Mary's Song of Hope

The Song of Mary, known as the Magnificat, which we sang as a Canticle and then heard in the Gospel, is from the first chapter of Luke.  Luke is the only gospel that includes Mary's Song, and apart from the Gospel of John, Mary is barely mentioned in the Gospels of Mark or Matthew.  Mark does not include the birth story at all, and in Matthew Mary has nothing to say.  She is mentioned but does not speak.  Then, in the letters of Paul, God's Son is referred to as being "born of a woman," but her name is not mentioned.  So it is only in Luke that Mary has something to say, and what she says resonates in a glorious song.

Elizabeth and Mary were filled with the Spirit of God as they anticipated the birth of children.  Mary expressed in song what she experienced in her own life and hoped for in the lives of others:  "God has scattered the proud in their conceit.  He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty."  This is a reversal of what had been taken for granted.  The accepted values and norms of the people were to be turned upside down, and a new day of justice, fairness and equality was coming.  It was what the ancient understanding of the Hebrew year of jubilee was all about.  It was "the promise God made to Abraham and his children for ever."

It was Mary’s faith in God that enabled her to sing her magnificent song “rejoicing in God her Savior.”  She trusted that nothing was impossible for God.  As Luke states, “Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.”  The biblical scholar Walter Brueggmann reminds us,  “She sings about ‘the hungry,’ the ones cut out of the food chain and denied access to the world’s great granaries.  Mary knew what Israel always knew, and what the church knows in Advent.  The weak and vulnerable will be ‘lifted up.’  The poetry and the song invite us to move into a new,  different world.  We may, in anticipation, already act in and for that new age.  Already now in such anticipation folk in Bethlehem can lean back in confidence.  Folk around Mary can hope and sing.  And the rest of us, while we wait, may be alongside the hungry and lowly who will be honored by the new reality of the Christ-child.”

This great Song of Mary reminds all of us that we are interdependent beings.  We need places where friendship and companionship are a reality without regard to social status or economic standing.  The upside-down values of the Magnificat tell us that God's economy is different from ours, that people and relationships matter more than anything else, and that true fidelity to God and others demands a new attitude and a new understanding about human relationships and the purpose of life.

James Kay, a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary, has written, "Mary sings not just a solo aria about her own destiny, but a freedom song on behalf of all the faithful poor in the land.  She sings a song of freedom for all who, in their poverty and their wretchedness, still believe that God will make a way where there is no way."

"Can Mary’s God truly be our Lord and our God -- the God who overturns the way the world works, who elects the least and the last to bring in the kingdom, whose judgment in every sense will save the poor, the wronged and the oppressed? …. Can we really praise this God -- Mary’s God?”  (The Christian Century, 1997)

Today there is a real need to praise Mary’s God.  In the midst of all the controversies and devastation around us, including the deaths of innocent children, we need the presence of God in our lives and in the lives of all people.  God who is compassionate, life-giving, the God of peace and love is to come among us bringing into being a new reality of hope and joy for all people. 

As we enter the Christmas season, singing carols and songs of gladness and good will to all in celebrating the birth of Christ, it is a new time to bear witness to the church's ancient faith that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us" in the lives of very ordinary people who found shelter in a stable.  The most difficult task for us is to be still, to ponder these events, to open our hands and hearts, and, as we prayed in today's Collect, to "purify our conscience." 

God's grace in our lives is a reconciling power.  As our Advent celebration anticipates God's victory and the restoration of Christ's gracious reign over his redeemed creation, tomorrow evening we shall hear the angel's song of praise for God's glory in the highest.  God's eternal plan for redemption will be made known to all creation.  It is a proclamation of hope for people of every race, class and culture.

And so, as we move toward the celebration of Jesus' birth, wrapped in swaddling clothes and placed in a bed of straw in the stable of a shepherd, may we honor the God we praise who brings to birth our human quest for freedom, justice, peace and good will for everyone. Amen.