God our redeemer, who prepared the Blessed Virgin Mary to be the mother of your Son: grant that, as she looked for his coming as our savior, so we may be ready to greet him when he comes again as our judge ☩ in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
“Jingle Bells,” “Santa Claus is Coming to Town,” “White Christmas” – we’ve heard these songs dozens of times over the past weeks. But there is one song that we haven’t heard this season, and, no, I’m not speaking of “Dominic the Christmas Donkey,” which is a fun song. The song to put on our lips and carry with us in our hearts is Mary’s song which we heard this morning.
Just as two Sundays ago we heard the great canticle of Morning Prayer, the Benedictus sung by Zechariah, this morning we have the great canticle of Evening Prayer, the Magnificat. We call this song of Mary the Magnificat because it begins with that word in Latin, meaning “magnify.” The reason why this song is so worthy of our focus this morning is that is a bridge to carry us from Advent into Christmas.
As we heard in Luke, the context for this song is the visitation between Elizabeth and Mary. After the angel Gabriel has announced to Mary that she will bear the Messiah, she goes with haste to a small village where her relative Elizabeth lives. And when Mary entered her home, the child in Elizabeth’s womb, John the Baptist, leaps with joy. Elizabeth then speaks of this joy, and Mary sings with joy. Through and through, there is joy in this passage. Joy, of course, is different from happiness or contentment. Happiness can be elusive. For us to be happy, things have to go our way, we have to feel good, we need to have all the things that we both need and desire. But joy is different. The only thing required for joy to show up is the presence of God.
And so joy can be found on a battlefield, in a hospital waiting room, in a courtroom, in a tense meeting, or in a strained relationship. Joy is all about an awareness that God is with us. Whether or not Mary and Elizabeth are happy, we can’t say for sure, but we do know that they are joyful because God is with them. And I wonder, when was the last time you leaped with joy? When was the last time you were aware of God’s presence in your life? If you can easily think of an answer, thank God for that moment of joy. If you can’t recall a time when you were joyful, you might pray for an awareness of God’s loving presence to be with you. And know that Bonnie and I are always here to talk with you – either to hear about your joys or to sit with you in what feels like God’s absence.
There’s another detail about this interaction between Elizabeth and Mary that is helpful to us in our faith. Elizabeth asks “Why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me?” Elizabeth asks “Why me?” That’s a question that we all have uttered – when you lose a job, when you lose a loved one, when you get a bad diagnosis, when your kids are struggling, we ask “Why me?” We’re really good at laying blame at God’s feet for when bad things happen. And that’s actually a fine and holy thing to do. Even if God isn’t responsible for our suffering, God can take the blame for it if that’s what we need to get through it. So in no way am I suggesting that we shouldn’t ask “Why me?” when bad things happen. There are a good number of the Psalms that do just that.
What I so appreciate about Elizabeth is that she asks “Why me?” when something wonderful happens to her. When we get an award, or a raise a work, or meet our goals, how often do we ask “Why me?” Probably not as often as we should, because we know the answer – it was my hard work, it was my determination, it was my skill. And certainly, those things are a factor. But I’m not sure that we give God enough credit or stay humble in our accomplishments. Elizabeth is a great example to us of remembering that God is the one from whom all blessings flow.
We then have the magisterial and majestic Magnificat. You all have probably heard that Christmas song that doesn’t deserve to ever be heard again, “Mary Did You Know?” Of course she did, read the Magnificat, she knows more than we can ever hope to. Mary isn’t some passive vessel, Mary is not meek and mild. Instead, Mary is a bold, strong, and powerful woman. The theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer once said of this text that it is the most passionate, vehement, and revolutionary Advent hymn that has ever been sung. Mary is not singing a sweet lullaby, but rather she sings a strong and uncompromising song of justice which speaks about the bringing down of rulers and humbling those in power. Though Mary may have been an unwed teenage mother, she is the most powerful person this world has known.
Now, Mary’s power may not look like what we’d expect – she probably wouldn’t win a weightlifting completion, she probably wouldn’t be a master at playing chess, she might not have the organizational skills to run a Fortune 500 company – and yet, I’ll stand by my assertion that she’s the most powerful person, man or woman, in all of history. This is because she shows us the place from which true power is derived – obedience to God. Mary demonstrates an incredible amount of self-awareness and humility in her obedience. Obedience to God is not about becoming a doormat or losing our voice, rather it is about aligning ourselves with the transforming love of God. Mary becomes powerful not by climbing over others to get there, but rather by embracing her own lowliness. And from that lowliness, God greatly exalts her unlike any other person in history. And so we thank God for Mary.
