Luke 1:46-47, 52-55 "Mary's Song"

You are welcome to use parts of this sermon, but if you do, please attribute them properly! 

         In my home, when I was growing up, we were not allowed to play Christmas carols until Thanksgiving.  However, once Thanksgiving morning rolled around, before the turkey was in the oven, before the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade had ended and the football games had begun, Christmas carols blared out of our stereo, and the familiar melodies and words did not cease to dominate the airwaves at our house until December 26^th. 

         Carols and songs are a very old part of Advent and Christmas preparations. They are so ancient, in fact, that we can trace the very first one all the way back to Mary, the mother of Jesus. 

         As the story goes, an angel named Gabriel had recently snuck into the kitchen and told the young woman who was standing at the sink doing the dinner dishes that she would become pregnant in a strange and mysterious way that neither Mary nor her soon-to-be-husband, Joseph, would ever fully understand. 

         And lo, it came to pass, just as the angel had said.  Joseph was not too happy about it, and his relationship with Mary was undoubtedly strained for a while until he had a dream that set it all right again. 

         Mary, for her part, was completely discombobulated by it all.  Her mood, like that of pregnant women before and since, would swing from weepy and demanding of pickles and ice cream at all hours of the day and night to excited and joy-filled by the mere thought of a child growing inside of her – whoever the father was.

         We do not know what whim of pregnancy caused Mary to take off one afternoon and skip town.  Eventually though, she found herself not all that far away knocking at the door of her cousin, Elizabeth. 

         I have often wondered if Mary’s spontaneous departure from her own village was because the two women were drawn together in some mysterious way.  After all, they had found themselves in a similar circumstance – both mysteriously touched by God – both of them pregnant - Mary so young and unmarried and Elizabeth feeling like a senior citizen most of the time – and barren to boot. 

         At any rate, Elizabeth welcomed Mary, which was a grand gesture on her part.  After all, as Episcopal writer, Judith Jones notes, “By greeting Mary with honor, Elizabeth overturns social expectations. Mary is an unmarried pregnant woman. She might expect social judgment, shame, even ostracism from her older kinswoman.

         Yet Elizabeth knows from her own experience the cost of being shamed and excluded. In her culture a woman’s primary purpose in life was to bear children, so as an elderly infertile wife she had endured a lifetime of being treated as a failure…..She sees beyond the shamefulness of Mary’s situation to the reality of God’s love at work even among those whom society rejects and excludes”.  Surely both women sensed that God was coming.  The time was now.  Salvation – the ultimate healing - was at hand.

         When Elizabeth answered the door in full-on maternity garb, the child inside her, we are told, “leapt in her womb.”  That first flutter of a kick reminded Elizabeth once again that, yes, God does work in wondrous if incomprehensible ways.

         For her part, Mary, who was just beginning to show, burst into song.  That was quite unlike her as well.  After all, we never hear of her doing it again in any of the Gospel narratives.  And so it was that the first Christmas carol – Advent song really – came to be. 

         We call it Mary’s Song (or, if we are high brow enough to quote the Latin, it is “The Magnificat”), and, come to think of it, we really do not sing it very much these days in any language.  At least, it is certainly not one of the old standby carols. 

         But – not to worry - because we always try to live a bit on the edge around here in our church, and so we will sing not just one, but two, versions of it this morning – one after this sermon and the other as we end worship.

         But that begs the question:  Why is it that Mary’s song has not become one of the old beloved yuletide chestnuts?  It could scarcely be the melody because we do not know what tune came out of Mary’s mouth that afternoon millennia ago.  Therefore, it must be something about the words.

         I think we tend to push Mary’s Song aside during this season of Advent for a couple of reasons. First, its words do not fit our compulsion to make these weeks before Christmas blissfully happy even as we build up the balance on our credit cards with all of our gift purchasing and wear ourselves ragged with entertaining, decorating, and baking.  The words of Mary’s Song do not fit our image of what we think we should be focusing on in our preparations for Christmas – making our days both merry and bright.  Instead the words confront us with a vision of God’s dream for the world, a dream that can make us feel mighty uncomfortable.

        Second, the words of Mary’s Song challenge our counterweight to the busyness of the Advent season as well.  They do not fit in with our sometime quest for quietude and meditation, our need to remove ourselves from the red and green rat race that characterizes the season.  The words are too, well, too harsh and disagreeable and not the least bit peaceful in tone – even implying that we ought to be a bit more activist than we are comfortable with.

         What in heaven’s name then is Mary singing about that we would prefer to shelve it rather than sing it joyfully and loudly as she did?  When everything else is stripped away and particularly in this excerpt from her song that we read this morning, she is singing about change.  She is singing about transformation. She is singing about reversal and the world being about to turn.  She is singing about toppling the rich and lifting up the poor.  She is singing about feeding the hungry even if it means that the affluent have to do things differently.  She is singing about something that, in the end, we cannot stop because it is of God, and with God all things are possible. She is singing with immeasurable joy, and yet we are fearful of her words, choosing instead to bury them away in the midst of all that red and green. 

         In short, Mary’s Song announces God’s revolution – as scary a word as that is.  Mary’s Song is God’s core document - a sacred philosophy or holy vision set to music.  It is God’s charter that, as Christians, we know in our heart of hearts is the only way that the peace of God’s kingdom will come.  And her song is not just directed to first century Palestine.  Mary knows that, and so she can sing that these fundamental principles are for all generations – down through the ages even to us. 

         As Lutheran pastor Edward Marquart writes, “God totally changes the order of things. God takes that which is on the bottom; and God turn everything upside down, and puts the bottom on top and the top on the bottom.  God revolutionizes the way we think, the way we act, and the way we live. Before God’s revolution, we human beings were impressed with money, power, status and education. We were impressed with beauty, bucks and brains. But God revolutionizes all of that; God totally changes all of that; God turns it upside down.  The poor are put on the top; the rich are put on the bottom. It is a revolution; God’s revolution.

