magnificat | Solvitur Ambulando

Luke 1:39-55

Historically, Mary, the mother of Jesus, has been held up as a role model for women. In order for her to be the role model that suited the purposes of culture, however, she’s been reinvented as meek, mild, and passive. The flowing, modest blue robe, downcast eyes, covered head. That Mary bears very little resemblance to the Mary in Luke.

The angel Gabriel has told Mary that she will bear a child. Gabriel then explains that Mary’s cousin, Elizabeth, is also expecting. Elizabeth is “getting on in years,” so this, too, is extraordinary news. “In haste,” Luke says, Mary goes to see her. When Elizabeth greets Mary, her unborn child recognizes Mary’s unborn child, and turns a joyful somersault. In Luke’s gospel, Elizabeth’s unborn son will grow up to be John the Baptist. The message we’re to take from this is that even before they were born, John the Baptist, as well as his mother Elizabeth, heralded the coming of Jesus. Elizabeth exclaims that Mary and her unborn child are blessed, and then Mary begins to sing. We know her song as the Magnificat, named after the first word of the song in Latin. Biblical scholars tell us that these words are not original with Mary. The song is remarkably similar to Hannah’s song in the Old Testament – Hannah was the mother of the prophet Samuel.

And what a song it is! William Willimon tells the story of a college student explaining to him that the virgin birth is just too incredible to believe. Willimon responded, “You think that’s incredible, come back next week. Then, we will tell you that ‘God has cast down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the lowly.’ We’ll talk about the hungry having enough to eat and the rich being sent away empty. The virgin birth? If you think you have trouble with the Christian faith now, just wait. The virgin birth is just a little miracle; the really incredible stuff is coming next week.” Martin Luther said that the Magnificat “comforts the lowly and terrifies the rich.” William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury in the late 19th century, warned his missionaries to India never to read the Magnificat in public; the verses are too inflammatory. Several biblical commentaries use the same word to describe the Magnificat. That word is revolutionary.

I wonder, if they really gave it some attention, whether more American Christians, or Christians generally, would have a harder time with the story of the virgin birth, or with this song of Mary’s. Mary’s song blesses God for the victory won over the proud, powerful, and rich for the sake of the lowly and the hungry. This is not a sweet soprano solo. One commentator says it’s more like Janis Joplin. But it’s all about God keeping God’s promises. God moves, and the people at the top who have organized reality for their benefit but at the cost of others come under siege. God keeps the covenant, and a teenager, a nobody from nowhere, testifies to wealth redistribution for the sake of the hungry. The fact that she sings means God does exalt the lowly; that this happened to her means that the overturning of the inhumane order has begun. She is lowly, and she is lifted up.

Now, this is a good news, bad news proposition, isn’t it? Revolution sounds pretty scary to many of us. Cornelius Plantinga writes, “When our own kingdom has had a good year we aren’t necessarily looking for God’s kingdom.” At first blush, Mary’s Magnificat might sound even a bit vengeful. But biblical scholar Sharon Ringe notes that a leveling, rather than reversal, is what Luke intends here, as God’s action moves us to a common middle ground, to a world where winner takes all is transformed into one in which all have a place at the table.

So that is the question for us on the Fourth Sunday in Advent: Can we hear Mary’s song as good news for all people, not just for some, but for all? Can we truly hear that lifting up the lowly and bringing down the powerful is good news, even for us?

If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend the little video, “An Unexpected Christmas,” produced in 2012 by St. Paul’s Church in Auckland, New Zealand, a church with a ministry called St. Paul’s Arts and Kids. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TM1XusYVqNY. This video captures precisely what Luke intended in the first two chapters of his gospel, in the story of Elizabeth and Mary, and in the Christmas story as well. “Brilliant! They won’t be expecting that!” Although, to be fair, Luke’s version is edgier. Luke gives center stage to these two women, ordinary women chosen by God and unhindered by men.

If you go to church, you hear the Magnificat and the Christmas story every year. In the sentimental glow of the season, it’s easy to forget that when the angels sang about good news of great joy for all people, what they meant is this: God wants justice, peace, and well-being – shalom – for everybody, and so God comes to us in a vulnerable baby born to non-white, non-English-speaking, non-Christian, nobody parents in a backwater village in the Middle East, in a stable surrounded by mess and bad smells, with “no crib for a bed,” and the first people to hear about it, those shepherds out on a hillside, are the kind of people you’d never invite to dinner and you’d pray your daughter wouldn’t marry.

Which means that God can reach everyone; anywhere at any level, even when things are messy, or all messed up; even when our best laid plans go awry; even when we find ourselves at the bottom of the heap, whatever heap we’re in. It means it is just like God to be at work in uncelebrated or unexpected ways in other times and places, too.

Even in us. Which, my friends, is truly brilliant. They won’t be expecting that!