I’m really glad that Amanda was willing to read Mary’s beautiful prayer, known as the Magnificat.

We need a little bit of help to break through the haze of gilded Christmas cards and remember that the Christ child was born to a woman who was barely more than a child herself. In all likelihood, Amanda is older than Mary was when these prayerful words of challenge came from her lips.

If Catholics are perhaps guilty of thinking too much of Mary, maybe the rest of us are guilty of not thinking enough of her. What words do you use to describe Mary? [ASK]

It’s tough, isn’t it? We forget how vulnerable and young she was, and yet we also sugarcoat her, stick her on a donkey, place her in a placid stable without the pain of labor, just meekly writing things down in her little baby book as she “treasures all these things in her heart.”

She’s becoming for me an enigma; an innocent girl without guile, but with the strength of a samurai. We can’t miss the power. We can’t miss the challenge. We can’t miss the protest and the victory in her words.

This beautiful prayer is a turn-the-world-upside-down poem, drawn from justice passages of the Old Testament.

This meek, humble girl is glorying in the leveling work of God. She’s not just giddy with the joy of a young woman awaiting a baby. She is seeing farther, seeing the hope of God for the weak and wounded in the world.

Mary doesn’t just see her son; she sees the justice work that God will do through the son in her womb. She hopes for the activity of God to break in with power!

This young girl is really a defiant giant, a woman joining with God to usher in a new era, powerfully aching for the movement of God to bring down the rich and proud and raise up the poor and humble. She serves a God who levels the playing field because he shows no favoritism.

She aches for justice and freedom, and will not go meekly and quietly into the history books; Mary’s prayer breaks over us like a crashing wave.

As I read her prayer, as I prayed her prayer over and over this week, an image came to my mind.

In 1968, in Mexico City, in the Olympics, Tommie Smith ran 200 meters faster than any human being had ever run it before. But we don’t remember him for that.

After riots and protests and killings in the Civil Rights movement, with the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy still fresh in the headlines, the world was concerned with far more important things than sports. But on the medal platform, Tommie Smith and John Carlos provided the iconic image of quiet protest by the oppressed, as they stood with one black-gloved fist in the air, head bowed, as the national anthem played.

It was controversial and it was powerful, a gesture intended, as these men both say to this day, to be a message for human rights and not just black power. A fist in the air is about as ineffectual on the surface as a prayer by a teenage Jewish girl, her bulging belly a sign of her social stigma.

Mary’s prayer is not saccharin sweet.

It is as defiant as a gloved hand shoved in the air during a sweltering summer of discontent. Mary’s prayer about the baby in her womb shows she doesn’t see Jesus as some loving Santa Claus, spreading gifts equally to one and all. Her prayer is contentious. She doesn’t just thank God for lifting up the humble and filling the hungry with good things.

No, she has to take the controversial step of going further. Not only does God raise up the downtrodden in her prayer, God scatters the proud, brings down rulers from their thrones, and sends the rich away empty. Mary’s praise to God is her protest of injustice, and a celebration of our God who acts with mighty power to level the inequities of the broken world we live in.

Where would a nice girl get ideas like this?

Well, she gets them from her bible, from what we call the Old Testament.

“The Magnificat is at times marked by specific OT allusions, but more commonly OT motifs and language are used in a fresh [way], which evokes more generally the whole thought world of OT faith,” writes John Nolland.

In other words, she knows the Old Testament backwards and forwards, knows the God it describes, and knows that this is the heart of God: to love all peoples of the earth equally and to act consistently to level the playing field that we constantly try to stack in our favor.

Our theme words for Advent this year are “Give, Stop, and Celebrate.”

Today we’re looking at give, and I’ll be brutally honest: we don’t have much desire to create a saccharin sweet Christmas. We’d rather join defiant Mary to celebrate and join with our mighty God who is doing his leveling work, his justice work in the world.

We want to make Christmas an Old Testament Jubilee!

In Leviticus 25, we read about the Year of Jubilee. Every 50^th year, God’s people were asked to do something that is simply beyond comprehension in our world today. Every 50^th year, all debts were forgiven, and all land reverted to the family of the original owner.

God’s asked his people (and whether it was followed or not is a big debate…) …but God’s plan was to care for all people by a regular “leveling” of the resources they had been given.. Listen to Lev. 25: 13-17:

“In this Year of Jubilee everyone is to return to his own property. ‘If you sell land to one of your countrymen or buy any from him, do not take advantage of each other. You are to buy from your countryman on the basis of the number of years since the Jubilee. And he is to sell to you on the basis of the number of years left for harvesting crops. When the years are many, you are to increase the price, and when the years are few, you are to decrease the price, because what he is really selling you is the number of crops. Do not take advantage of each other, but fear your God. I am the LORD your God.”

And God is pretty clear that the word “mine” doesn’t fit too well in God’s view of the world…verse 23:

The land must not be sold permanently, because the land is mine and you are but aliens and my tenants.

God is crystal clear why he wanted this Jubilee, why he wanted a regular “leveling out” of the resources, keeping anyone from getting too much wealth or from having too little.

