“A Song of Too Much Hope”

Advent 4 December 20, 2020

Luke 1:26–38, 46b-55

In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, ‘Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.’ But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. The angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.’ Mary said to the angel, ‘How can this be since I am a virgin?’ The angel said to her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.’ Then Mary said, ‘Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.’ Then the angel departed from her. …

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.’

*****

In this season we hear a lot about Mary, the mother of Jesus. We see her in nativity displays. Millions honor her legacy with some of the most beloved prayers, liturgies, and carols we know.

On this final Sunday in Advent, I want to consider Mary the prophet, the voice of the downtrodden who sings God’s gorgeous justice song.

I grew up Lutheran and didn’t learn much about the song Luke attributes to the teenage girl who gave birth to Jesus. No one told me that Mary’s song comprises the longest set of words spoken by a woman in the New Testament. No one remarked on the astonishing fact that Mary sang her prophetic song on her pregnant cousin Elizabeth’s doorstep, while Zechariah, the “official” spokesperson of God, endured his divine silencing. I had no clue that the song’s socioeconomic and political implications are so subversive, its lyrics have been banned many times in modern history. I wish my early exposure to the Nativity story had been framed by Mary’s fiery justice song, because her understanding of God’s intentions and actions fundamentally change the story of “the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.”

It seems that throughout history Mary is portrayed as docile and unassertive, but I see something remarkably bold and even brazen in these lines of Mary’s Song. Imagine the audacity of a young peasant girl, scandalously pregnant, peddling an angel story no one believes, living on the outskirts of an empire, to declare without shame or apology that she is favored of God. This is not the song of a spiritually timid human being. This is the song of a bold young woman. A young woman passionately in love with a God who is passionately in love with her.

Let’s look at Mary’s Song (the Magnificat) more closely.

According to Luke, Mary sang “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.” Before the Magnificat points to anything else, it points to joy. Specifically, it reminds us that the appropriate response to God’s complicated presence in our lives is joy. Not fear. Not guilt. Not penance. Not obligation. Joy. Indeed, deep and irresistible joy is at the heart of the entire Christmas story. The angel tells Zechariah that “joy and gladness” will mark John the Baptizer’s birth. When Mary arrives at Elizabeth’s house, Elizabeth’s unborn baby “leaps for joy.” When an angel choir announces Jesus’s arrival to the shepherds, they describe “good news of great joy.”

Joy. We miss something essential about the life of faith when we gloss over Mary’s decision to rejoice in response to God. Consider the circumstances into which she sings her amazing words. A peasant girl living under oppressive imperial rule is unmarried and pregnant in a culture that considers it appropriate to kill young women in her condition. At this point in the story, it’s not clear if her fiancé will stick by her. In fact, it’s possible that she has run away to her cousin’s house precisely because she feels vulnerable and threatened in her own hometown.

And yet this young girl sings of joy. Her song demonstrates a baseline trust in the goodness of God, and her imaginative capacity to frame her story as one worth rejoicing over. Joy. Against all odds, she dares to believe that what is happening to her is not horror, not tragedy, not random, not meaningless. She doesn’t succumb to the judging narratives swirling around her — of shame, scandal, and sinfulness. Instead, she insists that her very body is infused with the presence and power of a God who acts decisively and generously in history. In her history. In her life.

What would it be like to frame our own lives in this way? In this year of loss and frustration, uncertainty, division, and angst, what would it look like if we reframed it all in the goodness of God and an imaginative capacity to see joy. What would it be like to look for God in the most intimate details of our days? What would it be like to make joy our bedrock?

*“He has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed.” Do you ever imagine God gazing at you? If so, how do you characterize God’s gaze? Cool? Judgmental? Or patient and tender, warm and inviting? Mary finds the gaze of God not just bearable, but wonderful. When God looks upon her, she is nourished and elevated. Mary basks in God’s eyes. She senses God’s pleasure and returns it.

Moreover, it is in Mary’s lowliness that God favors her. God’s gaze accepts Mary’s poverty, her simplicity and favors her anyway, completely, and exactly for who she is and what she is.

How would life change for you by seeing into God’s delight in this way? Dare to entertain the possibility that God looks on you with favor and that God’s gaze lingers on you in love.

*“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.” After Mary sings her joy and God’s delight, she finds the keen, sharp edge of her prophetic voice, and bursts into an anthem of hope and justice for the world’s poorest, most forgotten, most brokenhearted, and most oppressed people. She describes a reality in which our sinful and unjust status quo is gorgeously reversed: the proud are scattered and the humble honored. The hungry are fed and the rich sent away. The powerful are brought down, and the lowly are lifted up. In short, Mary describes a world reordered and renewed — a world so beautifully characterized by love and justice, only the Christ she carries in her womb can birth it into being.

These lines, needless to say, are the lines that get Mary into trouble. These are the lines that have gotten the Magnificat banned at key moments in history. These are the lines we Christians feel a perpetual need to either tame or ignore because we find them so deeply threatening to the lives we prefer to live.

And yet there are moments when I am drawn like a hungry person to the world Mary describes. Can you envision it, even just for a moment? A world without scarcity? A world without hoarding? A world in which our economic disparities don’t get in the way of our fundamental kinship as human beings? A world in which the poor receive truly good things — not leftovers, not hand-me-downs, not judgements that insult their dignity — but good things? A world in which our own cluttered, bloated fullness is mercifully taken away from us, so that in newfound emptiness, we find room for all that is truly life-giving? A world in which we are finally and permanently delivered from the tyranny of our sense of possession, ownership, and stuff?

Isn’t that a world worth singing about? Even if it costs us before it fulfills us? The thing is Mary’s song forever dismantles the self-protective walls we erect between our personal piety and God’s insistence on systemic justice. We can’t choose the first only and call it Christianity. To love the helpless infant who comes to us on Christmas Day is to love the one who grows up to raise valleys and level mountains, to liberate the oppressed and dethrone the arrogant. Imagine Jesus in his cradle, the Magnificat a lullaby Mary pours into his ears each night until his heart burns for justice as fiercely as hers does. This is the One we call God. To love this God is to yearn for a reordered world with the same passion and urgency Mary voices in her justice song.

Notice that Mary describes these divine reversals as if they have already happened: “He has brought down.” “He has filled.” “He has sent.” My favorite preacher, Barbara Brown Taylor writes in Home by Another Road: “Prophets almost never get their verb tenses straight, because part of their gift is being able to see the world as God sees it — not divided into things that are already over and things that have not happened yet, but as an eternally unfolding mystery that surprises everyone, maybe even God.”

What would it be like this Advent, to mix up our tenses as prophets routinely do? To live into the topsy-turvy, upside down world Mary foresees? To live as if that world is already here? The Messiah is at your doorstep, Mary sings across time. There is no unjust system, oppressive hierarchy, or arrogant leadership structure the Messiah will not upend. No promise the Christ will fail to keep. No broken, exploited life God will not save. What if we lived into these promises — insisted on these promises — in our day-to-day lives right now?

The Magnificat is a song of too much hope. Of course, it is, because “too much hope” is precisely what we’re called to cultivate on this fourth and final Sunday in Advent. Can you do it? Can you find your voice and share it with a world desperately in need? What does your Magnificat sound like this year, despite a pandemic? How is God magnified through your unique perspective and vision? What stories of divine favor do you have to tell? What glorious reversals do you see heading our way? What words will you choose to describe the joy of the Good News of the Messiah you carry?

Don’t wait. Sing it. Sing it now.