DOWNWARD MOBILITY

December 6, 1987, 11:00 a.m. Worship Service
John M. Buchanan
Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago

Scripture
Luke 1:46-56

"My soul magnifies the Lord, for he has regarded the low estate of his
handmaiden." —-Luke 1:46,48(RSV)

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The lead item in the Editorial Section of the New York Times this
morning began...

“Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, now stand-on the verge of what
could be one of the most serious and constructive dialogues that Soviet and
American leaders have had in many years..

How apprepriate, in Advent, that the whole world is hushed,. in
anticipation, hopeful, waiting...

So let us be hopeful, and let-us hear the promise of Isaiah: that a
day is coming when...

“they shall beat their swords into piowshares, and their spears
into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift wp sword against nation,
neither shal] they learn war any more." (Isaiah 2:4)

Let us join brothers and sisters all over their world - praying for peace.

Lord God, you are the source of our hope. When angels sang their
Glorias at the birth of your son, they sang about- peace on earth... So we
pray for peace. We pray for President Ronald Reagan as he prepares to
represent us in summit negotiations this week. Give him courage and
patience and strength. We pray for Premier Mikhail Gorbachev - as he
represents the Soviet people. God of people - be in the midst of it all -
renewing strength, causing hope to soar, urging men and women to the

difficult but blessed tasks of peacemaking - through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen. :

I have discovered that there is nothing so guaranteed to get under
the skin of middle-class American Presbyterians as the suggestion that God
is partial to the poor. The preacher who wishes to enjoy a peaceful Advent
is therefore advised to tiptoe carefully around one of the classic texts of
the season — the Magnificat of Mary. "It's not a luilaby,” William Willimon
quips. . “The little pregnant girl looks out across the Judean hills bathed
in winter twilight and sings. She thinks she hears kingdoms fall and the
earth rock beneath her feet. She feels the child move within her as she
hums a little tune of liberation."

The Magnificat - “My soul magnifies the Lord,”...

Our brothers and sisters in the Roman Catholic tradition used to have
a decided advantage over us, by being able to keep it in Latin.. That way
you can’read and even enjoy hearing what Mary says without understanding
it. .We Protestants had the onerous duty of hearing it in plain English...

"he has scattered the proud...he has put down the mighty from their
thrones, and exalted those of low degree; he has filled the hungry with
good things, and the rich he has sent empty away."

I am told that the followers of Martin Luther, when they translated
the Latin Mass into German so the people could understand, left one portion
in Latin - the Magnificat. The German princes who were so helpful to
Luther. in his struggle with Rome, were properly nervous about the “mighty
being pulled from their thrones" and the low life types being exalted.

It's no wonder the preacher wants to tiptoe around that on an Advent
Sunday morning. There are places in the world where it is illegal,
subversive activity, to read gentle Mary's song in public. And, of course,
there are many places in the world where the words of the Magnificat sound
very much like a call to social, economic and, if all else fails, military
revolution.

If you were a Central American peasant, barely subsisting on land
owned by a wealthy family now living in Miami Beach, and if your husband or
brother had been executed by a para-military group and your parish priest
told you one day about a place in the Bible where the mighty are pulled
down and the poor exalted ~ you might find that very interesting. The
jeast.we - who are relatively wealthy - must do is understand how that sounds
when the circumstances are radically different from our own.

What a story it is! A young Galilean peasant girl is paying a visit
on her elderly cousin. The teenager, perhaps only 14 years old, is
pregnant. She is not an important person. Engagement to a tradesman, a
carpenter, had been a ray of hope. But that was in danger now. © Her
condition would soon be evident to her husband to be. And then there was
that strange dream, an angel telling her that the baby within her would be
great, and that she should call his name Jesus.

So young Mary hurries off to see an older and trusted relative, an

understanding grandmother figure. She is a frightened and bewildered
teenager with nowhere else to turn. And Luke, with poignancy and

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tenderness gathers up the power of this meeting by telling us that the
child in Elizabeth's womb jumped for joy when Mary arrives, and adds an
intriguing detail that Mary remains there three months.

