And he shall be the one of peace… (a sermon for the fourth Sunday of Advent)
Advent is my favourite liturgical season, and it’s always a joy to preach during it — but this was my first chance to preach on the Magnificat, and I loved it. I found it a little bit tricky working out how to land the final section, but bell hooks’ work gave me a key, and I could have used any number of passages from her writing.
The readings were Micah 5:2-5a and Luke 1:39-55
I.
In 85 AD a man stood on a hillside in what is now Scotland gathering his people to fight. They were facing an invading enemy that had destroyed their granaries and pursued them into the north, determined to defeat them. As he encouraged his men before the battle he reminded them of their identity as a free people, and described their enemy, as ‘Robbers of the world, lusting for dominion – they make a desert and call it peace.’
This is Calgacus, the leader of the Celtic tribes trying to hold off the Roman armies of the general Agricola. It’s a speech written by the Roman historian Tacitus in his biography of Agricola, and in the speech he gives to ‘the enemy’ the historian tells us a truth about his own people: that the peace they established in the places they conquered was only really peaceful for them.
Just over 100 years before this Augustus was established as the first Roman emperor. His defeat of his enemies ended fifty years of off-again, on-again civil wars and inaugurated what has become known as the Pax Romana – 200 years of peace across the Mediterranean world.
When Augustus wrote his autobiography, he emphasised this peace. There was a temple in Rome, to the god Janus, whose doors were closed when Rome was at peace — which had been rarely — but in Augustus’ reign they were closed three times. An altar to this peace was built on the Campus Martius – the place where the Roman armies gathered before going to war. If you’ve been to Rome, you might have seen it – standing across the Tiber river from the Vatican. The artwork that decorates it shows important scenes from Rome’s history, the military success of the imperial family, images of agriculture, fertility, and flourishing.
Everything about it is intended to show that Augustus is the one who has brought peace to the world.
A peace that Calgacus describes as a fraud and a desert.
And when Micah described the coming king, the one of peace, he was not pointing to the Roman emperor.
II.
I wanted to talk about the Roman empire because — well because you can take the girl out of the Ancient History department, but you can’t take it out of her… but also because Luke wants to talk about it too.
Luke is very careful to tell us when and where this story is taking place.
In chapter one: “In the days of King Herod of Judea…”
In chapter two, in the narrative of Jesus’ birth, we are told that these are the days when Augustus was Emperor – and that he wanted ‘all the world to be registered’ – which is a polite way of saying that he wanted to know how many people he had under his power.
This, Luke wants us to know, is the world Jesus is being born into.
A world where one man holds the power of life and death – over people thousands of miles away from him.
A man who taxed his subjects as much as he could without them rebelling against him.
A man whose armies would attack those beyond its borders because he saw them as a threat to the security and wellbeing of himself and his empire.
A place where security and peace were all for the benefit of the centre: Rome and its emperor – not those living on the edge of the edge, in places like Bethlehem or Nazareth.
But Luke knows who the one of peace truly is. And so, in this glorious passage of his gospel, does Mary:
“The Mighty one has done great things for me, and holy is his name
His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation
He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly
He has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.”
III.
Mary knows who she is carrying, who she will give birth to. Gabriel told her — this baby is destined for the throne of David; to rule forever.
I imagine this understanding of who Jesus would be and what he would do might have helped Mary confront the possibility of being an unmarried mother, the difficulties that carrying this child would bring to her relationship with Joseph and with her family. All those things would be worth it.
But perhaps it was strange for her to see what his life did look like – because it didn’t really look like the life of one who would show the strength of his arm or bring down the powerful from their thrones.
Those waiting for the one who was to rule Israel were expecting someone who would throw the Romans out of Judaea. They wanted to have an independent kingdom again, to be very visibly God’s people.
But as the gospel story goes on it becomes clear that Jesus isn’t a king like the Roman emperor: he doesn’t want to raise armies and conquer the world. That is not what bringing peace is, not for this king. Luke, perhaps more than any other gospel, focuses on Jesus’ teaching about the kingdom of God and what it means to live in it. It is a kingdom where those who have been excluded are welcome: the poor, the sick, the sinner; where attention is paid to the lowly and the outcast, not the rich and powerful. A tax collector can give away his wealth and enter into the kingdom. An unmarried girl from the back of beyond can give birth to the saviour. In such a kingdom these people shall live safely and securely, to return to the words of Micah, for he shall be the one of peace.
However, the way that Jesus lives, describing this kingdom, inviting people into it, making it real, does threaten the Roman emperor. It upends the system that benefits him and reveals how unimportant he is in the cosmic scheme of things. It is because of this threat: the stir that Jesus causes in Jerusalem that threatens Rome’s carefully established ‘peace’ in the region that Pilate executes Jesus.
It looks to all the world like defeat. But it is the event that makes the salvation that Mary describes possible, and that shows the Pax Romana to be an illusion: a desert, not a place that gives life – the inverse, in fact, of the kingdom of God.
IV.
And so, as we continue to wait for the coming of Jesus — and his coming again — we need to ask ourselves what kind of world he is coming into now. At the end of a year that started in lockdown and is ending with rising cases of a new variant the world feels bleak.
Sadly, we only have to look at the response to the covid pandemic to see some of the many ways in which those who already have have sought to secure themselves at the expense of those who have not. We can see who has done well in the pandemic, and who has not. In many areas of life, inequality has grown. I am beyond grateful for my covid vaccinations, and the fact that I’m able to get a booster to guard against the risk of the omicron variant — but I can’t help thinking that I might not have needed it if only more effort had been made by rich countries like ours to secure global vaccination before trying to return to ‘normal’.
And so this Advent, when I hear the words of Mary describing the scattering of the proud and the dethroning of the powerful, I can’t help wishing that it would come a little faster.
But I also want to ask us to imagine what it might be like to be like Mary today: to carry the promise of this king into this world, to be surprised by what it looks like, and to continue to live in expectation of it.
We might not all be called to give birth to the Son of God – but as members of the body of Christ in the world we are all called to share in this work of bringing him into the world: of making this upside-down kingdom a tangible reality.
So, what does it mean for us to include, to welcome, to pursue safety and peace for all — not just the powerful, and even if that threatens the powerful? How can we make life possible in the places we live and the things we do?
bell hooks, who died this week, wrote that “To build community requires vigilant awareness of the work we must continually do to undermine all the socialization that leads us to behave in ways that perpetuate domination.”[1] It is an awareness that is rooted in attention and love, a choice to connect that moves against fear and separation,[2] and that challenges the status quo.
This, I think, is the work that begins to bring down the powerful from their thrones, and lift up the lowly, because it pays attention to those who are overlooked and excluded and looks to remind the world that peace that doesn’t allow life here is not really peace.
So, as we wait for Christ to come, let’s ask ourselves who we are paying attention to and how that attention is shaping how we live. One way of asking this question is to ask ourselves what we wish God would overthrow a little faster or where we wish God’s mercy was a little more visible. What needs challenging or changing here? Who needs to be lifted up? Who are the tax collectors who need to be invited to make recompense and come into the kingdom? What can we do with our time, our money, our voices, that makes real the reign of the one of peace in this time and this place, on this issue — whatever it is that God is moving you to see.
Our action might not always look as dramatic as we would sometimes wish — and perhaps Mary felt this too — but let the vision of Mary’s Magnificat sustain us in those moments.
"for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.”
Amen.