Luke 1:46-55
Thomas Tallis, Palestrina, Michael Praetorius,
Monteverdi, Buxtehude, Henry Purcell, Johann Sebastian Bach, Karl Phillip
Emmanuel Bach, Antonio Vivaldi, Mozart, Antonio Salieri, Schubert, Felix
Mendelssohn, Bruckner, Gounod, Tschaikowsky, Vaughan Williams, Vincent
Persichetti, and John Rutter: these are only a few of the composers who have
set Mary’s words of praise to music.
“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.”
Much powerful music has accompanied those
words. Luke ascribes this high poetry to
Mary in a speech traditionally called “The Magnificat”,
from its first word in its Latin form: “Magnificat!” It’s related to the word “magnificent”. It is Mary’s exclamation of wonder at God’s
magnificence.
“My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior”.
The story of the Magnificat doesn’t begin with wonder, though. It begins with fear. It started with the appearance of a messenger
from God, who appeared to a teenage girl living in Nazareth, a small village
with the sort of reputation that would lead the future disciple Nathanael to
remark, “Can anything good come out of
Nazareth?” [John 1:46].
“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.’” [Luke
1:30-33]
“Do not be afraid?” Are you kidding? An angel appears to you and you aren’t
supposed to be afraid? And then he tells
you (and remember you’re a young woman in the Middle East) that you are about
to become pregnant outside of your marriage, and you aren’t supposed to be
afraid? You are going to be responsible
for a child who will “be called Son of the Most High” and you aren’t supposed
to be afraid? How could you help
it?
As proof, the angel tells you that a relative
of yours who is well past childbearing years is now six months pregnant. There’s your chance. Go see her.
Go see Elizabeth, wife of Zechariah.
If you really are pregnant, too, the trip will get you out of Nazareth
before you start showing and before anybody realizes what is going on. If you are imagining the whole thing or if
you’re going crazy and hallucinating, then seeing what’s going on with
Elizabeth, that she is not expecting a baby, will be a reality check. So, Luke says,
“In those days Mary set out and went with haste
to a Judean town in the hill country, where
she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting,
the child leaped in her womb.” [Luke 1:39-41]
Well, that settled it. That was where she would perk up as the fear
changed over into wonder and awe. The
angel had said “nothing will be
impossible with God” [Luke 1:37] and the next thing you know, Mary has gone
from “the lowliness of [a] servant” [Luke 1:48] to someone whom “all generations” [Luke 1:50] will
bless. She has suddenly seen that God is
God of the humble and the hurting, not like the earthly kings who roll over
anyone in their way.
“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.” [Luke
1:51-54]
It’s like the song, possibly the very earliest
preserved in the Bible, that was sung by the Hebrew slaves who had just escaped
Egypt and received freedom. Exodus [15:20-21]
says that
“the prophet Miriam, Aaron’s sister, took a
tambourine in her hand; and all the women went out after her with tambourines
and with dancing. And Miriam [whose name would be shared by the Messiah’s
mother] sang to them: ‘Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; horse and
rider he has thrown into the sea.’”
The truth of that was Mary’s sudden insight,
the heartbeat giving life to her sudden song.
It isn’t just that God can work miracles. That goes without saying. It was that it wouldn’t be an isolated
incident here or there, but a regular happening, and it would turn the world
upside-down and inside-out. No wonder
she burst out in poetry.
What drew that Magnificat from her soul was exactly the awareness that when God is
in the picture (which is always, only we don’t always realize or admit it), the
folks who think they are in charge really aren’t in charge and the ones who
think they aren’t really are. It’s like
a Christmas pageant. We adults like to
think we can script and guide it, but finally it’s the shepherd who shows up
holding a stuffed tiger instead of a sheep or the wise man who arrives early or
the angel who forgets her lines that makes the play.
Will Willimon observes,
“I venture that Mary did not look much like the queen of
heaven that night in Bethlehem. I
venture, with Luther, that she looked more like a rather confused, bewildered
teen-ager from your church youth group who was about to giggle in her
nervousness and had not the slightest notion of what to do with a baby or even
what her next line was supposed to be. …And we, whether we really like it or
not, or have experience or ability or understanding, get pushed onto the stage
of history to act our parts, with stage fright, filling roles that are too big
for us, wondering what the next line will be, doing our best to do what he
wants us to do even when we are not sure why he wants us to play the part.”[1]
[1]
William Willimon, “The First Christmas Pageant” in On a Wild and Windy Mountain (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1984),
39-40.
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