CHRISTMAS SERMON/ESSAY: "GOD LOOKS WITH FAVOR ON OUR LOWLINESS"... Luke 1: 39-56

                       .   MARY'S MAGNIFICAT

46 And Mary[a] said,

“My soul magnifies the Lord,
47     and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
48 for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.
    Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
49 for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
    and holy is his name.
50 His mercy is for those who fear him
    from generation to generation.
51 He has shown strength with his arm;
    he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.52 He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
    and lifted up the lowly;
53 he has filled the hungry with good things,
    and sent the rich away empty.
54 He has helped his servant Israel,
    in remembrance of his mercy,
55 according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
    to Abraham and to his descendants forever.”

Introduction:

I.  I ask your good will for my efforts to see the stories we have all listened to through a different window of perspective. A point of view I'm suspecting is needed if we are to make good of the present chaos in our nation and the world. A different view point because we have, like it or not, changed internally. As Jesuit priest and world renowned paleontologist Teilhard De Chardin wrote in 1942. “..the new problems of humankind, without our suspecting it, have made us radically different in less than 200 years.” Regarding how we hear and interact with  Bible texts like  Mary's Magnificat, let me make two observations which I believe might guide persons to more likely experience some transformation in our own souls.

II. Humans have always had two different aspects of reality.

A. One is what we learn when we observe the outer world by what comes through our physical senses alone. This important material function values reason and logic which it applies to what is perceived through the senses. Without our realizing it our connection to this material aspect has become what most people call and live as reality, the only reality. Our present generations have derived much confidence and hope for the future ….. perhaps till now, from humanity's successful development of our material aspect of reality. However, now this aspect of our reality has led us into various political , national, ethnic and religious camps to look at each other as enemies and we are urged in good conscience to exert our energy to protecting our material part of the world and our goods while thoughtlessly diminishing basic needs of others.  

This material seeking, grasping, controlling part of our psyche has brought us Science and all the technologies by which we remain continuously dazzled. It systematically focuses, in most every human endeavor, on the material aspect of the world. We have not so subtly defined human success as amassing and controlling as much as possible this part of our reality and it has been an amazing human success story for two hundred years. This emphasis no doubt was an evolutionary necessity but at great cost which we must now wake up to? In the course of a few hundred years it has caused us to lose a sense of and contact with the other real aspect of our being which can appropriately be called Soul. 

B. Soul in contrast to our material physical senses is a reality  we can pick up on more directly and more subtly from our own inner world. It comes to us by spontaneous images, hunches, ideas, synchronicities and day and night dreams. And we have not been well trained to pick these up, make them conscious and learn essential lessons for living from them. But we can do much better when we know soul's great importance and how it can enrich life, making us not 'great' but far more whole than we are presently. Soul material can also reach and touch us through ancient religious texts such as Bible stories. 

Humans giving our energies to the material realities in the last 300 years has nearly led to a loss of personal and collective soul. We still sometimes expose ourselves to soul material like Mary's magnificat, creative art, story and film but we do it usually with our dominant material focusing aspect, not with our open soul capacity. So Sacred story, if we be honest, often strikes us as unreasonable, as from another world and easily leaves the modern person with a big 'so what.' This is also the typical attitude we continue to have toward any dreams we manage to recall.

More Discussion

I. So to hear Sacred text or a dream in its own language we must bring our Soul aspect to it. Soul language is different than our usual materialistic, tightly logical and reasoned language. Soul information, whether sacred text or a dream, brings something that is beyond normal rationsl words. It is consistently paradoxical inviting us to hold seemingly contradictory images or statements in mind as once. So it speaks primarily in images, images which if we make some effort can bring important meaning and direction to our total being,  a genuine wisdom that our material aspect, no matter how dazzling or promising, is incapable of bringing. The material aspect without soul eventually leaves us feeling soulless, defensive,  frustrated, competitive and chaotic.

