Mary's Song of Joy

Le Magnificat, James Tissot, France, 1886-1894

The last section of Luke 1 describes Mary's visit to her older relative Elizabeth, and Elizabeth's prophetic welcome:

Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear! But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her!

What follows is a song so revolutionary it was omitted from Bibles read to American slaves, and banned from public reading in colonial India.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer called it 

the oldest Advent hymn. It is at once the most passionate, the wildest, one might even say the most revolutionary Advent hymn ever sung. There is none of the sweet, wistful, or even playful tone of many of our Christmas carols, but instead a hard, strong, relentless hymn about the toppling of the thrones and the humiliation of the lords of this world, about the power of God and the powerlessness of humankind. 

Today in church I learned that Mary's song echoes the pattern of Hannah's sang in 1 Samuel 2 and contains references to at least 15 other passages of scripture. Was Mary, an uneducated teenage girl, a scholar of the Hebrew scriptures? Or was her song inspired by the Holy Spirit, echoing prophetic themes across the earlier centuries? 

My soul glorifies the Lord
    and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has been mindful
    of the humble state of his servant.
From now on all generations will call me blessed,
    for the Mighty One has done great things for me—
    holy is his name.
His mercy extends to those who fear him,
    from generation to generation.
He has performed mighty deeds with his arm;
    he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.
He has brought down rulers from their thrones
    but has lifted up the humble.
He has filled the hungry with good things
    but has sent the rich away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel,
    remembering to be merciful
to Abraham and his descendants forever,
    just as he promised our ancestors.

In 1976, mothers in Argentina, grieving the loss of children who disappeared under a repressive regime, began gathering to sing and read the words of Mary's song in the Plaza de Mayo, the central square of Buenos Aires. They prayed that Mary's words would come true, even under the abusive power. Some of the women who began the movement of the Madres y Abuelas de la Plaza de Mayo disappeared themselves not long after they started, but other women took their place in a movement that grew to confront dictators and death squads across 8 Latin American countries. 

Posters the mothers made portraying Mary and her words were outlawed and removed, but the prayer echoed through hundreds, then thousands of women. In 1983 Argentina returned to democracy and launched the National Commission for the Disappearance of Persons (CONADEP). Mary's words still gave hope and power 2000 years after she first sang them.

The Christmas story is itself an enactment of Mary's prophetic words. Jesus, the savior, the promised king, was born in a stable, and visited by shepherds, outcasts in their own culture. Not long after his birth, Jesus, Mary and Joseph were refugees in Egypt, fleeing Herod's jealous rage. 

I watch with sadness as Christians cheer the ascendance of Donald Trump and his wealthy, power-hungry cronies. Elon Musk invested at least $250 million to help Trump regain the presidency, a small investment with high potential return given the billions of governmental contracts Musk's companies enjoy. Will an administration composed of millionaires and billionaires serve the poor? Or is it far more likely that they'll cater to powerful allies while the hungry wait for crumbs?

Bonhoeffer's advent sermon about Mary's song was written in 1933, at the very start of a dark, dangerous time. He saw Mary's song as a reminder that God does not answer to us, does not fit our script, does not need our approval:

God’s path is free and original beyond all our ability to understand or to prove.

There, where our understanding is outraged, where our nature rebels, where our piety anxiously keeps its distance — that is exactly where God loves to be. There, though it confounds the understanding of sensible people, though it irritates our nature and our piety, God wills to be, and none of us can forbid it. Only the humble believe and rejoice that God is so gloriously free, performing miracles where humanity despairs and glorifying that which is lowly and of no account. For just this is the miracle of all miracles, that God loves the lowly. God ​“has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.” God in the midst of lowliness — that is the revolutionary, passionate word of Advent. 

I read Bonhoeffers' words, and Mary's, with both hope and sadness.

Here is the sadness:

While Mary's baby survived to adulthood to become the Christ, the crucified savior of the world, other boy babies of Bethlehem were slaughtered by Herod in response to the Magis' search for the newborn king. 

While Hitler and his quest for power eventually failed, over 50 million people died in World War II, the deadliest war in human history. 

While the mothers of Argentina helped bring down an oppressive military regime, most of the Desparacidos, the Disappeared, were never recovered or identified.

There is no promised of fast, happy endings when power grabs control and the poor are trampled.

Yet the hope in Mary's song, and in those terrible times of oppression, is the hope  known by followers of Christ around the globe and across the centuries. While injustice has its day, the powerful will fall. The poor will be lifted up. God will stand on the side of the little ones, the hungry, the forgotten. Unjust power rules for a season, but there will be a day when the lowly rejoice in the righteous rule of peace.

Christmas is a good time to pause and wonder:

Where do we place our hope?

What do we do with these words of Mary?

How do they shape our understanding of Jesus?

How do they shape our politics? Our worship? Our service? 

A few more lines from that sermon by Bonhoeffer, worth carrying with us through the Christmas season and into the year ahead:

God is not ashamed of human lowliness but goes right into the middle of it, chooses someone as instrument, and performs the miracles right there where they are least expected. God draws near to the lowly, loving the lost, the unnoticed, the unremarkable, the excluded, the powerless, and the broken. What people say is lost, God says is found; what people say is ​“condemned,” God says is ​“saved.” Where people say No! God says Yes!

Where people turn their eyes away in indifference or arrogance, God gazes with a love that glows warmer there than anywhere else. 

from Magnificat, Maurice Denis, France, 1901

A Song of Emperors and Angels

I confess, I've found the past few months exhausting.

When every word can trigger offense, anger and division, sometimes silence seems the easiest alternative. 