(Mary’s song) clearly tells us of God’s compassion for the economically poor; and when God’s Spirit gets inside of Christians, we too have a renewed compassion and action for the poor.  Our hearts (as well as our heads) are turned upside down.”

         Church of Scotland pastor William Barclay calls Mary’s Song “a bombshell” filled with ”revolutionary terror”.  Methodist bishop Marshall Gilmore claims it “fosters revolutionaries in our churches,” but adds that “the Church needs the leaven of discontent.”  Mary’s Song is a bold song of liberation, liberation from all those things (Bah!  Humbug!) that Ebenezer Scrooge centered his life around.

         And the fact that Mary (of all people) is singing this song that signals that God is itching for a change is evidence in and of itself that things should not – and will not – be as they have always been.  At the outset of her song, as blogger Joe Davis wrote, “Mary describes herself as God’s humble, lowly servant. She had very little power as a young virgin in the world she inhabited….When Mary says she’s “lowly,” she’s not just making a pretty metaphor – she is actually low. It’s ridiculous, completely preposterous, for someone like to her to even imagine singing a song like this. But God had remembered her.” 

         Mary sings of God’s promises, the ones God made way back when to Abraham.  Her song embodies the hope of Israel for hundreds of years.  She sings of God’s mercy for the poor and the marginalized.  She sings that God is not partial to the rich, the powerful, or the proud – the ones most likely to substitute their wealth and power and pride for the Holy One.  She sings of what will happen when we build walls, break up families, fan the flames of hate and fear.

         It is interesting to me that if you were to read all of Mary’s Song, you would find that it ends rather abruptly, and the Gospel writer hastily finishes up this chapter of his narrative by telling us that Mary stayed with Elizabeth for the next three months.  It is almost as if the Gospel writer knew that, although Mary might have stopped singing, her song did not end.  There were more stanzas to be written, and they would be written in the years and millennia yet to come. 

         Some verses would even be left for us to write.  You see, the song is still not over.  We, as Christians, are called to continue to sing it.  Each one of us is part of the song.  And the only way we can sing it is by modeling what Jesus did in his own ministry - lifting up the lowly, writing graffiti message of peace and love rather than fear and hate, building bridges and not walls, filling the bellies of the hungry, and welcoming home the marginalized. And the reason we must sing Mary’s Song all these thousands of years later is because it is the only way that peace –real peace - will ever happen on this earth.  The politicians may not think so, but we as Christians do.

         Canadian blogger Jennifer Henry raises these difficult questions for us to consider: “What does it mean for us, people with privileges, securities that the lowly will be lifted up?  Good news for the poor, but what does it mean for the comfortable?   What does generous welcome and radical inclusion mean for those of us who are comfortable with (our) way of doing things?’ 

         She goes on to note:  “That’s the thing about the turning, there’s an open, unsettling, free falling time, when the old comes apart and the new has not quite established its place, when the temptation to hold on, to hold back, is there almost as much as the momentum towards the unknown future.  How do we live into the turning, or even throw our weight forward and help God’s wheel to turn?  How do we put our hopes in others’ dream, confident that God’s liberation is ultimately good for us all?  How do we work towards a future we cannot see, we just must believe?”

         That is the great challenge of Advent, you know:  To understand that salvation is less about us personally and much more about the transformation of the world – the whole world - right now.  To be open to the significant changes that must occur if such a restoration is to become a reality. To do what we have to do to heal – and be healed, our families and communities, neighbors and nations mended and reconciled.  

         Advent is about the invitation that we receive year after year to better know God, to participate in the present-yet-always-future kingdom of God, and to always – always – work for justice and peace.  Mary’s Song is about the fact that God has not given up on us but rather has come to be in the muck and mess we have made of the world and to show us the way to begin to straighten it all out.  Mary’s Song is about understanding that redemption comes not as a result of the wealth we may accumulate, often at the expense of others.  Redemption comes from realizing the joy and love that comes from sharing in God’s abundance.

         As UCC pastor Kate Matthews wrote, “We hear this text not only in a time mired in conflict, discouragement and war but in a new season at the beginning of a new church year: Advent, the time of waiting, and so much more. While the world around us ends the year hoping for one more burst of consumer spending and waiting for annual reports on profits, so in need of healing, fearful of what next year could bring, the church has already stepped into a new time, daring to "hope and wait" for something much better than the news is reporting. We begin this new time remembering who is really in charge of everything, and setting our hearts on being part of that plan. As beautiful as these verses are, they paint a very clear picture: God is the One who brings this dream to reality, but there's work for us to do, too, in re-shaping the instruments of war, violence, hatred and destruction into instruments of peace and provision for all.”

         So - this Advent, I pray that you will not bury Mary’s Song under the trappings of the season.  In fact, I pray that you will hang on its every word.  I pray that you will sing the words of Mary’s Song and ask yourself what in your life needs to turn and change and be transformed.  I pray that every phrase will begin to haunt you because Mary’s Song is so relevant.  It is a song for now.  It is a song for our time.  It is a song that the world desperately needs to hear.  It is a song of revolution and a song of hope.  It is a song to remind us that, in the end, Christmas is not about gifts and decorated trees and quiet times of meditation. It is about “ lifting up the ‘lowly,’ filling ‘the hungry with good things’ and ‘sending the rich away empty.’  Bah!  Humbug!?  No – not now, not here.  Mary’s Song: It is truly THE song of the season. 
By Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church U.C.C., Raymond, Maine