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Thank God for Luke. Of the many
insights Luke gives us, his glimpses of Mary are especially
profound. Were it not for Luke’s Gospel, we would know very
little about Mary. Mark skips the birth altogether, and in
his Gospel, Jesus seems indifferent to Mary when she does
show up. Matthew’s Mary is mute. Not one word comes from her
lips. She is present, but passive and silent. John shares
her presence and her story, but little of her words or
thoughts. And St. Paul… the bulk of the New Testament…never
even mentions her.
We Protestants have tended to
avoid Mary as if she belonged only to the Roman Catholics,
and in the process perhaps we have missed the beauty and the
power of her place in the sacred story. Jason Byassee
reminds us that in Mary, the church makes its radical claim
to “Incarnation;” that in fact through her, God has become
human flesh, born of a woman, nursed on a mother’s knee,
diapered and wiped, calmed and encouraged, taught and
tutored by Mary. The very ordinariness of Mary proclaims the
church’s faith in a God who becomes one with us, in human
flesh, in Jesus Christ. Byassee says:
In Mary, the church ties a
string around its finger to remember the particularity of
its belief about God in flesh, made known in a baby.
(Jason Byassee, “What About
Mary?”, Christian Century, Dec. 14, 2004, pg. 29)
Other New Testament writers
minimize her, the Protestant church tradition ignores her,
but Luke remembers her. Luke’s Mary is neither silent nor
passive. Her humility is the humility of strength. Her
submission to God is a bold act of faith. Her courage
carries her from the shocking announcement of the pending
birth to the overwhelming agony of the cross.
And
in Luke’s Gospel, Mary sings!
James Kay
says:
Mary just keeps singing, ranging
high on her scales of praise, soaring in her expectant and
revolutionary libretto, because God has reached so
unexpectedly down to where the least and the lowly still
struggle for life.
(James F. Kay, “Mary’s Song and
Ours”, Christian Century,
Dec. 10, 1997, pg. 1157)
So Mary sings her incredible
song which has the power to transform and challenge our
lives, as well as hers, and turn the world right-side up…
My soul magnifies the Lord,
And my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
For he has regarded the low estate of his handmaiden.
He has scattered the proud in the imaginations of their
hearts,
put down the mighty and exalted those of low degree.
He has filled the hungry with good things
and the rich he has sent empty away. (Luke 1:46-55)
Sing, Mary, sing. How we need to
hear your song in our lives today. Listen. Listen for the
song of Mary, the song of Good News for the poor and the
suffering, the song of hope for those in despair.
Sing,
Mary, sing your song.
1.
Sing praise to the Lord your God.
It is really quite a
revolutionary moment when you come to think about it—a
humble, poor woman singing of the Lord God. One would
expect this kind of song from the high and the mighty, the
grand, the splendiferous. Maybe the Mormon Tabernacle Choir
accompanied by the New York Symphony, assisted by the
Archbishop of Canterbury, or something set to the strains of
Handel’s Messiah or Bach’s St. Matthew’s
Passion. You would expect this kind of anthem to be
accompanied by thunder and lightening, cymbal crashes and
rolling drums, a cloud of smoke and a pillar of fire…at
least a burning bush!
But the fact is, God’s praise is
placed on the lips of one so common, so ordinary, so earthy.
A God who is so far beyond us, we can hardly catch a glimpse
of his glory; a God who is so holy, sinful human beings
should draw near in fear; a God whose name is spelled only
with consonants so that it can’t even be properly spoken by
the human tongue. This God who is above every God, whose
name is above every name, is now known and praised, sung and
proclaimed by a poor, simple, teen-age bit of a common
village girl. In Mary’s song, the magnificent Magnificat,
she sings praise to the God who has done great things; she
tells of her Savior who has “looked with favor on the
lowliness of his servant.”
James Kay reminds us that the
Greek word for “lowliness” is not talking about humility,
it’s talking about poverty.
Mary (he says) was poor…dirt
poor. She was poor and pregnant and unmarried, she was in a
mess. But still she sings. Why? Because this lowly one, this
wretched one, this woman, God raises up. Mary, despised and
rejected, is favored by God and will bring the Messiah to
birth. And so, she sings.
(James F. Kay, “Mary’s Song—And
Ours,” Christian Century, Dec. 10, 1997)
So
the question is: If Mary can sing, in all her poverty and
lowliness, why can’t we?
Why can’t the praise of God flow
out of our mouths and off of our lips? If Mary can sing
praise for the Lord God Omnipotent, so can we!
My soul magnifies the Lord
and my heart rejoices in God my Savior.
One of the familiar signs and
sounds of the season is the Salvation Army kettle and the
ringing of the bells. In our shopping malls, we only get to
see the volunteers manning the Salvation Army buckets. I
never pass one by that I don’t drop something in, if for no
other reason than to thank them for their time and effort
and to say, “I want to be a part of that ministry.” Around
here, we just get to see the standard bell-ringing
volunteers, but of course, in New York City they still have
the Salvation Army bands standing on the corners, playing
the Christmas carols.
The story is told of a certain
Salvation Army drummer, beating away on his bass drum,
perhaps a bit over-zealously but full of the joy of the
season. A very proper New Yorker came up to him and politely
suggested that he might want to be a bit more reserved in
his musical expression. With a big smile on his face, he
looked at her and said, “Ma’am, you’ve got to understand. My
life was a disaster. I lost my family and my job to alcohol.