When every effort seems met with an insurmountable wall, why even bother?

I stopped listening to the news (local NPR) soon after the election. I've been listening instead, when I drive, to the Porters' Gate on Pandora.

I've dramatically cut my time on social media, doing what I need to do for my work, but scrolling as little as possible. 

I've been keeping my head down, tackling the daily tasks before me, praying for wisdom and grace and continuing my normal morning practice, reading the daily notes and passage suggested by Scripture Union's Encounter with God. 

The Prophecy of Isaiah, Francisco Bayeu, Spain, 1778-9

From November 15 to 30, the readings were in Isaiah 22 to 34. The accompanying notes were written by my husband, Whitney Kuniholm. He worked for Scripture Union from 1976 to 1983, then was President of Scripture Union USA from 1997 to 2016. Over the years he's written many Bible studies and many Scripture Union notes. The Isaiah notes were interesting in that they were written almost two years ago, but felt as though they'd been written very specifically for the weeks after the election. 

Those chapters have much to say about justice and righteousness, the danger of trusting oppressive leaders, the folly and snare of selective prophecy. 

Sometimes passages of scripture seem as immediate as the day's news, sometimes as timeless as humanity itself. The people of Isaiah's day thought that as God's chosen, they could pick the rules they liked and ignore the deeper obedience of listening closely for God's voice and caring for the poor, the weak, the hungry and the weary earth itself. 

The prophets can be rough going but for me, in this season, the chapters in Isaiah, and Whitney's daily commentary have been a gracious reminder than political turmoil is not new. Manipulation, deceit, corruption and abuse of power are recurrent themes in history and in scripture.  

But they're not the end of the story. 

In almost every chapter, Isaiah describes corruption, disdain for the poor, environmental destruction and God's fury at disobedience. Interwoven with those passages, often without transition, are descriptions of a future overwhelming joy.

Isaiah 24 surprised me. It seemed to capture the moment entirely.

Heartbreaking news of Gaza and Lebanon battered by drone strikes. 

Strange president-elect pronouncements beyond the bounds of legal authority. 

My own feeling of exhaustion. 

And there in the middle: announcements of joy.

They raise their voices, they shout for joy . . .

 From the ends of the earth we hear singing:
    “Glory to the Righteous One.”

I've read it before, but this time, I was struck by the idea of an unknown "they" singing from the far, unknown ends of the earth. The song doesn't start in the seats of power. It comes from the edges, not as conflict, anger or revolt, but as songs of joy. 

How do we live as people of song, rather than angry protectors of our own sense of right?

Jesus told us in the beatitudes: blessed are the agents of mercy, peace and light, even when surrounded and attacked by darkness and division. 

Sometimes, looking toward Christmas, we fall into a vision of twinkling lights, with all we hope for wrapped and waiting beneath a tree.

It's helpful to remember that the lights of the Christmas story were angels, speaking to shepherds on the margins, and the one bright star, ignored by God's people, drew distant travelers longing to be included. 

And it's wise to remember that the tree of the Gospel was not a well-decorated fir tree, laden with ornaments and happy memories. 

It was the cross, an instrument of power, oppression, pain and death. 

Thinking and praying about this time we're living in, I stumbled on a Christmas Eve sermon by Anglican bishop N. T. Wright. The sermon is called "Emperors and Angels," and begins with short verse, apparently Wright's own:

Sing a song of Christmas, of emperors and angels;
Sing a song of Christmas, of darkness now past;
Sing a song of starlight, of shepherds and of mangers;
Sing a song of Jesus, of peace come at last.

In his sermon, Wright insists that the Christmas story is deliberately political and that Christ's kingdom challenges all kingdoms, values, and existing power structures.  He shares the example of William Wilberforce, who spent 20 years pressing the British parliament to outlaw the slave trade, then spent the next 26 years doing all he could to outlaw slavery completely throughout the British empire. 

[I]n 1833, as he lay on his deathbed, Parliament passed the bill which got rid of the scandal once and for all. My friends, it can be done. There were massive vested interests ranged against Wilberforce, but by prayer and faith and sheer hard work he and his friends took the gospel forwards into the real world. It’s always costly, always tiring, it always takes everything we’ve got; but this is what it looks like when the song of the angels is heard and obeyed, when the power of the emperors is challenged and confronted, and when the Prince of Peace is celebrated and proclaimed in the middle of it all.

While Wright's sermon encourages political engagement, I'm doubtful he meant it in the ways we've seen most recently. He doesn't argue on behalf of a party, or a particular point of view. Rather, he suggests we learn to watch and listen well: 

we can watch for the empires of the world, the Augustus Caesars of our day: we can keep our eyes open for where the powers that run the world are crushing the little people who live on our street, in our town, in our local hospitals or prisons. And we can listen for the song of the angels. It will come in surprising ways, as it always does. God doesn’t call everybody in the same way. But if you are learning to love the Christ-child you will find your eyes gradually being opened to what the powers of the world are up to and your ears gradually becoming tuned to the particular song that God’s angels are trying to sing to you, and, more dangerously perhaps, through you.

The more we read the songs of the Psalms, the songs embedded in Isaiah's prophecies and recorded in the early chapter of Luke, the more we can recognize and repeat the recurrent themes, as in the song of Isaiah that Jesus read in the temple in Luke 4. 

      “The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
      because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.
      He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
      and recovery of sight for the blind,
      to set the oppressed free." 

That song of good news it the song of the prophets, the song of the angels, and the song that gives us peace, rest and joy.

May that peace, rest and joy be yours this Christmas. 

The Annunciation to the Shepherds, Nicolaes Bercham, Amsterdam, 1649