II. To hear the Bible stories  as soul language we must give up the attitude that we are hearing history.... that these are necessarily actual outer happenings recorded materially by eye witnesses as historical events. This is not easy for  a modern secular or  religious person. We carry a deep bias for the material world compared to the inner one which  now demands to be heard. To continue to insist that soul language be material language is to certainly interrupt its capacity to affect us inwardly, to significantly transform us to a better more whole state. Modern Bible scholarship and depth psychology give us good evidence that the Bible is not primarily  history and is not usually materially literal. Soul contents  come instead from the depths of our collective human soul, from the origins of all that is, from what we call God.

 If these considerations are new I'd advise one to not at first ask 'how' can I better hear my Soul?  To simply be open to Soul being a reasonable and potential reality and taking  it seriously is what is most important. Soul wants to find us as much as we want and need to find it.

III. So sacred text, like a dream, is not trying to tell us about the outside material world but about our personal internal soulful world. This particular text listened to that way tells us among other things that we can discover and own our personal 'lowliness.' Now that is the last thing that our material  reality aspect wants to do. It is all about finding our highness and almightiness and encourages,  when not informed by soul;  personal pride, superiority over matter, the earth and other people.

Soul language confronts us in such a text and makes clear that we adults lose our potential wholeness and harmony with inner reality until we legitimately denounce this sense of pride in our reasoning,  material based inteligence and  our controlling of others and of life's transitions. It says as marvelous as our intellectual reasoning success has been, it has become a most dangerous liability when not coupled with soul. We are ,the text reminds,  indeed like a poor young pregnant girl in Palestine. Being female meant to be without human value, being poor anywhere means to have little control over ones life. It means to have no political capitol or representatives.

 Soul says no matter how much of these we accumulate we remain most lowly and must recognize and own our human situation. That our personal or collective material reality  aspect is incapable of solving our most urgent complex problems. Soul must be found and honored at this point in evolutionary history or all will collapse. This is what the message from our forgotten soul is in such a passage.

This mesns in our time of present chaos  and  attempts to undermine needed institutional  supports we can start focusing finally on our soul, our inner world . That rather than  a focus on outer politics, as important as that may be, as where the answer and redemption of humanity's present hostilities will be found, instead real solutions will emerge  from our paradoxical inner soul world. Our material reality aspect has become helpless and lowly. This means we can do the most good, not by material and political strategizing which historically only push the most serious  problems forward , but by finding and strengthening our personal souls. For it is ultimately from the unseen soul world  that the outside world is going to be determined. If the personal and collective soul of humans is weak or lost than the outer world by nature in time reflects that very situation. I think disconnect with soul  is what we are seeing all about us. It seems urgent that we personally know of our objective lowliness.( read again Luke 1: 48, 52).  

These images, like most Sacred text, being a product of the collective human soul means that what is true of Mary is true of all persons. We are genuinely lowly and must come to realize that psychological fact  to be more whole human beings. Soul  provides no hope in our dominant hubris or  talk of us being great. It instead  insists we discover our  objective lowliness, welcomed or not. Human survival depends on such a new level of consciousness.

IV. There is so much more about our collective soul in this text. One is that our soul, when more fully found , is both strong and good at its center. And this is who we actually are. And because we all are connected to the same collective soul such inner soul reality can be discovered by every person. Such discovery would transform us into humans who intentionally cooperate and seek the well being of each other, not to continue to compete and control each other.

Another important soul reality I find here is we are living at a time where the 'feminine principle' , as compared to 3000 years of Western 'male principle' patriarchy which is a source of our material reality  described above, is necessarily on the rise. And the collective soul urges us in this text to live in support and harmony with that. This story is about two women, Elizabeth and Mary, and about a radical valuing of the young poor homeless woman Mary.  

The recent amazing effect of Alabama black women in electing the new Senator of their state and the recent national tide of women courageously owning being sexually abused and harassed are two of many hopeful ways we see the 'feminine principle' being realized in the outer world.

Conclusion: I'd like to read an excerpt of a sermon from about the year 1300 C.E. by Meister Eckhart. He was a German Dominican Catholic priest monk and teacher of  high standing living a stable outer world life.. He died on trial for heresy and his full acceptance in the Catholic Church remains uncertain. He is often referred to as 'The Father of German Thought'. He has come to be called a Christian mystic, for the very reason that he was one who learned to look within to soul and to report and teach what he found in relation to the scriptures.