We'd like to spiritualize it, make it into a metaphor - or at least
keep it in Latin, but Luke won't allow us to do that. Luke, alone among
the Gospel writers, sees that with the birth of this baby God has done
something new and that things are now fundamentally different for all God's
creatures.

The purpose of the whole enterprise, Luke and Mary remind-us, is the
salvation of human life, not simply the organization of a new religion.
The purpose is that human life should be saved - from everything that
inhibits and demeans and destroys it.. That includes physical illness,
ignorance, It includes demeaning poverty and oppression. Salvation, in
Luke and in Mary's Magnificat, means the overcoming of death and the
freeing of human life to be lived in glorious peace and fullness.

Luke and Mary understand that to participate in that, you have~to
know how poor you are. If you already have it all, think you have it
all, or are convinced that the purpose of your life is getting it all, what
need do you have for this baby?

That's what is behind the Biblical preference for the poor and ‘the
consistent harsh treatment of the rich. It is not that the Bible is
actually Marxist. It's not that Jesus was a socialist. He wasn't. Nor
was he a-supply-side conservative. In fact someone has suggested that
American Christianity needs to develop a theology of responsible
stewardship - instead of alternating between anger at those who resent our
wealth and guilt over having it... Surely “sell all you have and give to
the poor" is not the only thing Jesus ever said-to a rich person. And it
is not that the Bible regards wealth and pewer as evil and poverty. and
weakness as good. Poverty is no virtue. Poverty means illiteracy and
disease and infant mortality, hopelessness in Cabrini Green — in the
Hollows of West Virginia. In what sense then is the Bible partial to the
poor? What does it mean? It's just that wealthy and powerful people have
a way of thinking they have everything they need or at least know what they
need and how to get it. Biblical scholar Raymond. E. Brown is heipful when
he observes that the New Testament poor are "those who could not trust in
their own strength but had to rely in utter confidence upon God: the
lowly, the poor, the sick, the downtrodden, the widows and orphans. The
opposite of the ‘Anawim,' (poor ones) are not simply the rich, but the
proud and self sufficient who showed no need of God or of his help." [The
Birth of the Messiah, Raymond E. Brown, p. 351]

That is the idea that shows up throughout the Bible, not only in
Luke, but in Psalms and in much of the prophetic literature.

The real problem in the Bible, is not flat-out, flagrant sin. The
Bible confronts and heals the overt sinner, the robbers and adulterers, and
cheaters. The real problems are the people who don't think they have any
problems, oar needs. To address that, to give salvation - to those people;
God comes into the world in a particular way, desipned to show them and us
~ that our salvation begins at a point. radically different from striving,

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reaching, climbing. It begins with the confession of need and: the humility
of the recipient of a great gift.

Wenri Nouwen, the Dutch Jesuit theologian, came up with a helpful
description of that basic.Christian posture. -He called it "Downward
Mobility." He wrote,

“God not only chose an insignificant people,... not only chooses a
humble girl in an unknown town in Galilee... Ged alsa chose to manifest
the fullness of divine love in a man whose life led to a humiliating death
outside the walis of the city." [The Selfless Way of Christ,.: Sojourners,
6/14/81]

Obviously there is a very basic tension here with the value system of
our culture. We're interested in "upward mobility." It is what we will
make significant sacrifices for. It is almost:.the bottom-line hope of
parents — that their children's “upward mobility" will result in the kids
doing even better than Mom and Dad. My generation, children of the
depression, is obsessed with making it. We chuckle about the fact that our
children graduate from college and then sit down and try to figure out the
meaning of life. We graduated from college one day, and reported to work
the next morning. After the moral sensitivity and subsequent protests of
the Sixties and Seventies, my generation, the people now in charge, are
pleased to see the return of our obsession. Professors of Ethics*at the
Seminary lament the proliferation of M.B.A.s, and BMWs as value symbols
instead of the alphabet soup of the Sixties - SDS and ADA and NAACP. ;
Someone.may be lamenting the fact that on college campuses all over the aa
nation there are more business and economic majors than ever and fewer
philosophy and literature: majors. But check the faces of most fifty-year-
olds; .particularly:thase in three piece suits, and you'll probably: notice
them-smiling discreetly. -We are interested in‘upward, not downward,
mobility.

