Luke 1: 47-55
The holy season of Advent, preparing for the Christ child’s coming unfolds alongside the season of preparation and shopping for Christmas. Songs of the season are at first welcome, then at times a bit too much, as “it’s lovely weather for a sleigh ride together” plays in an endless loop as you’re put on hold ordering a last minute gift, or “Santa Baby,” a song you hope you won’t hear again for some time, turns up on muzak that backgrounds seasonal shopping.
This morning in our reading from Luke’s gospel, we encounter an ancient song, the song of Mary, mother of Jesus, called the Magnificat. Mary has just received the annunciation from an angel, telling her that she will bear the Christ child into the world. “Be it unto me according to your word,” she replies. Then she turns to song, in an ancient tune that echoes other prophet women down through the ages, Miriam, who sang of God’s deliverance at the Red Sea, and Hannah, who sang of a long-awaited son.
Sometimes, at key junctures along the journey, a song crystallizes the spirit of the age; history turns on a song.
In the war of 1812, the words of Francis Scott Key held out hope that the tide would turn in America’s favor, “O say can you see, by the dawn’s early light….” Years later, following WWI, a poet wrote a ballad lamenting the loss of young Willie McBride, asking a question that has haunted our history down through the years, “did you really believe that this war would end wars?”[i]
In World War II, Bing Crosby’s song, “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas” struck a bittersweet note for soldiers serving overseas, who would be home for Christmas, if only in their dreams…
In the turbulent times of the civil rights struggle, an old gospel song, echoed in a thousand voices lifted to bring in a new era, “We Shall Overcome.” And in the time of Viet Nam, John Lennon’s song, “Imagine” evoked a fragile hope for a more peaceful world, and Bob Dylan’s “Blowing in the Wind” captured something of the sprit of the age.
Sometimes, history turns on a song. At the crux of history as we see it through the eyes of faith, at the turning point between BC and AD, we find a poetic and prophetic song; Mary’s Magnificat.
It is called the Magnificat, as the first phrase in Latin means “my soul magnifies the Lord.” Mary turns to God in a response of praise for the great gift God is giving the world, the gift of the Christ Child.
Mary is often portrayed as meek and lowly, eyes downcast. Yet if we draw close and listen to her song, we find a prophetic note that may surprise us. Mary was given a deep and disturbing insight into the implications of this child who would soon be born. After his coming, nothing would be the same.
Those of you who’ve had a child or grandchild added to the family have a sense of how a baby changes everything. Everyone in the family moves over a bit to make room for the new little one. And a new baby can be very demanding, of love and energy and sleep and care from everyone around them. There is a sense that in the case of the Christ child, he was demanding not just as a baby, but infinitely more so as he became an adult,[ii] asking much of those who would follow him, that they would give their love and energy, imagination and effort to help him bring in a new and different world.
Jesus echoed Mary’s song in his first sermon, when he preached that he was being sent to bring good news to the poor and release to the captives.
It all began with this baby, who would change everything. Mary was given a vision of how Christ’s birth would bring about a series of “great reversals,”[iii] with the old ways passing away and a new era brought to birth.
The first reversal unfolds with Mary herself. She is not yet married, and now to bear a child, an ordinary young woman in a small village, part of a people under the oppressive heel of the Roman empire. Yet it is to her, to Mary, that the angel has come, proclaiming God’s choice of this seemingly insignificant girl to bear the Christ into the world. And while it’s hard to imagine the impact the angel’s announcement must have had, Mary seems to recover herself quickly, and responds by singing God’s praise.
She sings of other reversals the coming Christ will bring: God will “scatter the proud in the imagination of their hearts.” Among the proud of her day, there were Roman soldiers, armored against adversity, secure in their strength. Yet the prophetic word given to her promised a day when their strong arm would be vanquished by the stronger arm of God. The proud would be scattered, their pride struck down. Pride, which Christian faith sees as the core sin, from which all others arise. Pride, which proclaims someone self-made and self-satisfied, leaving no room for the providence and provision and praise of God. In Mary’s song, the good news of Christ’s coming brings the downfall of the proud.