Keep in mind this sermon is soul language, not history. It is primarily images, not hard reasoning. It has much that is paradoxical in it. It is like dream material. Let it in, not primarily thinking intellectually about it or the soul effect will be missed. I am reading a paraphrase with additions to it. I felt it would be more relevant than anything else I could say about the magnificat of the mother of Jesus. You may find yourself on reflection to know at your core, " I am lowly." This message, Mary's Magnificat, from soul to soul, is saying God can do much good with that.

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 PARAPHRASE WITH ADDITIONS TO MEISTER ECKHART'S SERMON ON THE ANGEL'S          GREETING..re 1300 C.E.

 Eckhart has been called 'The Father Of German Thought.'

Here I offer a parable. There was a certain man and his wife; the woman by accident lost an eye, and was extremely troubled about it. Her husband then said to her, "Why are you troubled? "She answered, "It is not the loss of my eye that troubles me, but the thought that you may love me less on account of that loss." He said, "I love you all the same." Not long after he put one of his own eyes out, and came to his wife and said, "Wife, that you may believe I love you, I have made myself like you: I, too, now, have only one eye." So humans could hardly believe that God loved them till God put one of His eyes out, that is took upon Itself human nature, and was made human. Just as fire infuses its essence and clearness into the dry wood, so has God done with man. God has created the human soul and infused His glory into it.

If I am in a higher place and say to some one, "Come up here," that might be difficult for her. But if I say, "Sit down," that would be easy. So God deals with us. When a person discovers their lowliness and is humbled in nature, God cannot restrain God's mercy from such a situation; God must pour It's grace into the humble person and give God's self most of all, and all at once, to the very least of all. It is essential to God to give, for God's essence is goodness and that goodness is God's love. Love is the root of all joy and sorrow. Now slavish fear of God is of no long term value. But the right fear is the fear of losing God, of not finding that God is within each of us.


If the earth flees downward from heaven, it finds heaven beneath it; if it flees upward, it comes again to heaven. The earth cannot flee from heaven: whether it flee up or down, the heaven rains its influence upon it, and stamps its impress upon it, and makes it fruitful, whether it be willing or not. And so is God with human beings: whoever thinks he escapes God flies right into God's bosom, for every corner and angle is open to God. God brings forth God's very image in a person, whether a person likes it or not, whether a person sleeps or awakens; God works God's own will in the most personal of human and earth matters. That humans are unaware of it, is now our fault, for our taste is so spoiled by feeding on material things, only on what the senses bring to us. That is what prevents us from relishing God's love and inner presence. When the love for God is made alive in us , we naturally relish God, and all that we know and don't yet know. We then can unreservedly receive all things from all sources from God, and eventually humankind will work together the same works as God works, for we are each made in God's image.

God created the soul after the image of God's own highest perfection. God issued forth from the treasure-house of the everlasting fullness of God in which God had rested from all eternity. Then the tent of God's everlasting glory was opened in the depths of the human soul in ones like Mary and Jesus. Therefore by peering within one's own human soul one can find the growing pains of love. God has returned to God's secret chamber in the silence and stillness of the everlasting fullness of God from which all that is within and without comes. As God comes forth from the Highest, so God returns to the Highest with His Bride, and as with the young and poor Mary reveals to every humbled person the inner hidden treasures of God's fullness.

The first beginning is for the sake of the last end. God does not rest because God is the beginning, but because God is the end and goal of all creation and of human life. This end is concealed in the darkness of the everlasting fullness of God , and is unknown, and never was known, and never will be known. God's self remains unknown; the light of the everlasting God shines now in darkness, and the darkness comprehends it not. May following truth lead us to the truth. Amen.

BENEDICTION: As we go may the words of the Christmas hymn and the images of Mary and baby Jesus in the manger “Cast out our sin, and enter in, and be born in us today.”Amen.