ADVENT 4b – December 18, 2011

Kushners was the kind of restaurant patronized by the neighborhood. People didn't drive from all around Washington to eat Kushner's excellent crab Norfolk and Mariner's Platter, but my family ate there. When my father retired and played golf several days a week, he ate there with his foresome. When I married and came down from Pennsylvania with my children, we ate at Kushners. For years and years and years at Kushners, my father asked that his family and his friends be seated where Mary was serving.

Mary was at Kushners as a waitresses (now we call them servers) all of her working life. She was a professional, truly cut out for her work. She was the kind of waitress you ask for week after week, year after year. It wasn't long after my father died until I said, "We have to go to Kushners and tell Mary; she'll be wondering where he is." She established that kind of relationship with customers; she was that good at serving.

The name Mary is a coincidence on this 4th Sunday of Advent, but the quality of her service and her heart for service are related to today's story. Because today's story is about another Mary, engaged but unmarried, who says to an angel, "Let it be with me according to your word. I am the servant of the Lord." Earlier translations said the handmaid of the Lord. The term handmaid is no more current than the word waitress (or stewardess); so how can we think of Mary the Mother of Our Lord when she consents as a handmaid to carrying God incarnate into the world? Is she like a lady-in-waiting serving a queen? Like a flight attendant with a beverage cart? Like a phenomenal server at your favorite restaurant? When Mary as a teenager agrees to be a servant of the Lord, what is she agreeing to? And what can we learn about our own service to God from her?

We hardly need to be reminded of Mary's situation. Since she was not yet married, (in her day, it means) she would have been young. Think of her going to Middle School. Since Mary was not married and had not even been with Joseph-her-betrothed, her pregnancy would have been (for one) a scandal. (Think of being sent off in shame to a Charles Dickens era "home for unwed mothers.") And (even more), the appearance of her having sex outside of marriage would have been against the law and punishable by death. (Think of a woman in Afghanistan today being stoned to death for sleeping with a man not her husband.) Despite the seriousness of what the angel Gabriel is saying, despite the fact that (if his word becomes reality) her plans for the future would be ended and her life might even be ended, Mary uttered one of the most remarkable lines in scripture, "Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word." Think what it is to be this kind of handmaid, servant, or server.

Mary at Kushner's was paid to be a server. A flight attendant is specially trained and is paid, too. The lady-in-waiting was moving up in the world, living at the court and engaging (from a certain distance) in the life of the court. Mary the Mother of Our Lord was not like those. The word she uses for herself upon hearing Gabriel's message is doule, slave. Mary says that she is to God as one in bondage – the way the Israelites were slaves in bondage to Pharaoh. Mary, in saying she was a bondswoman of God and willing to do as God says, is in effect freely giving up her freedom. She is not like Mary at Kushner's; she belongs to the One she serves. She is entirely committed to the will of her Lord. I am in awe of her.

And truth be told, I am a little afraid of her. The place Mary holds for us as Lutherans is not exalted as the Queen of Heaven but, like all the saints who have gone before us, a model of the godly life. Mary teaches us about faithfulness; Mary inspires us to faithfulness. And that is why her model of service – so complete whatever God demands – can be frightening. It is the same form of service that her son himself knew, when he "emptied himself, taking the form of a doulos, a slave." Paul writes those words to the Christians in Philippi (and to us) that we are to have that same mind: to be as he was, humble in obedience, slaves – empty of self. As we think about a baby born in Bethlehem, we may smile to think of serving him. Jesus in the manger is sweet ("holy infant, so tender and mild"). But the newborn Prince of Peace is the same Jesus who will later overturn tables in the temple and die on a cross. He and his mother Mary are lessons in giving up control, yielding. "No Surrender" is not the theme song of the child we await or his mother; they surrender totally to God.

How hard is it – how scary – to hear Mary's story as instruction! When Mary's story comes around on Advent 4, we tell ourselves that she was young and innocent and wore blue. But her story is so much more. She was brave; she was strong; she risked losing everything (even her life) because she was faithful. An amazing person, the mother of an even more amazing son, she defines for us what it is to be a "servant of the Lord," a slave of God.

I have never known a slave, but I have known a wonderful server down in Takoma Park, Maryland. And we are a congregation of servers – devoted like a waitress at Kushners, also struggling and praying to grow toward the devotion of Mary, the Mother of Our Lord (to move from being a server to being a slave). As Jesus once more is born to us, we bow, we kneel, we weep at the manger... that the love of God and the God of love would stoop so low to serve us. And we long to be more Mary-like, carrying that love as she did into the world.