In the wake of Christ’s coming, the mighty are brought low, and the lowly raised up. We see this so many times throughout history. We’ve been watching a series on the Tudor family recently, watching as the waves of history lift first one boat and then another in the time of Henry the 8th, as the once-mighty are struck down, and a lowly child, Elizabeth, in time ascends the throne. We see this pattern played out in our time as well, as once-powerful dictators have fallen in the Arab spring, and those once influential in finance are called to account;[iv] how the mighty are fallen, just as Mary predicted.
In Mary’s song, the coming of Christ sees “the playing field…more than leveled, [as] the powerful are stripped of their entitlements, and the humble given preeminence.”[v] The reversals brought about by Christ’s birth continue to unfold, as the rich are sent away empty, and the hungry filled with good things. The good news of the gospel seems to fall a bit unevenly, a word of grace for those who had lost hope of having enough to live, yet an unsettling reminder for the proud and powerful that things are not as secure as they once thought.
Mary ends her song with a promise for God’s people, Israel, seeing Christ as the fulfillment of the covenant made with God’s people long ago. Mary’s is a song of hope, of hearkening to the new thing God is doing through Christ, a song both of comfort and of challenge.
The notes of justice in Mary’s song sound a echo of what we find in the news these days, record numbers in Oregon who are “food insecure,” and studies documenting the growing inequality of life in our time. It seems we are still waiting for the lowly to be raised up.
Some interpreters see Mary’s Magnificat through the lens of social justice, as a kind of revolutionary manifesto of overthrowing the powers that be. Yet there is a sense that Christ’s kingdom brings “a more profound revolution”[vi] overturning not just the workings of the world, but also the ways of the human heart.
In all of this, Mary’s Magnificat is more than manifesto. She is announcing the in-breaking reign of God. And note how she envisions it; for her, God’s new world has come already, even as she sings these words, long before the Christ child’s birth. Even before he is born, God has acted to scatter the proud and feed the hungry with good things. She uses a special kind of verb, to show the “things which are bound to happen as a consequence” of the coming Christ child. In doing this, she echoes an old understanding, called the “prophetic perfect, which represents things of the future as [though they were] already accomplished.”[vii] The lowly are given a throne, and the ruthless and powerful cast down. “The world becomes what God meant it to be.”[viii]
Through Mary’s song, we are called to align our lives with the revolutionary reversals brought about in Christ’s coming. We are called, like Mary, to sing as if things were already made right, to say yes to God, even when we do not understand how these things will come to pass.[ix] It is enough that for us that God has promised, that with Christ’s birth, a new day has dawned.
As Christmas comes, may you find yourself swept up in the song of Christ’s coming, a song of the new world God brings to birth, wrapped up in the babe of Bethlehem. May we show that our hearts have been transformed by his coming, by reaching out in his name to feed the hungry and warm the cold. O come, let us adore him. For he makes all things new again.
Let us pray: Lord Christ, as we await your coming, may we with Mary, lift a song of praise against the cold. Help us embrace the reign of God, and take our place at the side of the Savior, who comes as God with us, always. Amen.
Endnotes:
[iv] Over the past weeks, former banker and New Jersey governor Jon Corzine was called before a congressional committee over missing investor funds.
[vi] George Caird, in his excellent commentary on St. Luke, The Pelican New Testament Commentaries. Penguin Books,1963, p. 55.
[vii] Reiling and Swellengrebel (1972:75), cited in Peter Samuel and David Frank’s paper, “Translating poetry and Figurative Language into St. Lucian Creole, 2000
[viii] Old Testament Professor Fred Gaiser, Luther Seminary , Advent Devotional, “In the Wilderness,” 2011, http://www.luthersem.edu/
[ix] Geoffrey Wainwright writes of aligning oneself with the revolutionary action of God in his Doxology: The Praise of God in Worship, Doctrine, and Life (New York: Oxford, 1980), pp. 426-7. Trisha Lyons Senterfitt writes of Mary singing as if things have already been made right in her Pastoral Perspective in Feasting, p. 80, and of Mary’s willingness to say yes even when she does not understand how a virgin like herself could bear God’s Son, p. 81.
