It is Mother’s Day and so I felt that I should start with a couple of observations. Did you ever notice that Mother’s Day is when everybody waits on mother and she pretends not to mind the extra work? A long time ago I found the perfect Mother’s Day card and I try to tell my mother this every year. Mom, now that we are mature adults, I can tell you with a kind of relationship I never imagined we would have, that you are still the first person I think of when I fall down and go boom! Virtues are learned at Mother’s knee; vices are learned at some other joint. That’s one of those that kind of sneaks up on you.
There are some mothers that I would like to call your attention to from history who are taught us some important lessons about God. And I think probably this is the most important reason for us to recognize mothers and fathers during the course of the year because they have the privilege and the fearful responsibility of representing God to their children. A mother that I would like to tell you about is a woman named Anthusa. You may not have heard of her. She lived from around 330 A.D. to 374 A.D. in Antioch. She was a widow at the age of 20. And she is remembered most importantly for her influence on her son, John Chrysostom. John was one of those folks that we refer to as “the church fathers”. We owe a lot to Anthusa because what we are doing here was shaped by her son who was so strongly influenced by her. Historical accounts record that she was an attractive woman, very intelligent, had come from a well-to-do family, and was well educated. Clearly she could have remarried and done quite well. But instead, she devoted herself to raising her two children, John and his sister.
Now John, who wrote later about his mother and her influence on him, became a great teacher of the Bible, was appointed as the Bishop in Constantinople by Meletius. He was a zealous missionary. He had brought other missionaries and no doubt was instrumental to bringing Christianity to the world in those early days in the church after the passing of the Apostles. And we can pretty well bet that Anthusa had given him that vision for loving, and caring, and devotion to the Bible. Here was a mother who was in many ways a mother to the church.
Here is another mom that you are probably more familiar with--Susannah Wesley. Now being good United Methodist, you all know who Susannah Wesley is. And like a lot of moms, she’s introduced to us as John and Charles’ mom. You know, if my mother were here today, sooner or later somebody would say, “Well, this is Reverend Dan’s mom.” Well, Susannah Wesley was a lot more than John and Charles’ mom. She was their teacher. She had quite a great mind in her own right. She was an excellent theologian. She was a great Bible scholar. She spoke different languages; taught them to her children. She educated and prepared all of her children, John and Charles most significantly, so that they were able to go to Oxford University in their teens. Now we are very proud of our heritage as United Methodists knowing that John Wesley probably did more to prevent revolution in Great Britain at a time when revolution was happening around the world in different countries. We are very proud of our heritage as Methodists because John is the one who brought a revival to Great Britain that spilled over into the American colonies and gave birth to churches like this one. We are proud of Charles because of his 9,000 hymns, his beautiful poetry that has taught us so much about our relationship with God. But we mustn’t ever forget that what they gave us was the result of a seed planted in them by their mother. And that she is, in many ways, the mother of our United Methodist Church.
And now I want to talk about the most famous mother of all time—Mary, the mother of Jesus. Mary is the most exemplary choice. She is the one that we can look to as a soul that magnifies the Lord. Now you are use to hearing her story more at Christmas time. And I’d like to change that tradition today. In fact, it occurred to me this is very hard for me to put into words. I’ve practiced and practiced and I can’t get this right. Mary would have had the conversation we are going to look at about now in relation to the birth of Jesus in the same way that it is this many months before Christmas. We are actually talking about Mary’s pregnancy at exactly the right time because when we do that at Christmas time we’ve so compressed it, haven’t we? So consider this, about now in relation to Christmas, Mary has been told recently by the angel, Gabriel, that she is going to carry the child that will be the Messiah, the Son of God. That she has been miraculously impregnated and will be giving birth to this child while still a virgin. And this is a frightening thought for her, but she accepts it. Her answer ultimately to the angel Gabriel is, “Let it be”. She has traveled to visit her cousin, Elizabeth, who has also had a miraculous conception and is carrying a child of great significance to the church. And when Elizabeth has seen Mary, the baby left within her womb, and she said, “Blessed are you among women,” Mary’s response is something we call “the magnificat”. These are the words I’d like for us to look at right now.
Luke 1:45-55. Mary said, “My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant. From now on all generations will call me blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things for me holy is his name. His mercy extends to those who fear him, from generation to generation. He has performed mighty deeds with his arm; he as scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts. He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, remembering to be merciful to Abraham and his descendants forever, even as he said to our fathers.”
Mary has summed up in those beautiful words what happens when God is the focal point in a person’s life. She says, “My soul magnifies the Lord.” Have you ever thought about what that means? I tend to take it very literally. To magnify something is to bring it into focus. I use the magnifying glass; use the magnification of my glasses in order to bring things that are fuzzy into clear focus. And Mary has seen that through her humility and her lowly state, God is using her to bring God’s self into focus. Souls that magnify the Lord can look to heaven and in so doing, heaven is brought into focus to the world. That isn’t a self-centered action. Mary’s prayer, her song, was not selfish. Rather, she had recognized that it is not about her, it’s about God and what God is doing through her. Mary is not saying, “I am magnified by the Lord”. She is saying that “My soul magnifies, brings into focus, the Lord.” And so this famous mom has taught us something we all need to remember about our lives in Christ. We are to surrender ourselves as a mother surrenders her freedom, her mobility, her flexibility, in order to care for her child. We surrender in that way to Christ and then in so doing, Christ becomes more clearly focused to the world around us.
