Advent 3
December 15, 2024
William G. Carter
A third Christmas carol is placed on the lips of young Mary. She has gone to a certain town to visit her cousin Elizabeth, after learning Elizabeth is great with child, se she will be. Both pregnancies are extraordinary. Elizabeth is as old as the Old Testament. Mary is young and not quite married. You might think two pregnant women would compare notes about stretch marks and other medical details. Yet this is the Gospel of Luke. Luke says both women are full of the Holy Spirit, so we are going to hear some theology.
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.
His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the
thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy,
according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his
descendants forever.’
Those are big words for a young girl from a small town. They are structured like an ancient hymn, so it is easy to call this a Christmas carol. Indeed, her burst of praise has been set to music in every subsequent generation of the church. For those parts of the Christian family who pay a lot of attention to Mary, it has become a celebration of her pregnancy and all that has been imputed about it, even though it doesn’t mention a baby at all. Did you notice that?
She sings of God. She rejoices in God’s saving power. She affirms the great grace she has received as God’s lowly servant. With great certainty, she states everybody in the future will bless her. All of that is true. Yet Jesus is never mentioned. His birth is never specified. There’s even a question that Mary actually sang the song; if you look at the footnote for verse 46, it mentions that a few of the handwritten versions of the text assigned the song to Elizabeth, not to Mary.
Ultimately, the singer doesn’t matter. What matters is the song itself. It’s a really big song, enormous in fact. For what we have today is an overture to the Gospel of Luke. Or as Luke calls it, “the Good News of God.” Everything that will happen in the next twenty-three chapters of Luke’s book is foretold in this Christmas carol. And everything in this Christmas carol has already been declared in the promises of the Jewish Bible.
Now, Mary didn’t need to make up these words. She already had the words. Over on my bookshelf, there are a couple of thick books that tell us every line in her Christmas carol comes from somewhere else. If Mary were in school, she might get reprimanded for plagiarism. But she is not in school. She’s in the Psalm Making Tradition of Israel. She lifts phrases from the prayer book. She quotes the Song of Hannah, from the second chapter of First Samuel.
Like a jazz saxophonist, she is singing new variations on an old song, while keeping continuity with that song. We hear the reference points, the rhythms, the resonance with the original. Hannah did not have a child until God said a baby’s coming. She says, “My heart exults in the Lord; my strength is exulted in my God.” (Sound familiar?) She says, “God brings down and God lifts up.” (Uh huh!) She says, “God raises the poor from the dust, and God cuts off the wicked and the proud.”[1] It was true for Hannah, it will be true for Mary, it will even be true of the ministry of Jesus.
For Jesus would say, “The last shall be first and the first shall be last.”[2] Sounds like his mother. He would teach the people saying, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Woe to you who are rich, for you have received all the consolation you’re going to receive.”[3] That is in his mother’s song, too. “The hungry will be filled, those who are satiated will go hungry.” That’s the grand reversal of God’s kingdom, by which God remembers those in need, and God reminds those who think they have plenty that they also have needs. Everyone is addressed. Everyone is reminded of God.
What I notice about this Christmas carol is how Mary universalizes the particular. By other evidence in Luke’s story, we know she is poor, yet she knows God loves her, and therefore God loves the poor. As a young maiden of that time, she had no social standing, yet she celebrates that God lifts her up. She has nothing but a song; therefore, God fills her with all good things. She has done nothing to deserve God’s honor. Therefore, she is worthy of God’s honor, the very definition of God’s grace.
What I also notice about this Christmas carol is that what Mary is singing about is not visible to the multitudes. It is not obvious to the powerful, the mighty, and the rich. Yet she sings about being seen, noticed, cared for, and lifted up. For this is the small work of God, and it is magnified. Magnified. It’s how Mary begins the song, “My soul magnifies the Lord.” That’s a wonderful word: magnified.
As I age, I am finding support by having magnifying glasses all over the house. My wife, who’s a few years older than me, taught me that. The optometrist says my eyesight is still good if my glasses are on. But these days, the small print seems smaller.
