Reading: Luke 1:39-45
This week I tried hard to find a sermon topic that did not involve the poor, or did not focus on justice and compassion or the lack of it in our world. But I failed miserably and for two very good reasons.

Firstly we have just had the climate change talks occurring in Copenhagen over the past two weeks, involving a huge number of nations. Many people, including myself, were very hopeful that some consensus for action on global warming would be reached. However in the end they stalled, not because people did not want to do something, but because of the clash between those that have a lot and are the main polluters, and those that have a little and whose first priority is to survive. It is a clash between the rich and the poor, seen not just in climate change talks, which ultimately has meant the agreement reached does not satisfy anyone. Yet we know that the people who will suffer first and most severely will be those without resources and money to combat the effects, the poor of our world. It brings into sharp focus how divided we are in our world and how little people want to give up to help others. It is enough to make you cry.

Yet my second reason brings us hope. It is the time of Advent, and when we are waiting for the birth of Jesus every reading to me seems to deliver a message of justice and compassion, hope and love for the poor. This is because the birth of Jesus is not an event in itself but a prelude to a life calling for transformation, for all those who hear it. It is this life that is celebrated in the nativity story.

Today`s reading from Luke about Mary is no different.

Many see Mary as meek and mild, and her only usefulness is as the mother of Jesus, some one who incubated the son of God. Yet she was much more than this, a prophet in her own right in the tradition of the great prophets of the Old Testament like Isaiah and Micah. In some ways her story is like that of Isaiah, a person of humble circumstances who lived at a time of political turmoil, military oppression and social inequality. An angel appears to the future prophet, who feels inadequate to bear God`s word to the people. Yet eventually, both Isaiah and Mary relent and submit to the Spirit`s call on their lives.

In her song of celebration about the baby she was about to give birth to, Mary speaks in the Jewish prophetic tradition, seeing beyond the surface realities to the deeper truth of human affairs. That is why today`s reading, the Magnificat or Mary`s song, is seen as the great liberation song of the New Testament. In it, as Bill Loader points out, she gives voice to her blessedness, which Elizabeth, her cousin affirms, but at the same time speaks of a wider vision which will challenge the lordships of this world. This is Mary, the prophet of the poor, the champion of the downtrodden, proclaiming the overthrow of the social, economic and political order of things. This Mary does not sound so meek and mild, suggesting that God will show his power by filling the hungry with good things and exalting the lowly.

Out of faith Mary sings, and we want to hear more of this person, who surrounded by hardship and injustice, shows incredible strength of character and clarity of vision. She becomes alive to us in a way that brings out the strength of all women in all times.

And out of her vision comes a vision for us. Mary knew what Micah knew, what Israel always knew, and what the Church knows in Advent. The weak and the vulnerable will be lifted up. That the God found in Jesus is a God of the poor. The poetry and the song invites us to move out beyond the world given to us by the money men and into a new different world. We in turn are to act in and for this new age.

So we return to the events in Copenhagen, saddened by the distrust and the lack of open hearts and minds. But also with the hope that the new reality that Christ brings will someday come to past, it just may take a little longer. And it may need us to speak a little louder.