Mary said, “The Mighty One has done great things for me.” Do you know whether times are good or bad, the Mighty One is doing great things in your life. We just have a bad habit of forgetting that. We have a tendency to ignore what our Mighty God is doing around us when we think we are doing just fine on our own. And we have a tendency to underrate what our Mighty God is doing around us when things don’t seem to be going very well. In his book, 450 Stories for Life, Gust Anderson tells the story about a little farm community in Alberta, Canada where there had been a drought for about eight years. And the people had been made poor by this drought. Their crops had failed year after year; they had nothing to offer. They had very little in the way of money. But they continued to participate in their weekly worship services at their little country church. And Gust happened to be there for this particular occasion when one of the farmers got up to speak in his overalls and his coat—the only clothes he had really to wear to church that day. And the farmer very sincerely quoted from the book of Habakkuk. And with deep meaning the farmer spoke these words, “Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labor of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no food; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls; yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation.” This is what it means to focus on God and allow others to see him clearly through ourselves, to rejoice profoundly even in the midst of our suffering and our sorrow. People will not remember you for the way that you glorified God when things were going well. But they will remember how you glorified God when they thought you should be angry with God, disappointed, and let down. Mary taught us that by her submission and obedience to a situation that for her was a terrible situation. Here she was betrothed to a man but had not consummated that relationship yet. Here she was a young girl in a very small town in the hills around Nazareth and were this news about her to get out she would likely had suffered severely for it. And yet, she says, “The Mighty One has done great things for me.”
Mary said, “He has regarded my lowly state.” You know, as you read those versus, you need to remember that God doesn’t make things happen just for those people who seem holier than most. There is no indication that Mary was anything unusual at that time in her life. In fact, it seems that God chose her simply because she was so insignificant and small; such an unlikely mother to the Savior of all humanity. It was her unlikeliness that made her the perfect candidate. And so if you are tempted to think that you are not worthy of God’s favor, that you are not the one that God should use, consider Mary, the mother of Jesus. God delights in using the least likely to do the most remarkable things. And that makes all of us likely candidates for God’s glory through us.
Mary said, “He has scattered those who are proud.” You know, even as Mary is focusing on the amazing things that God is doing through her, she is also keenly aware that God is doing something through her for the people called Israel, the descendants of Abraham. And she’s recognized that pride is one of the awfullest, most ugly sins known to humanity. That it has incredible destructive power. It causes some of us to think that we are above the law and a little better than the rest. And she has witnessed this in her life. She has known this in the history of her people. And she knows that things like what God is doing through her are exactly the way that God brings down the proud and the haunty. And that it is through her simple nature, this little maiden from a little farm town in the middle of the hills, is going to carry the savior of all humankind. And it is through that that God says to the proud, “You get all your rewards your way, but people like Mary, souls who magnify the Lord, will receive their glory in a place where it can not be taken away. They will store their treasure in heaven and it will become part of the very inheritance earned by her son, Jesus.”
Mary said, “He has filled the hungry with good things.” Take someone who has been given a little and been content in it, and they will show you invisible riches. I don’t wish this on anyone here, but sometimes you have to have some things taken away in order to realize how really wealthy you are. Mary doesn’t have much we can assume because she lives in Nazareth, which is a town that doesn’t offer much. It doesn’t necessarily make her poor, but she is not living in the big cities, she’s not living where the wealth is. She’s on the verge of losing whatever she has because of this unplanned pregnancy. And she says, “He has filled the hungry with good things.” The soul that magnifies the Lord has recognized that eternal wealth is of greater importance and value than anything we have on earth.
Mary said, “He has helped his servant Israel.” You know, Mary as I said, has recognized that not only is God working through her but God is at work in this body of believers called Israel but more importantly the descendants of Abraham, which includes us. Mary uttered that song of praise to Elizabeth for our sake as well. Mary recognized that God was completing through her and through her child, the plan, the covenant that He intended to fulfill with Abraham that generations would call her blessed simply because she was the vehicle through whom God fulfilled the covenant with Abraham. We are among the stars that God said would be the children of Abraham. And Mary recognized that in that hour of questioning and blind innocent faith.
Mary’s obedience and faithfulness in carrying Christ, giving birth to the Lord Jesus, raising Him in the simple way of his people, allowing Him to become everything that He needed to be for our sake, Mary’s act of motherhood and simply being a soul that magnifies the Lord has helped us to see clearly who Jesus is and what Jesus has to offer us. Our goal then today, as we think about mothers, is to think in a broader sense about how all of us can magnify the Lord. How we can see the Lord more clearly when we look to those souls we know who magnify the Lord. And so as Stacey said earlier, “Find the company of other believers and then through that focus, you’ll see the Lord more clearly.”
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