The Already-ness of Grace

The Already-ness of Grace--December 18, 2018

"And Mary said, 

    'My soul magnifies the Lord, 

       and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,

   for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.

     Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;

  for the Mighty One has done great things for me,

     and holy is his name....'" [Luke 1:46-49]

She hasn't even had the baby yet... but she knows she is blessed already.

These words, the opening few lines of what we sometimes call "Mary's Song," or the Magnificat (because of the first word of the song in Latin), are set while Mary is still pregnant with the child announced by the angel.  And yet she talks like someone who has already won the lottery, got the promotion, and received her Christmas bonus all at once.  She sings like the goodness of God to her is an already accomplished fact, even before the birth, even before she first holds her child, even before she gets to bring him home.

And that is perhaps precisely the point.  There is an "already-ness" to grace that makes joy possible even before the good things we are looking forward to.  There is a sense that blessing can begin now and become even fuller and more complete in the future, even while it is still completely true to recognize it right now in the present.

For Mary, before she ever heard her baby cry and had her eyes fill with happy, holy tears, before she held her child, and before they could finally rest easily in their own home together past the fears of Herod and the strangeness of being refugees in Egypt, she already sense that "the Mighty One" had done "great things" for her, in all of her ordinariness.  That made every moment that followed, every other minute spent with her son, every sigh of relief when the labor was over, and every smile she got from her child all the more grace.  Before any of the good memories are made, she knows she is blessed just having been chosen.

And maybe this is the real wonder: Mary knows this was not a competition or a pageant.  She was not chosen by God because of her moral character, her religious devotion, her physical attractiveness, her political influence, her dizzying intellect, or her accumulated wealth.  What she brings is, as she names it, her "lowliness"--the fact that nobody else treats her like she's worthy of notice. She brings her ordinariness--no bargaining, no deal-making, no quid-pro-quo, and no promises of future favors or pay-offs to God. She just is who she is... and God chooses her in the midst of her ordinariness.  That is precisely what grace is all about--the way God gives, to our eyes recklessly, without regard for earning or future returns on the investment.  Mary knows that God has revealed the priorities of the divine in her being chosen--that God is not nearly so impressed with our status, influence, or wealth as we like to think, and even that God doesn't simply hand out good things on the basis of outstanding religiosity.  God just chooses us in our ordinariness, rather than on the basis of what we can do for God, how we could pay God back, or how impressive we are.  We are chosen, like Mary is chosen, simply because God delights in us, while we are also still stinkers at the same time.

And when you know that you are loved apart from how "useful" or "influential" or "powerful" anybody else thinks you are, well, it feels like a "great thing" has been done for you.  That's the start of Mary's awareness of grace.  She is blessed already, because she sees that God hasn't picked her for what anybody else would have seen in her, but simply because God chooses to love her this way.  And compared to the way the world operates--where everything is about currying future favors, leveraging influence, and trading transactions--God's choice to be born into Mary's life is a sign of God's rejection of the conventional wisdom and ways of doing business.  God isn't wowed by the people whose names are in giant gold letters on their buildings, and God isn't impressed with the folks who are at the top of the Forbes list.  God doesn't play the game of impressing anyway.  God chooses Mary the way love always does--as she is, and without regard for "getting" something in return.  That up-ends the old order of things, and it begins a new kind of order--a new kind of Reign, one that is not dependent on earning or impressing or intimidating or threatening, but simply on the abundant goodness of a God who chooses us in our ordinariness.

So even before the baby is born--while the child is still in the womb, in fact--Mary knows it is a wondrous thing just that she has been chosen by God.  The grace has already begun, even before the manger and the shepherds and the whole heavenly host show up.

The same is true for us, too--before we get to glory, before resurrection and new creation and gates of pearl and all the rest, we are graced.  God has seen us--you, and me, and this whole mess of a world--and called us beloved, chosen, and precious, just as we are, in all of our ordinariness.  We have been chosen, called, beloved, and claimed, not because of what we have done or avoided doing, not because of what we will do or how much we will contribute, not because of the size of our estate or the strength of our influence, but just as we are, without regard for what God "gets" in return.  We are simply beloved.  And before we even get to other ways that God's goodness shows up in our lives, that makes us already blessed.

That is the already-ness of grace.

Lord God, thank you for love that meets us and cherishes us as we are, in all of our ordinariness.  Make us able to stop trying to pretend to be more than we are, or less than we are, and instead simply to abide in your love for us all.