I was out on the street. But then I met Jesus. He changed my
life. He turned me around, he saved me, and Lady, I’m sorry,
but since I met Jesus, I am so happy, I could bust the
bloomin’ drum!”
If a common, ordinary, farmer’s
daughter like Mary can sing, so can we. If a lowly,
poverty-stricken, pregnant teenager can sing, so can we. If
God can reach down and raise up one like Mary, giving her a
new future and a hope, giving her a song to sing that will
bring light to the world…if God can do that with Mary, he
can do it with us, and we too can sing:
My soul magnifies the Lord
and my heart rejoices in God my Savior.
Sing,
Mary, sing your song of praise to God.
2.
Sing, Mary, sing your song for the poor.
Mary’s song
is a song for those who find themselves in the midst of
despair,
-
a song
for those who struggle with life
-
a song
that will strengthen the soul
-
a song
of justice for all people
Now, it’s at this point that, in
all honesty, we don’t have much in common with Mary. At this
point, singing her song becomes really tough. Mary is not
like us, and we are not like Mary—we American Christians who
have so many blessings to enjoy, we of the Western world who
hold so much of the world’s power, we of North America who
consume the lion’s share of the world’s energy and food and
hold the largest share of the world’s wealth. The fact is,
we are not the “lowly handmaidens of the Lord.” We are not
the hungry, the poor of whom she sings. The fact is, we
are more like the mighty, the proud, the rich. We
are the last great super-power, the economic engine of the
world, the richest nation on earth.
So for us, Mary’s song is not a
song of comfort and joy. It’s a song which challenges us and
confronts us with the claims of the kingdom. It is not an
easy song for us to sing, not a popular part of the
pop-Christmas culture of our day. I mean, who in America
really wants to sing:
God has scattered the proud in
the imagination of their hearts.
God has put down the mighty with
their thrones and exalted those of low degree.
God has filled the hungry with
good things and the rich he has sent empty away.
James Kay
says:
For those of us sitting pretty
at the top of the world’s economic pyramid, Mary’s song
sticks in our throats. We are not in a very good position to
sing with Mary.
With all of our arguments about
lawn ornaments and “keeping Christ in Christmas”—are we
ready to keep that part of Christ in Christmas? Are we ready
to sing that song in the world in which we live?
No doubt about it, Mary’s song
is hardly our song. But it is a song which has the potential
to bring healing and hope and life to the broken of the
world, if only we are willing to sing.
Sing,
Mary, sing your song for the poor. And give us the courage
to sing along.
3.
Sing, Mary, until the whole world hears the good news.
Sing on, until the light of the
love of Christ breaks forth around the world. Sing on, until
the hungry are filled and the lowly are lifted up. Sing on,
until the proud are scattered in the imagination of their
hearts and the imagination of the spirit touches the hearts
of the world with a new vision of peace and justice.
Mary, sing your song of joy,
until sins and sorrows no longer grow and thorns no longer
infest the ground. Sing until He comes to make his blessings
flow far as the curse is found. Sing, Mary, until the day
when He rules the world with truth and grace and makes the
nations prove the glories of his righteousness and wonders
of his love. Sing until all heaven and nature sings, and
heaven and nature sings.
Sing the song of Messiah, the
song of Hallelujah, the tidings of comfort and joy to all
the world. Sing, Mary, until the kingdoms of this world
become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and He
shall reign forever and ever.
My brother was for many years
the pastor to the “Magic Kingdom United Methodist Church.”
Actually, it was St. Luke’s UMC, Orlando, but it was right
on the edge of Disney World and most of his members were
“cast members” at one of the Disney parks.
Every year they would go to the
traditional Christmas candle-lighting concert, a true Disney
spectacular. About a thousand high school choir members
would begin their procession in Frontierland, making their
way down Main Street USA with their battery-powered candles
and Reeboks or Birkenstocks beneath their choir robes, then
join the Dickens carolers and the Disney orchestra on the
steps of the train station with Cinderella’s castle looming
in the background.
Jim says that during the concert
his eye caught the smiling face of one of the thousand
youth…a frosted blond cheerleader-type in the second row on
the right. He says the cynic in him figured that for most of
these kids there was nothing more than the thrill of singing
in the glitz of Disney World, but he wanted to believe that
at least for some of them, this would be the moment when
they would actually hear what they were singing and know it
in their hearts.
The climax was, of course,
Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus.” The orchestra began to swell,
the conductor was in full force and the voices rose with the
climax:
The kingdom of this world is
become
the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ.
Jim says it was then that he
noticed her again…the blond cheerleader, second row, on the
right. He writes:
As the choir sang, I could see a
tear begin to well up in her eye, and as the driving rhythm
of the music moved us into the concluding lines, the night
reverberating with the words, “King of King, Lord of Lords,”
the tear became a stream, and I watched as they dripped off
her cheeks and she struggled to keep singing.
It’s possible that she was
simply moved by the lights, the sound, the color, the beauty
of it all. But I would rather believe that in the singing of
those words, something deep within her awakened to a new
awareness of the good news of Christmas: Christ is born. God
with us.
I can’t be sure it happened for
her that night, but I know it happened for me.
Sing, Mary, sing. Sing praise,
for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth; King of Kings and Lord
of Lords; and he shall reign forever and ever. Sing your
song for the poor. Sing until the whole world knows. Sing,
Mary, sing until we all sing along.
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