Again, Nouwen:

“Our whole way of living is. structured around climbing the ladder of
success and making it.to-the top. Our very sense of vitality. is dependent
upon being part of. the upward. pull. and the Joy provided by the rewards
given on the way-up.”

- We. know about that; . don't we? We know our obsession with power,
our need to be the biggest-and the best, as the moral and political crisis
of this age. We are in-a spiritual crisis because in recent months
Americans have had to come to terms with the relativity of their power and
wealth within a world economy. It has not been easy on us. And it is
almost.a cliche now to characterize American culture as incurably
acquisitive, grasping, selfish and narcissistic...

T have a growing hunch, however, that. we.~- about whom those critiques
and cliches are: written --know better. I have a growing conviction.that
the real moral cutting edge today is with the people who know better. than
anyone else that success is not salvation, namely the successful. I have a
hunch. that: the powerful.know. better than anyone, that there is no such
thing in this world-as."saving power": not economic power, not political

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power, not even military power. We know, I believe, that the things we
want and crave and are willing to give our lives for, are not going to
produce what we need and what, underneath it all, beneath the upwardly
mobile striving, we want most of all.

A friend of mine who teaches theology says that, to be middle age in
our culture is to finally arrive and discover that you are irrelevant: to
work very hard for 35 years, climb the ladder and to be told at the age of
59 that you are no long needed. [Walter Baumann, Trinity Lutheran
Seminary, Columbus, Ghia]

The social scientists don't have to scold us. We know that the
deepest hunger in us is not fed by the material rewards of .the affluent
society. We know about being "turned away hungry and empty," in Mary's
words.

And so Advent and gentle Mary's Magnificat and the incredible
assertion that God, long ago, committed himself to “downward mobility.”
God, we believe, in a long ago past, stocped low, te waik in history with a
particular people, to share their lives, to participate in their defeats and
to celebrate their victories. Unlike the deities of every other religion
in history, God, we believe, left the courts of heaven and came down and
became vulnerable.

That is what this Christmas business is about. It is what Mary was
singing about ~ a downwardly mobile God, a vulnerable God, a God who shows
up in the weakness and humility of a new born child.

We know the enormous power of that at Christmas. In the midst of
wealth and power and bright lights and a year-end celebration of affluence,
we keep bumping into symbols of a very different set of values... mangers,
cow stalls, a humble teenage mother, shepherds, a new born infant.

What we must not miss is the invitation to downward mobility. So
hear Mary's song. Let this frightened Galilean peasant teach you something
this year.

Let her teach you, for instance, to celebrate the birth of her son
this year by loosening your grip, slowing your pace, and re-examining your
obsession to try to do far too much in the next three weeks. Let her teach
you that this obsession of ours with getting ahead, succeeding, upward
mobility, is a very poor substitute for the wholeness God is willing to
give as a pift.

You are invited in Advent to a quiet revolution. You are invited to
find meaning, joy, peace, and wholeness in a surprising new place, not a
classroom, or courtroom, operating room or board room, but in a humble cow
stall back of the Inn. You are invited to a new direction, following a
star which shines over a very modest place called Bethlehem. You are
invited to find a whole new set of realities, placed into human history by
Mary's child — peace, forgiveness, love, compassion, tenderness. You are
invited to ponder, celebrate, embrace, that downward mobility which may be
the beginning of your salvation. Amen.

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