Mary’s song could serve as the foundation for millions of sermons, and so there’s no way that I’m going to cover it all. The part that I want to focus on this morning though is the great leveling that she sings of. Mary says, “God has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly.” Sometimes it can be very unhelpful to interpret the Bible in an overly literalistic way, but on this point, I’m not sure that we think literally enough. We need to actually visualize this image – the powerful are brought down while the lowly are lifted up. Think of it in terms of a scale that is out of balance – what God is doing is to bring balance.
One of the false narratives that we live by is the story of redemptive violence – the understanding that if you do something wrong to me, that the only way to restore order is for me to do something to you. Of course, on the Cross, Jesus utterly demolishes this approach when he takes on the sins of the world. But we still haven’t learned that lesson. You block my Supreme Court nominee, I’ll block yours. You say something bad about me, I’ll slander you right back. You attack our country, we’ll attack yours. You kill someone, we’ll kill you to show you that it’s wrong to kill. As we can see from looking at a newspaper or at our own families, redemptive violence is just a fairy tale because redemption never really comes.
But too often that how’s we misinterpret the Magnificat, we cheer on God and say “Yea, let’s bring down the mighty and lift up the lowly!” A lot of what passes for “social justice” is rooted in this idea, that if we can just swap out those who are in power that everything will change. But that’s a lie. Nothing changes when those without power become those with power and those with power become those without. That’s just flipping the equation and leaving the scale out of balance. As we heard John the Baptist prophesy two weeks ago, the hills are made low and the valleys are lifted up. It’s not that valleys are turned into hills and the hills into valleys.
Instead, what Mary sings about is God’s great leveling, where we are all servants, not rulers, where no one is oppressed, no one is hungry, no one is forgotten. I can’t help but wonder how things might be different if the Magnificat was the Christmas song that we heard on every radio station this time of year. What the Magnificat does is to realign our vision. It shows us that the solution to our problems isn’t “Well, if I were in charge” or if “My political party wins the next election.” No, our salvation is found in that God remembers the promise of mercy.
And if we’re going to read the Magnificat faithfully, we need to be honest about the fact that most of us are on the “being brought down” side of this leveling action. We’re sitting here in a gorgeous church, we have warm clothes to wear, we know where our next meal is coming from, we have homes to return to and cars in which to get there. And the reality is that a lot of people don’t have these things. Now, this isn’t a case of “be thankful for what you have because a lot of people have less.” That’s terrible theology. But, rather, this is a reminder that if it feels like you’re going down a bit in the rankings, it very well may because you were higher up than you should have been.
That’s why the Magnificat doesn’t make sense sometimes. It’s why dictators throughout history have banned people from singing this song in public. They know how powerful this is. Sometimes the only way to see God’s justice is when you’re looking up at it from a place where you are aware of your need for God’s mercy. When we are in a place of contentment and self-sufficiency, it can be easy to overlook injustice. Or it can be easy to say something like “a rising tide lifts all boats,” when that isn’t the image here. The image isn’t that the lowly just need to be brought up to the level of the powerful. Yes, the lowly do need to be lifted up. But the powerful, they’ve become too powerful, too rich, too mighty. And so they do need to come down.
And I’ll be the first to admit that this makes me uncomfortable. I know that as an educated, heterosexual, white American male that I have privilege upon privilege. That doesn’t make me a bad person, and that doesn’t make any of those things bad. The solution isn’t just to wipe out my bank account and give it to someone else. It isn’t to throw me out of this pulpit and replace me with an underrepresented demographic. But, if in God’s wisdom, that is what happens, I need to bear in mind that this is a part of God’s leveling. It’s not that others are stepping over me, but rather that we are being leveled by God. And when you’re brought down or humbled, it’s not fun. Even if you believe that greater diversity in leadership is a good thing, no one enjoys being the one passed over.
What the Magnificat does is to help us to understand this great leveling of God and to stop seeing everything as a competition and a zero-sum game. It’s quite possible for someone else to be given more of a voice without it diminishing your own. But even if you don’t have as much as a voice as you used to, it very well may be a part of God’s plan of salvation to bring the mighty down and lift up the lowly so that all people stand on the ground of God’s mercy. And we trust that even if we are on the “bringing down” side of things, that God’s love, mercy, and abundant care will always remain with us. It is not that God will love us any less, just that we stop pretended that we deserve God’s love more than others do.
If it does nothing else for you, pray with the Magnificat today as you prepare for the joy of God’s presence which will come tomorrow on Christmas Eve. Let this bold song sung by a bold woman change how you see power, wealth, and prestige. Not everything is a competition, and when it comes to God’s mercy and love, there is no shortage to fight over. If, in God’s wisdom, it’s time for me to be brought even with others, even if that means that means being brought low, may God grant us the courage and grace to, in the words of Mary, respond by saying “Let it be with me according to your word.” Amen.
