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| Le Magnificat, James Tissot, France, 1886-1894 |
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.
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:
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.God’s path is free and original beyond all our ability to understand or to prove.
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.
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| from Magnificat, Maurice Denis, France, 1901 |
