“Mary’s Song”
4th Sunday in Advent, Dec. 20, 2015
Luke 1:39-56
First Congregational Church, UCC, Saugus, Massachusetts
Rev. Martha Leahy
The beautiful passage we heard this morning called “Mary’s Song” brings to mind
that old adage, “Like mother, like son.” Never heard of that one? Well, the story
of Jesus is not your typical story, so it calls for different idioms to explain what
God is doing in the Christmas story.
All Christians know the story of the birth of Jesus. The story, we know, actually
begins pre-birth, with a visit to Jesus’ mother Mary by the Angel Gabriel. Gabriel
announces Mary has been chosen by God to give birth to the Messiah. And this
Messiah will be very different from the one the Jews have been expecting: not a
warrior with an army, but a prophet, a healer, a teacher, a radical and most
amazingly, God’s own son.
Mary takes this news with skepticism at first, but then has a conversion experience
at the angel’s lofty predictions of the future greatness of her son-to-be. The angel
also tells Mary that her relative, Elizabeth, someone past the prime of child-bearing
years, is also pregnant with a special child. So Mary travels to see Elizabeth,
perhaps out of curiosity, perhaps to assist at the birth, and perhaps to compare
notes as to their experiences of other-worldly beings.
Upon hearing Mary’s voice, Elizabeth tells her that “the baby in my womb leaped
for joy!” Her baby will be Jesus’ cousin, John the Baptist, who will make his own
unique mark in the world, preparing the way for the Messiah.
Wholly convinced that God is indeed at work in both herself and Elizabeth, Mary
is overwhelmed, humbled and accepting of what is happening, and she sings her
beautiful, emotional song of praise to God:
“My soul glorifies the Lord
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and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
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for God has been mindful
of the humble state of his servant.
51God has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.
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God has brought down rulers from their thrones
but has lifted up the humble.
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God has filled the hungry with good things
but has sent the rich away empty.”
Mary sings of a God who is not doing business as usual. There is almost a see-saw
feeling in her song, a give-and-take, or even an imaginary scale of justice, with the
contrast of words like humble and proud and filling the hungry and sending the
rich away empty. Yes, Mary song is a mix of bravado and humility, a song about
how the coming of God’s son - her son - will bring changes in how power will be
given, taken away and shared by all.
There is another ancient hymn in the New Testament that was sung about Mary’s
son Jesus. We are fortunate that this hymn has been preserved in Paul’s letter to
the Philippians 2:5-11. It goes like this:
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In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
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Who, being in his very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
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rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
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And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
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Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
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that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
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and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God.
Notice the same movement as in Mary’s song: Jesus is humble, so humble he
bends down to serve us like a slave, even though he is God’s son! He didn’t arrive
on a white horse with a legion of soldiers at his beck and call; rather he arrived in
an animal’s manger, born to a displaced family, and raised in a town so obscure
that historians of the time never even mention it.
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And in his humility, Jesus never asked God for anything, except to help keep him
prayerfully centered on his task of preaching, teaching and healing. God saw this
and rewarded him with the highest honor of all: his name became known around
the whole world, not for his own sake, but for the sake of God’s message of radical
love, sacrifice, service and inclusion. The song dips and rises with the movement
of Jesus from servitude to holy royalty.
I sincerely believe Christianity is not for the faint of heart. To be a Christian is to
truly believe that God works in radical ways, the most radical being in the person
of Jesus. Jesus asks us in many ways to do things we might not be comfortable
doing. Leave our families to follow him. Turn the other cheek. Help an outcast.
Be generous to the poor. Believe in miracles. Put God first above anyone or
anything else. Be humble.
Mary’s life can be seen as a mirror to her son’s. Not much is recorded about her
private thoughts concerning his ministry. We do know she traveled with him, even
once asking his brothers and sisters to help her drag him home when she thought
he had gone insane. And we know she was there at the foot of his cross when he
died.
I think we can now fill in the historical gaps in Mary’s recorded life with the words
of her song. Mary was a radical, too, in her concern for the poor and with the
redistribution of wealth and power in God’s Kingdom. She was a teacher, in the
way she taught the history of how God worked in the lives of the Jews. She
sacrificed the life she had planned as a typical Jewish girl, for a life of uncertainty
and sometimes fear for what was to come. She became a servant of God. Like
mother, like son.
Mary’s song is a song for us to read and reflect on more than once. If we think we
know what the Christian faith is all about, we might think again when we read
Mary’s words.
And so we wait in this Advent time, and we pray, and we act as if we believe all
the things promised by all the writers who recorded all the stories of Jesus’ life.
What is it that Jesus would have us do? What would Mary do if she had to do it all
over again? What does God want us to do with the knowledge that we can change
the world if we follow the teachings of the Savior who is coming? Thanks be to
the God who waits at the manger for us. Amen.
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References
Bartlett, David L., and Taylor, Barbara Brown, Eds., Feasting on the Word:
Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary, Year C, Vol. 1 (Louisville, KY:
Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 92-97.
Zondervan NIV Study Bible, (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan: 2002).
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