Interfaith Service of Recommitment and Witness to the Achievement of the MDGs

Reading: Luke 1: 46-55

THE MAGNIFICAT: MORAL, SOCIAL, ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATION

Some years ago now, during One World Week, a local primary school invited me to do some creative writing with the children on poverty and deprivation. One child began her story like this:

Once upon a time, there was a very poor family. The dad was poor, the mum was poor, the children were poor, the butler was poor, the chauffeur was poor ...

I shook my head in disbelief, and proceeded to tell her of stories of real poverty from my own childhood: how all my clothes were hand-me-downs and I didn't possess a pair of shoes until I was eighteen! With disarming innocence she asked "Did you live with your mum and dad?" "Yes", I said. "I don't", she replied.

I later discovered that Lucy was a very deprived child who was in the care of the local social services.

Lacking what most of her classmates possessed she was writing out of her deep desire for a better tomorrow. I felt rebuked for priding myself on having had so few possessions as a child: My story was the real story of poverty! But was it?

The reading from Luke challenges us to question what we believe to be real: a virgin having a child and God becoming human.

But the whole emphasis in the Magnificat is on unexpected things.

Most of us like to think we understand exactly how the world works – that is everything is surfable , e-mailable, predictable, except British weather of course (not to mention the current global financial situation!)

But the words of Mary's Magnificat shake us abruptly from our self-complacent confidence.

For Mary looks to God with the confidence that life in him gives, catching a glimpse of the future that God is shaping for his creation. What she sees contradicts every aspect of our present experience. God's rule is depicted as topsy-turvy, values upside down where the hungry are filled with good things and the rich are sent away empty.

This for me is the hope for the world, but it spells out a need for a radical turning around of us and our basic human structures. The Magnificat reminds us that God is calling us join in his great task of transforming the world. We're not bystanders: God invites us to be part of the story in three ways.

First, it's about moral transformation: "He has routed the proud and all their schemes" – the likes of me and my pride at growing up in childhood poverty. Pride isn't just showing off how successful we are. Pride always rears its ugly head when we're trying to use our own experience to out-do one another: because we've been to hospital so many times in the last year means that nobody else can understand suffering like we do; or because we've been the victim of a racist attack means that no-one else can possibly understand racism like we do.

Hope for the world lies in allowing God to tear all forms of pride from us in order that we may step fully into the shoes of others. This means letting them tell us their story before we start giving them our answers to questions they may not even be asking, and allowing ourselves to hear what they think about us.

It's a most liberating experience for me to belong to this church family called the Anglican Communion, for it's made up of people from every continent of the globe. We were richly reminded of this at the recent Lambeth conference in which bishops from so many different parts of the world prayed, worked and rejoiced together.

It's like being given a glimpse of what heaven will be like. You may be surprised to hear the Lambeth Conference likened to a foretaste of heaven. Certainly if you relied for your knowledge of Lambeth on what some in the British media portrayed, you would be plunged into doom and gloom! There are still deep divisions in the Anglican Communion and we hold these before God for his healing. But it is also true that at the Lambeth conference this year we saw signs of God's grace, bringing resurrection life and hope. But this in itself won't bring about the radical transformation sung by the Blessed Virgin Mary in her song: the Magnificat.

The Magnificat speaks of God calling us to radical transformation of the way we relate to each other, to the world and to God. And when all three have coalesced together will we sing and be magnificat.

We need to remember that Christ had to become human and be filled with the Holy Spirit beyond all measure, so that in him and through him, human nature might become a new creation. So that we might inherit from him the spirit of wisdom, knowledge and understanding, in place of our human tendency towards foolishness, blindness and opposition to God's ways.

This is the new life in us which begins the process of our moral transformation and ends in always desiring the good of the other person. "For you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God." (Galatians 4:7)

The Second challenge before us is one of finding a way of injecting this divine power into the veins of our society today: hope for the world is social transformation: "He brings down monarchs from their thrones, he raises on high the lowly." Then God who humbled himself in Christ gave the deathblow to the distorted way we look at people according to their status. He puts an end to the world's labels and prestige.

Light breaks into our darkness when we realise that other people's despair and fear, joy and sorrow are ours too.

If we don't, one day we will be for ever haunted by these words of the German Protestant pastor, Martin Niemoller, "They came for the communists and I didn't object, for I wasn't a communist; they came for the gypsies, the slaves, the mentally ill, and the physically disabled and I didn't object for I wasn't one of them. They came for the Jews and I didn't object for I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for me – and there was no one left to object."

The God of love, Immanuel, God-with-us, has identified himself with the whole of humanity, and we have therefore no choice but to identify with each other, especially in the fiery furnace of pain. And, as disciples of Jesus Christ, forever struggling to cope with the incomprehensible suffering of the innocent in our global village.

Back in my own country of Uganda, when something tragic happens, the women sit down on the ground and mourn. It's always a corporate experience, because we are persons through other persons "I am because we are". By getting together we are permitted to enter into a sad situation with a message of great joy, the assurance of the presence of Jesus with us in times of trouble. A Ugandan proverb says, "When the tiny toe is hurting, the whole body stoops down to attend to the pain of that tiny toe."

Hope for the world in the song of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Magnificat, is Moral Transformation; Social Transformation.

Thirdly, hope for the world is by way of economic transformation. "He has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty". This means an end to our acquisitive society where each person is out to amass as much as they can get; it's the beginning of interdependence, a godly society where no one dares to have too much while others have too little, where everyone must get, only to give away.

As we reflect on our future together as part of this global village, we are being invited to open our eyes to see how together we can be part of the process of the creation of a new community of Love, Peace and Justice, coming out of that ultimate reality, God.

In this vision, no-one is a spectator. We all have a responsibility for a better global order. And this can't be created or enforced by laws, prescriptions and conventions alone. Rights without ethics can't long endure. It demands our readiness to involve ourselves in the struggle for human rights, responsibility, freedom, justice, peace and the good stewardship of Planet Earth. It's a scandal if we let our different religious and cultural traditions prevent our common involvement in opposing all forms of inhumanity and working for greater humanness.

As a Christian, I know that I base my life on my understanding and experience of an Ultimate Reality, God, as seen in the face of Jesus Christ. And I draw spiritual power and hope from that in trust, in prayer and meditation, in word and silence, and social action. I don't consider myself better than anyone else, but I trust the ancient wisdom of the faith I hold can point the way for the future: the creation of a new community of Love, Peace and Justice. The only true principle for humanity is justice, inspired and nourished by love and true compassion.

For love wasn't put in our hearts to stay; Love isn't love 'til we give it away! "God so loved the world that He gave; it's more blessed to give than to receive", so said our Lord.

You may know the story of an eight year-old who was picking up starfish stranded when the tide went out - and throwing them back into the sea. An old fisherman came by and couldn't understand what the little girl was doing. So he asked, "Why are you doing that?" She said, "They are stranded. If I don't throw them back into the water they will die."

The fisherman said, "Little girl, do you realise that the beach goes on for miles and thousands of starfish are stranded? You can't hope to make a difference."

Holding one starfish in her hand she said "It makes a difference for this one." And she threw it into the water.

We all need to clean out the old yeast of our selfishness and greed that we may become a new batch of a reconciled humanity. As Rabbi Abraham Heschel said, "We must continue to remind ourselves that in a free society, all are involved in what some are doing. Some are guilty, all are responsible"

Become an agent of hope for the world.

Like the Blessed Virgin Mary be an agent of a moral transformation;

Be an agent of a social transformation;

Be an agent of an economic transformation.

Become what you are. A Child of God – invited to participate in the life of God.

AMEN.