It’s all God’s, and God is the one who brought them out of slavery in Egypt. God brought them out of bondage, and he doesn’t want anyone to return to bondage and slavery and oppression.

Not even the aliens and temporary residents! Treat them all well, God says in verse 35, spread everything around, because it’s all a gift from me.

This is how God speaks all through the Old Testament. He will act on behalf of the poor and oppressed, and his people will join him in that action. Jubilee showed how important redemption is to God. When tough times came and someone had to lease their fields to someone else to make ends meet, a relative or kinsman always had the right to pay the debt and redeem the land for the original owners.

But if a family member never came through, Jubilee was God’s way of acting. John Hartley writes, “Yahweh himself was acting as the next of kin, liberating his kinsman’s property.” Even if family and friends fail, God never fails!

We want to participate as a church in a leveling process this advent.

By spending less than usual on gifts at Christmas and giving to those in need, we act as “kinsman-redeemers.” We become the family and friends who don’t fail our brothers and sisters in need. We want to purposefully act not to accumulate resources, but to distribute them to where they are needed most. That’s the purpose behind our giving tree and our “$7000 in ‘07” gifts to India and Love INC right here in Newberg.

The question I’ve been working to answer all week is, “Why would we do this? Why would we spend less on gifts for each other in order to give to those in need?”

It’s that question that led me to the answer found in Mary’s prayer and in the year of Jubilee. God’s work for justice can’t come down the chimney like Santa Claus. It can’t come without a cost. To raise up the poor comes at a cost to the wealthy. As much as I wish Mary’s prayer wasn’t so defiant, this is the God we serve and the world we live in. We want to choose to sacrifice and give because we want to join what God is doing to level and reorder the resources of the world.

Elaine and I have been talking about this quite a bit.

She brought me some great help from a book called “Affluenza”, which details the consumer epidemic in our culture, and challenges us to think differently. Let’s join Mary, and defiantly think differently this Christmas!

“The more Americans fill their lives with things,” write the authors of Affluenza, “the more they tell psychiatrists, pastors, friends and family members that they feel ‘empty’ inside. The more toys our kids have to play with, the more they complain about boredom…In all the great religious traditions, human beings are seen as having a purpose in life. Stripped to its essentials, it is to serve God by caring for God’s creations and our fellow human beings.”

Do you hear the challenge in that? We’ve made the first theme of Advent give, because we believe with our God that “stuff” does not satisfy; joining God’s work in the world does!

Our own Lisa McMinn said it this way in her book “The Contented Soul”:

“We need to learn, or perhaps just remember, how to pursue the right things, to want the Good Life as described throughout Scripture–connection to others, justice, peace, hope and love, beautiful aspects of life that satisfy the emptiness of our souls.”

So can we try this together?

Can we raise a quiet hand of protest, choosing not to buy Aunt Marge the Chia pet? Can we teach ourselves and our children that happiness is not found in stuff and checking off the Christmas gift list, but in celebrating the gifts of relationships that God has given us, in giving out of what God has given us in a defiantly joyful act of Jubilee?

There’s a danger, of course, a danger of becoming Scrooge-like in our pursuit of justice. Our quest to give can’t cause us to be ungrateful. I’ve imagined with horror a Christmas morning scene of someone opening the iPod Nano that Grandma has sacrificially and joyfully given, only to have her grandchild say, “Great! After I sell this on eBay, I’ll have $150 bucks to give to India!”

Please hear me. We’re not saying it’s wrong to exchange gifts, or that money given to the poor is “good” money and money spent on our families is “bad” money.

It’s always good to give, to our family and friends and to the poor in our community and around the world. It’s always good to receive a gift with grace and thankfulness, without making the giver feel awkward or guilty or unappreciated.

It just seems like it’s time to make a tangible stand against the lie that things make our lives complete.

Our church is joining a growing movement of people who are choosing to make Christmas a joyful Jubilee, a sharing and leveling of God’s resources to those who need it in our community and around the world.

So take your kids shopping with you for a gift from the giving tree, and talk about families right here in Newberg who not only can’t afford Christmas presents, but don’t have good food to eat every day.

Instead of buying a trinket for your cousin or sister or mom or grandson, write down what about them you are most grateful for, and tell them you sent some money to India in their honor. Or give them one of Lisa Nauman’s beautiful bracelets, and tell them that the proceeds went to help kids in Thailand.

Leave the sweater or tie or dancing Santa Claus at the store, and give someone a delayed gift. Last year, we gave gift certificates to Kiva, an organization that loans money to people around the world who are starting businesses. We gave people $50, to do whatever they wanted with it…but first, they got to loan it to the person of their choice around the world. When that person paid it back, they would have our gift, to use however they wanted.

Let’s be creative in our giving, and grateful for what we receive.

As you find ways to save money by giving less to friends and family, I hope you’ll join with us to give $7000 to India and to Love INC here in Newberg that serves the poor every single day. Actually, I hope you’ll join with us to give MORE than $7000, that we will joyfully and defiantly join Mary to celebrate the God who brings justice by leveling our world.

Let’s make this Christmas a Jubilee!