church in Baltimore, on Sunday, December 24, 2006

Luke 1:39-55

Mary had just learned that she was going to have a baby, which was quite a surprise to her since she was still a virgin. The angel Gabriel had brought her the news. Mary was going to give birth to a son, and she was to name him Jesus. He would be great and would be called the Son of the Most High, the Son of God. What's more, the angel said, her relative Elizabeth, who was much older and considered barren (unable to have children), was at that very moment six months pregnant! Elizabeth was going to have a son as well!

As you might imagine, all this was an awful lot for young Mary to take in. It was incredible news! She was perplexed, to say the least, by the angel's words. Her first question to the angel was, "How could this be?" But the angel responded that nothing is impossible with God. What could she say to that? "Well, OK, if you say so."

When the angel had left her, Mary quickly set out for Elizabeth's house. If what the angel had said was true, her relative Elizabeth would be six months pregnant. That would be a miracle in itself, since Elizabeth and her husband Zechariah had never been able to have children before, and they were now getting on in years. Presumably, if what the angel had said about Elizabeth was true, then what the angel had said about Mary would be true as well. She, too, would conceive and give birth to a son.

No sooner had Mary entered the house and greeted Elizabeth, than the child Elizabeth was carrying leaped in her womb. It was a sign. With that, somehow, Elizabeth knew all about Mary. Mary didn't have to tell her a thing. "Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit," the text says. "And [she] exclaimed with a loud cry, 'Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.'" Elizabeth knew that Mary was to be the mother of her Lord, the mother of God.

Mary's response to Elizabeth, a song of praise to God, is known as "the Magnificat," from the first word in the Latin translation. "My soul magnifies the Lord," Mary says, "and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant."

"My soul magnifies the Lord." I've been pondering this phrase from Mary's song over the past week, playing with the idea of magnification and what it might mean to magnify God.

When I think of magnification, I think of optics, that branch of the physical sciences which deals with the properties and phenomena of light and vision. The science of optics has given us two primary instruments for magnifying things: the microscope and the telescope. Both were invented in the Netherlands in the early 1600s. Both use a system of lenses to collect light from tiny objects close by or large objects far away. Microscopes, of course, help us to see things that are too small to be seen with the naked eye, while telescopes help us to see things that are too far away for us to see with the naked eye. With a microscope you can see the crystalline structure of a mineral or the inner workings of a living cell. With a telescope you can see the rings around Saturn or the stars of distant galaxies light years away. Both kinds of instruments -- microscopes and telescopes -- help make the invisible visible. Both instruments make things appear closer to us. Both instruments make things look clearer to us. Both instruments help bring things into focus for us.

So, when Mary says, "My soul magnifies the Lord," I begin to think of Mary's soul as a lens through which God is magnified, God who is both transcendent (very far away from us) and imminent (very close to us), but invisible to us nevertheless. Mary is the instrument through which the instrument is made visible. Through Mary comes the light of the world, Emmanuel, God with us. By bringing Jesus into the world, Mary helps to give focus to God, for it is in Jesus that we see God most clearly. Jesus is our window to divinity. It is through Jesus that we see God's love for us fully revealed. By giving birth to Jesus, Mary helps to make it possible for God's love to be personified on earth. By bringing the Christ child into the world, Mary magnifies God, Mary enables God to appear closer to us than ever before.

Extending our optics analogy a bit further, the uncanny thing about light and Jesus is that they both have two natures. Scientists tell us that light acts as both a wave and a particle. It is not either/or but both/and. Similarly, theologians tell us that Jesus, the light of the world, also has two natures. He is both human and divine. As one who is fully human, Jesus serves as a role model for each of us to follow. He is an ethical guide for us, a moral compass. By this life and teachings, Jesus shows us what it means to live life in all its fullness. Jesus models for us what it means to be a faithful child of God. As one who is fully divine, Jesus shows us something of what God is like. Jesus is the human face of God, the mortal and visible manifestation of the immortal and invisible Creator God. Jesus is God magnified.

This doctrine of the incarnation -- that Jesus is God in human form -- has, over the years, become more and more important to my faith. Without Jesus, my view of God remains a blurry abstraction -- God as the mysterious, invisible, life force behind the universe. With Jesus, that blurry, abstract God comes into greater focus. God becomes clearer and more concrete to me. Jesus literally brings God down to earth for me. He makes the invisible visible, the infinite finite. With Jesus, I feel closer to God. He makes God more accessible to me by mediating the human and the divine. All of us, the entire Christian community, share in relationship with God through Jesus Christ. Christ is our mediator with God.

The significance of Christmas, then, is not simply that an extraordinary person was born. It is that God so loved the world that God became flesh and lived among us as Emmanuel (God with us) to heal our brokenness and restore us to wholeness. God became one with humanity that we might become one with God. That is the miracle and the mystery of Christmas.

And that is why, 2,000 years after his birth, we still remember that newborn bab wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. That is why we celebrate Jesus' coming into the world. That is why we worship and adore him. That is why many of us will gather together again tonight to hear the wondrous story of Christmas -- to hear the greatest story ever told. Thanks be to God!

Amen.