Welcome
Invite various persons to bring a designated item and use this liturgy as a way to begin your time of learning together.
One: Come, let us gather around and see how the Spirit will nurture our faith today.
All: Who is with us?
One: Christ, the light of the world.
(Place a candle on a table in your gathering place and light it.)
All: Who is with us?
One: The Love of God, who came to meet us in the world.
(Place a cross on a table in your gathering place)
All: Who is with us?
One: The Wisdom of God, who speaks through the scriptures
(Place an open Bible on a table in your gathering place.)
All: Who is with us?
One: The Grace of God, who proclaims we are children of God
(Place a symbol of baptism – a bowl of water, a seashell – on a table in your gathering space.)
All: Who is with us?
One: Our risen Lord, who meets us at the Table.
(Place a symbol of Communion – a plate and cup, a loaf of bread and grapes – on a table in your gathering space.)
One: We are here, Holy Spirit, ready for your leading.
God sightings and prayer offerings
Invite each person to share where they saw or experienced God this week. Invite each person to share something – a person, community, experience, event, etc. – for which they want to offer prayer.
Good and gracious God, we thank you for all the ways you were and are present in our lives and in the world … [Invite each person to say aloud the sighting they named earlier.] We bring our prayers to you, prayers for … [Invite each person to say aloud the prayer need they named earlier.]. In Christ’s name, we pray. Amen.
Connecting with Scripture — Luke 1:39-55
Read the Scripture aloud the first time using the New Revised Standard Version or the Common English Bible.
For the second reading of the text, invite those who are gathered to close their eyes and let their mind’s eye imagine the scene as it unfolds. Once the reading is finished, invite people to share how they saw the story unfold.
Connecting through story
Watch and listen to this version of the Magnificat with scenes from the movie The Nativity
- What did you notice in the movie scenes?
- What did you hear in the lyrics of the song?
- In what ways did they work together to bring insight?
Connecting with our lives
Engage in dialogue
- Why do you think Mary went to visit her cousin Elizabeth?
- Why did the child in Elizabeth’s womb leap with joy?
- In the face of everything, why is this young woman, Mary, rejoicing?
- Where is Mary’s focus?
- What has God done, what is God doing and what will God do?
- What surprises you from this list?
- Why do you think God makes these a priority in the coming of God’s Son?
- What causes you to rejoice?
- How is your rejoicing expressed?
- What is God doing now that you think needs to be magnified?
Teaching points that can be incorporated into your discussion
- The theme for the fourth week of Advent this year is “rejoice.”
- Today’s Scripture is often called the Magnificat or the Song of Mary.
- It means to both exclaim praise and to magnify, increase, and enlarge with great consequence.
- The significance of Mary’s rejoicing is captured in the broader understanding of today’s text. Mary, a young woman engaged to Joseph but not yet married, is told by an angel she will become pregnant and bear the long-awaited Savior. Perplexed though she may be at the message and the reason-bending possibility, she must go home, tell her family, Joseph and face the varied responses of the village in which she lived. It is during a visit with her older cousin Elizabeth that the truth of the angel’s words begins to take shape and form when the child in Elizbeth’s womb rejoices at the presence of the child in Mary’s womb. This, then, is confirmation of the angel’s message and Mary’s response is not one of fear or arrogance. Rather, her response is to
- Rejoice that God’s promises are sure and about to be fulfilled.
- Proclaim the great things God has done, is doing and will do, and celebrate the promise God is about to fulfill in the birth of the long-awaited Messiah and Savior.
Any number of responses would be perfectly sensible – fear, anxiety, doubt, anger, pride, self-importance – but Mary’s response is to turn away from self and turn towards God. She focused on what God was doing and not what she would do. Perhaps that is what gave her the strength to do what she was called to do — to focus on the magnificent power and strength of God at work in her, through her child and into the world. Note, too, how God’s power manifests:
- Favor those whom society would push to the margins
- Preference for servants
- Scatter the proud
- Balances power by bringing down those which the world sees as powerful, and elevating those who are considered lowly
- Provides food for the hungry
- Faithfulness in the face of human fickleness.
Here is another version of Mary’s Song.
As you listen and watch this version, what do you notice and hear that is different and brings further insight to the text and its meaning? (It can be found in the Glory to God hymnal #100.)
Prayer
Close your time together by praying for one another, your neighbor, community and the world. Extinguish the candle.
*God’s Kin-dom is another way of referring to God’s Kingdom. It emphasizes the distinctive characteristics of the realm of God which values the relational interconnectedness of all of God’s children marked by mutual respect and dignity rather than the world’s hierarchical understandings.
