Mary sings, and we just got to join in.
My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my savior,
for you have looked with favor on the lowliness of your servant.
Mary sings, I’m convinced of it, though Luke doesn’t give it to me in writing. Even when merely spoken, her words easily fall into rhythm and make the whole body search for a tune to go with her confident posture.
My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my savior,
for you have looked with favor on the lowliness of your servant.
Mary sings of the magnifying gaze of God. She sings of the Holy One of Israel who looks with favor on what is small in our eyes, on what we dismiss as insignificant, on what is often overlooked or ignored—lowliness. Mary sings of God’s magnifying gaze that has changed her life and the course of the world.
We’re told an angel came to her; she would get pregnant and give birth to a boy, the angel said, and that she would name him Jesus. And that was only the beginning of the angelic announcement; the divine surprise was still unfolding. God would give to her boy the throne of David, and of his kingdom there would be no end. And this child of hers would be called the Son of the Most High.
After dropping the news, the angel lingered a little, didn’t just return to heaven, having delivered the life-changing message. The angel waited. Clearly this pregnancy was not just a matter of divine fiat. The angel waited to hear what Mary would have to say. The angel waited because the good news for all people does not press us into service or coerce us. God speaks and awaits our response, awaits our consent to let our lives serve God’s saving purpose. “Here am I, the servant of the Lord,” Mary said. “Let it be with me according to your word.” Fully seen in our dignity as creatures made in the image of God, none of us are treated as mere means for God’s ends; we are partners whose consent God awaits and honors. Advent is a time of expectant waiting, and not just for us, but for God and whole host of heaven
“Let it be with me according to your word,” Mary said. Then the angel departed, and Mary departed as well, with haste, to go and see Elizabeth down south, in the hill country. It’s with Elizabeth, that Mary finds words beyond her courageous, “Let it be.”
My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my savior.
“The confession ‘Savior’ expresses the desperate need of the lowly, the poor, the oppressed, and the hungry,” writes Alan Culpepper.
Those who have power and means, privilege and position have no need sufficient to lead them to voice such a term that is itself a plea for help. ‘Savior’ gives evidence of one’s sense of need greater than one’s strength. The proud are thereby excluded from the beginning from the confession that leads to joy and salvation.[1]
The confession “Savior” expresses the desperate need of the lowly, but also their confident hope in the God who sees them and looks on them with favor. Mary glorifies God her Savior, because the Mighty One of Israel doesn’t act like the mighty ones of the world. Mary sings, because God’s magnifying gaze renders the overlooked visible, making seemingly insignificant people greater in status and importance, moving them from the margins to the center. Mary sings, because her life matters, her consent matters, her voice matters. She sings, because God chose her to participate in the great work of salvation. “Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed,” she declares, moving quickly from the very personal to the vast horizon of God’s promise to Abraham: all generations will call her blessed, and in the end all the families of the earth will be blessed because God is faithful.[2]
God’s magnifying gaze is by no means a new thing, it simply is the way God looks at the world. “You, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah,” the prophet Micah declared, “you who are one of the little clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to rule in Israel… He shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of the Lord, … he shall be great to the ends of the earth; and he shall be the one of peace.”[3] Of all the towns and clans of Judah, God chose Bethlehem. Of all the sons of Jesse, God chose David. Of all the nations, God chose Israel. Of all the women, God chose Mary, a teenager from some town called Nazareth that nobody had ever heard of. Under the magnifying gaze of God, the people and needs we all too easily overlook or ignore, or are prone to dismiss as marginal or insignificant, are fully seen and recognized, and therefore honored.
Wendy Farley writes,
When we expect the power of redemption to mimic the power we see around us every day in fathers, judges, rulers, warriors, or captains of industry, it is because we have not been able to digest the shocking images of power we celebrate every Christmas and Easter. … Christ has always been a terribly offensive icon of the Holy, not least because he is perhaps the poorest display of power one sees in any of the world’s religions. In him, we see immortal, invisible God birthed into this world through an impoverished and nearly outcast young woman. We watch Jesus wander around a little rag-tag occupied country for a while and then leave it by one of Rome’s most hideous methods of execution. Although we love these stories and tell them over and over again, they capture something about divine power that [many of us] often find indigestible. Our love of power finds little satisfaction in Jesus. [4]
And perhaps because our love of power finds little satisfaction in Jesus, we are tempted, forever tempted, it seems, to fashion God for us in the image of an autocratic ruler. Yet for centuries, Christians have recited Mary’s confident and exuberant words in their evening prayers, with the desire to join her praise of God’s world-flipping redemption, and hopefully with the desire to have our own views of people and needs adjusted by God’s magnifying gaze.
For you, God, have scattered the proud in their conceit,
casting down the mighty from their thrones,
and lifting up the lowly.
You have filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.
You have come to the aid of your servant Israel,
to remember the promise of mercy,
the promise you made to our ancestors,
to Abraham and his children for ever.
Mary’s words reach far into the past, into the time of promise, and they reach deep into the time of fulfillment, even as the promise fulfilled reaches into the present with the birth of her child. We join Mary in her praise because the Spirit who came upon her has been poured out on us. We sing with her, because the God she birthed into this world is faithfully moving the whole creation toward its consummation in Christ. We sing Mary’s words of confidence and courage, because as we sing, our own hearts become a little more courageous and willing to follow Jesus on the way. We sing justice. We sing redemption. We sing the end of hunger and war. We sing the resurrection. We sing the power of love overcoming the love of power, and we say with her, “Let it be with me according to your word.”
During the years of military rule and civil war in Guatemala and El Salvador, those in power banned the public reading of Mary’s canticle of praise—they recognized it as subversive. When Martin Luther first translated the Bible into German, a number of German princes gladly supported him in his struggles with the Holy Roman Empire. But when they considered their own peasants singing along with mother Mary about the God who casts down the mighty from their thrones, they got nervous. And Luther, convinced that he needed the princes’ support, revised his German translation of the New Testament: he left Mary’s song in Latin.
Only that kind of maneuvering by those in power did not then nor will it ever prevent God’s merciful gaze from lifting up the lowly. In the late 80’s, before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Christians in Leipzig gathered on Monday evenings in and around St. Nikolai church to pray for peace and to sing. They lit candles, week after week, singing songs of hope, and their numbers grew from a few dozen to more than a thousand and eventually to more than three hundred thousand men, women, and children. After the fall of the Wall, a reporter asked an officer of the Stasi, the dreaded secret police, why they did not crush this protest like they had so many others. And the officer replied, “We had no contingency plan for song.”[5]
In the deep shadows of injustice and despair, we light the candles of Advent. In the thick darkness of the world’s sinful, loveless ways, we raise up our heads and hum along with Mary’s song—already a little more confident than we thought possible; a little more courageous than we imagined. We sing the birth of Jesus. We go to Bethlehem to see what God has done for us. We will enter the house where the promise of God is fulfilled and new life comes into the world. We will kneel next to the manger, and all that is proud and powerful in us will be brought down and scattered. And all that is lowly and poor, humble and hungry in us will be lifted up and strengthened and filled. And the hungry will eat. And those who flee for their lives will find refuge and home. And those who thirst for righteousness will drink. And we will all know and live the good news of great joy.
[1] Culpepper, Luke (NIB), 56.
[2] See Genesis 12:3
[3] Micah 5:2-5
[4] Wendy Farley, The Wounding and Healing of Desire. Weaving Heaven and Earth (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2005), 29, 96; my italics.
[5] David Lose http://www.davidlose.net/2015/12/advent-4-c-singing-as-an-act-of-resistance/