Margie Quinn
You may or may not know this, but we’ve got some musical theatre kids in the building. Jack will star in “Bye Bye Birdie” in the spring, Gia in “The Little Mermaid” and Quentin played in the orchestra for “Wicked” the musical not too long ago. I happen to be a musical theatre kid myself. Growing up, it was my passion. The first show I performed in was “Evita” at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center . My brother and I sang in the Nashville Children’s Choir in middle school and the traveling cast of Evita needed a few kids to play some children in the show. This was Patrick and I’s moment—we slathered Burt’s Bee’s ChapStick under our eyes during one scene, looking forlorn and crying a little, assuming that everyone in the audience was focused on the budding talent of two lanky middle schoolers in the ensemble.
I have always loved musicals—performed in every show at school and consider them my church outside of church. As I’ve grown older, I have begun to notice that there are two kinds of people: those that love musicals that those that don’t. My best friend is in the “Don’t” category. Her issue is the unrealistic fashion in which characters have a normal conversation and then all the sudden…they break out into song. I get it, I really do. It’s cheesy at times, a bit jarring and not exactly how daily life works. Still though, still. There’s magic to it.
In our passage this morning, Mary does the unrealistic and breaks out into song. Let me back up. Before Mary sings what we call the Magnificat, she travels eighty miles to visit her cousin Elizabeth. Scripture says that she went with haste. I can only assume this is because she was just visited by an angel who told her that she would bear a son named Jesus, who “will be great, and will be called Son of the Most High, Son of God…and of his kingdom there will be no end. Your cousin Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, she who was said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.”
Mary’s response? “Here am I, the servant of the Lord, let it be with me according to your word.” Mary’s, “Here am I” echoes Jacob’s response when God visits him in a dream, Moses’s response when God shows up as burning bush, Samuel’s response when God visits him as a child, and Isaiah’s response when God commissions him to become a great prophet. “Here am I,” Mary replies. Still, though, still, it isn’t surprising that she travels with haste to Judea to confirm her faith by going to see the miracle which the angel had effectively brought to her notice.
And just like Nunsense or Six, 9 to 5 or Legally Blonde: The Musical, this story centers women who don’t resent each other or compete with each other, don’t compare themselves to each other or push the other down in order to get ahead—no in this story, Elizabeth becomes the first human being to witness the good news. How absurd for that time, that the coming of the Messiah who would redeem the brokenness of the world is proclaimed not by high priests or archangels or kings, but by a nobody from nowhere; a young, poor, unwed pregnant woman who would definitely be seen as a disgrace, and an old, barren woman who had lost all hope in conceiving.
The absurd continues—when Mary reaches Elizabeth, the child LEAPS in Elizabeth’s womb. “Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb,” Elizabeth cries. “Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.” Elizabeth has no trouble believing that God could and would come to us in a most unexpected, radical way.
And Mary sings, “MY SOUL MAGNIFIES THE LORDDDDD. And my spirit rejoices in God my Savior!” Her song, the power ballad of the show, begins. A woman often depicted in our day and age as a coy, porcelain, mild-mannered girl, usually looking down at baby Jesus just might be looking UP, hands spread wide, a song of justice released from her lips; like Elle Woods in “So Much Better,” or Celie’s “I’m Here” in The Color Purple. Recognizing her own vocation in Elizabeth’s words, Mary is empowered to share a song. Harkening back to the song of Miriam, the song of Deborah, she sings the bold words of the Magnificat, a proclamation of a seemingly absurd world in which the oppressive political and economic structures are turned upside down! In her song, hierarchies are subverted, the mighty are brought down. These are some of the most prophetic words in scripture! They echo Isaiah’s words this morning:
“The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to comfort all who mourn; to give them a garland instead of ashes…shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations. For I the LORD love justice…and I will faithfully give them their reward, and I will make an everlasting covenant with them.” An everlasting covenant that stretches from Ruth and Tamar and Rahab and Jacob and Isaac and Abraham to…Mary.
Mary’s ballad goes on: God has scattered the proud who only have thoughts for their hearts, has brought down the powerful from their thrones, has lifted up the lowly, has filled the hungry with good things, has sent the rich away empty, has looked with favor on me.
And I believe it, even if you don’t, she might be saying. I believe it, just like Mary Magdalene believed in the resurrected Jesus when he encountered her in the garden, even if the Disciples didn’t believe her. Just like Elizabeth believed that she would bear John the Baptist, even if her husband Zechariah didn’t. Maybe men don’t always believe women, but how powerful in this story that women believe each other. Women know that it is vital to have the Elizabeth’s in our lives to bless us, lift us up and sing the harmonies to our melodies.
Mary believes all these things have already passed, even if we cannot see them yet. Notice that language? God has already redeemed us, has brought comfort to our lonely and fragmented souls, has brought healing to our broken world and has brought justice to the ones kicked to the outskirts by Empire. As Chuck Campbell writes, “Mary proclaims the promised, topsy-turvy future of God as an already accomplished fact—possibly because that future can already be glimpsed in God’s choice of Mary as the bearer of the Messiah.” This song foreshadows an end to the unjust social structures in the fleshy, tired, faithful body of Mary, a pregnant teenager, a nobody from nowhere. God chooses Mary as the bearer of this upside-down world coming to us.
As an aside, there is a Cathedral outside of Paris that contains the dress that Mary supposedly wore when she gave birth to Jesus—it is a length of beige silk without a single bloodstain. The costume designers in this musical got it wrong, because the good news didn’t come in something shiny and unblemished. It came in the cracked feet of a woman who rode 80 miles to see her cousin.
It came to give us this upside-down world. Absurd, really. Like the Feast of Fools—a festive event around Christmastime that depicted the role reversals Mary hinted at. Back in the day, leaders in the church would wear their robes inside out, hold their books upside down, wear glasses made of orange peels and, instead of singing traditional hymns, would chant, and I quote, “confused and inarticulate gibberish.” Think Spamalot. Some churches even had a congregant parading through the aisle on a donkey as a way to honor the holy family’s flight into Egypt to escape King Herod. The choir, the congregation and the priests would bray like donkeys during mass.
If that ain’t the whimsy of a Broadway musical, I don’t know what is. And yet, even as a young woman, I’m guilty of viewing Mary and Elizabeth as two-dimensional figures, frozen in stained glass, timid in manner; the background characters of a bigger show.
The topsy-turvy news of the gospel this morning can be found in the story of two pregnant women, laughing and singing, rejoicing, and believing that God comes to us in a vulnerable baby, who nobody wanted to take in—a baby born from a poor girl from Nazareth, who wondered, “Could the world be about to turn?”
Our hope as Christians today finds its voice in this song and its proclamation of the “already and the not yet.” We wait for the birth of God; we believe that God has already redeemed all the brokenness that we feel and see.
In this song, the mighty are brought down. In this song, the hungry are filled with good things. In this song, we see the glimpse of Empire that crumbles under the weight of the radical love of a baby.
This isn’t the voice of the powerful speaking here, church. It’s the voice of the powerless; it’s the voice of a woman and her cousin and a baby that leaps in a womb and a baby that’s soon to be born, and Mary wonders and asks, just as we do, Could the world be about the to turn? Could the world be about to turn? Can the world be about to turn?
May it be so.