Out of increasing need, I was delighted to find magnifiers available online at Temu.com. They are cheap, probably made in Chinese sweatshops, but they do the trick. I ordered a few. When they arrived, they seemed smaller than they appeared on the website. But they do make small things a lot bigger. A third grader might use one of these to get a closer look at a bug. I use them to view the four-point font of my Bible footnotes. Or the tiny liner notes on the back of a recording. A magnifier shows you what is always there but has remained too difficult to see.
And we hear Mary sing, “My soul magnifies the Lord.” It’s a curious phrase, isn’t it? What she is telling us is that what’s going on in her inner being (her soul) is making God bigger in her understand. I get that. I’ve never had a baby, and I’ve never given birth to the savior of the world. But I understand. God is frequently hard to see, so much so that many doubt that God is even there. Yet when a miracle happens – and especially a miracle like childbirth – it brings God’s power and grace into clearer view.
When you get a sense that God is lifting you up, it affirms that you have value even if you have felt unseen. When you get a view that God is knocking the arrogant down a few pegs, it confirms there is justice in the universe. When the hungry are fed, it clicks that this has been God’s intention all along. When the greedy are held accountable and given limits, we can nod in recognition that God wants everybody to have what they need and not closets stockpiled with extras.
This was one of the apocalyptic revelations of the pandemic a few years ago. Remember when a few people were stockpiling all the toilet paper for themselves? There was a lady in town who had two pallets delivered in her driveway. What was she thinking? What was she full of? Full of herself, most likely, at the expense of others. Just that little greedy click of the mouse, so she could grab what others could not. What a magnification of the smallest human impulse! It revealed a heart full of selfishness, to which God says, “No!”
You see, I know Christmas is coming. But Mary is not singing about the birth of a baby, her baby or anybody else’s. Mary sings about God. God is the subject of every one of her sentences:
God shows mercy.
God shows strength. God scatters the proud.
God brings down the powerful. God lifts up the lowly.
God fills up the hungry. God sends the rich empty.
God helps his people. God remembers those who remember him.
These are God’s values, the values of a kingdom governed by mercy, not greed. And are these values political? Well, you tell me. It pushes the question: what kind of a world do we hope for? What kind of world is worth working for? Is it God’s kind of world – or our kind of world?
Did you know, Mary’s Christmas carol is so revolutionary that it was outlawed in India before British rule ended? Or that in Guatemala, if you sang the Carol in the 1970’s and 1980’s, you could be jailed without a trial. Or that during the military dictatorship in Argentina, the mothers of those who had “disappeared” sang the Magnificat as a protest? They did so at the risk of their lives. And they did so because they believed in a God who makes things right, rather than keeps things crooked.
And this God does not work on pure air, sitting on a cloud somewhere. This God works through people with their feet on the ground, people who take on God’s holy values, people who practice truth-telling rather than lying, people who believe in openness rather than oppression, people who feed others rather than hoarding food for themselves, people who work for the benefit of their neighbors rather than manipulating people’s ignorance to work against their own best interests.
This week, I’ll bet somebody is singing Mary’s Christmas carol in Syria, where fifty years of a torturous regime has suddenly come to an end and the torturer ran off to hide in Russia. Who knows where Mary will sing it next?
The Gospel of Luke will keep reminding us that Christmas is about far more than the birth of a little boy. Christmas is about God’s intention to recreate a broken world through that little boy. He is the boy who grew up, who did good and suffered as a result, and who came back and is still working. Mary sings of nothing less than a new heaven and a new earth.
-
The
new heaven is the heaven of God’s mercy, forgiving our sin and calling us to
turn away from it. Heaven says God has restored our broken relationship to him
through no help from us. It is a gift to be accepted. A grace to be received.
- The new earth is obvious: it is the earth where every one of God’s creatures is treated with dignity, respect, and fairness. It is the earth where justice and righteousness are interchangeable words. It is the earth of welcome, inclusion, and embrace of all, where we are alternately knocked down or lifted up until all of us fit.
So, listen to Mary
sing. Listen to her sing of God’s great vision for us and for all. Listen to
her sing of love enacted, of grace turned into graciousness, of brokenness
healed, of shalom restored. Listen to her sing until you can sing along. Listen
and sing. It is the song of God, magnified.
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