Advent 3 (2016.12.11 Sermon)

Jamie McCormick continued us in the Advent season with a sermon on the story of young Mary meeting her cousin Elizabeth and breaking out in song.

Quotes and links mentioned:

“It’s the gospel before the gospel, a fierce bright shout of triumph thirty weeks before Bethlehem, thirty years before Calvary and Easter. It goes with a swing and a clap and a stamp. It’s all about God, and it’s all about revolution. And it’s all because of Jesus — Jesus who’s only just been conceived, not yet born, but who has made Mary giddy with excitement and hope and triumph.” – N.T. Wright
“Obedience is an unpopular word nowadays, but the artist must be obedient to the work, whether it be a symphony, a painting, or a story for a small child. I believe that each work of art, whether it is a work of great genius, or something very small, comes to the artist and says, ‘Here I am. Enflesh Me. Give birth to me. And the artist can either say, ‘My soul doth magnify the lord,’ and willingly become the bearer of the work, or refuses; but the obedient response is not necessarily the conscious one, and not everyone has the humble courageeous obedience of Mary… Mary did not always understand, but one does not have to understand to be obedient. Instead of undertanding, that intellectual understanding which we are so fond of — there is a feeling of rightness, of knowing, knowing things which you are not yet able to understand.” – Madeleine L’Engel