Mary’s Song For Us

Reverend Ann Beaty
Tarrytown United Methodist Church

December 17, 2006

Luke 1:39-55

“The Mighty One has done great things for me; holy is God’s name”  Mary sings for us on this Third Sunday in Advent.  Today we move yet another week closer to the event of Christmas and as we do so, we turn our attention to the scripture reading from Luke’s Gospel that focuses us on Mary – the mother of Jesus, the one who found herself at the center of this amazing event - waiting and preparing to give birth to her baby – to our Savior - the one who came to be a deeper and fuller manifestation of God’s love in the world.

When we step into the story today, we are past the point where Mary has received the news from the angel that she has been chosen to birth this blessing into the world and she has accepted her role and offered herself as a servant of the Lord.  We are past whatever point of skepticism and denial Mary might have had.  She is ready and willing and has offered herself to bear this blessing.   “Here Am I, the servant of the Lord.  Let it be with me according to your word”, Luke writes.

It seems to me that when we understand something of the complicated situation Mary was in, we are then able to appreciate Mary’s profound faith.   Some scholars refer to Mary as the first disciple – and I suppose this really is true.  She is the first one who said “yes” to following Jesus in her very special role as his mother.

At the time of our story, Mary was a young teenager, who was engaged to be married and she was pregnant.  She was a first century teenager, living in a male dominated culture that has more in common with the conservative, male dominated cultures in the Middle East today than with society as we know it in the United States.  She was pregnant, and the father was not the man to whom she was engaged.  Not only was that grounds for breaking the engagement; in that culture, her pregnancy out of wedlock was even grounds for Mary being stoned to death.

But, because of her faith, her trust in God and her belief that the message she received from God was indeed a divine blessing, Mary did not deal with her pregnancy as an embarrassment, much less a disgrace.  Rather than viewing her pregnancy as something of which to be ashamed, she saw it as a cause for profound gratitude.  Because of her faith, Mary was able to see her pregnancy not as a problem, but as a privilege and a blessing.  By faith, she knew she was going to give birth to the Messiah.

So it is in this spirit that Mary goes to visit her older, and also pregnant cousin, Elizabeth and their story together is one of hope and of joy.  Those two impossibly pregnant women – Elizabeth the barren wife of an aging priest, and Mary – an unknown peasant woman with neither royal blood or an important family – begin a song of praise that has continued through twenty centuries:  “My soul magnifies the Lord,” Mary sings, “and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.” 

It is a word of hope and joy through song from one who would have had every good reason to run into hiding and respond with fear, doubt, and self-pity.  We live in a different world than the one Mary grew up in, but we are every bit as much in need of this same word of hope and joy for ourselves and for the world in this Advent season.

Mary’s song begins by singing praises to God and about God.  The New English Bible says it this way: “My soul tells out the greatness of the Lord, my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior, for he has looked with favour on his servant, lowly as she is.”  Mary knows she has received God’s blessing.  She knows that she is not somebody important in terms of the society she lives in.  She knows that she has no connection or standing to royalty.  She knows she has meager resources and that she has potential to be completely shunned by her future husband and family.

But, in her faith, she looks beyond these seemingly huge obstacles and believes she is carrying a blessing.  “For he who is mighty has done great things through me.”  She begins by expressing awe and wonder that God has reached out to her, and in God’s unexplainable mercy and generosity has chosen her to be the mother of the Messiah.  She is well aware of some of the implications of being the mother of this particular child.   

She can no longer live quietly and in anonymity, but her life will definitely matter.  She cannot prove it, but she believes that people yet unborn for generations to come will be changed by this child.  She is blessed to be given this very special gift and this very special responsibility.  And so, Mary sings about the holiness of God, the unexplainable, eternal mystery of the divine.  She sings about the awesome love of God working in her.

Then, her song shifts its focus.  In fact, most of the song does not have to do with how grateful she is for what God is doing in her life.  Most of her song has to do with her gratitude for what God has done, is doing, and will continue to do in all of life throughout history.

Like the Beatitudes in Matthew’s gospel, this blessedness of Mary’s also has two parts:  her past lowliness or humbleness and her future glory.  “Blessed are the poor in spirit, those who mourn, who are meek, who are persecuted for righteousness sake” – who wants that half of the equation?!  But the other half – for theirs is the kingdom of God” – now that is the interesting part of blessedness.  The trouble is, it appears we cannot have one without the other; they seem to come in matched pairs.

So it is with Mary.  She has been embarrassed and afraid, the most lowly in all of society, but God has blessed her in her low estate, has made her a promise she has believed, and she has responded in faith.  In fact, that is the living definition of faith - faith gives substance to our hopes because faith means believing and trusting in things not yet seen. 

We all have known people with this great faith – people who face illness or hardship or loss in life not without fear or sadness or pain and questions – but people who go through those times knowing with assurance that they are in God’s loving embrace and that in time – in things not yet seen – God will bring healing and new life.

I am reminded of Steve, one of our AIDS Care team partners of almost 10 years ago who faced many difficulties in terms of pain and his disease, financial loss, isolation from family and friends; …who when he was out to eat with us for his birthday asked to pray before we began the meal and started with these words:  “God it has been so good – I can’t imagine anything more…”  Profound faith and hope in God’s graciousness and what had been provided.

Mary continues to sing…“And his mercy is on those who fear him from generation to generation.”  Certainly, she has had her time of fear to be sure.But, she trusts that God is God and she is not God and that in that assurance she can live trusting God’s will for this deeper manifestation of love to be at the center of her living.

“He has shown strength with his arm – some translations say “mighty arm”.  “…he has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.  He has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted those of low degree.”

God has put down HER mighty fears, and has exalted HER, low as she is, but it is at this point that Mary’s song spills over into bigger issues for more people.  Barbara Brown Taylor, one of my favorite preachers, writes about it this way:  “Mary is just singing a song about how happy she is and how thankful she is, but then why does she keep seeing LOTS of people as she sings; kings and queens leaving town all by themselves with their crowns flattened in the dust behind them, beggars dressed in brocade, cripples on their white stallions.  It is all backwards!  Everything is upside down!”

And the words to her song keep coming, spilling from her lips before she can decide what she thinks about them at all.  She is no longer singing the song; the song is singing her,  and what music – ‘He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent empty away.’  Where are these words coming from?!  She is no politician, no revolutionary; she just wants to sing a happy song, but all of a sudden she has become an articulate radical, an astonished prophet singing about a world in which the last have become first and the first, last. 

What is more, her song puts it all in the past tense, as if the hungry have already been fed, the rich already freed of their inordinate possessions.  How can that be?  Her baby is no bigger than a thumbnail, but already she is reciting his accomplishments as if they were history.  Her faith is in things not seen, faith that comes to her from outside herself, and that is why we call her blessed.”  (Taylor, Mixed Blessings)

If we are to join in singing Mary’s song, we might do well to ask ourselves a few questions:  Do we have faith in things yet unseen?  Do we believe that the blessing is waiting within us to be born and can we get ready to be hungry, meek, poor, powerless, and of low degree so that Jesus’ birth will mean something significant to us?

These are big questions, but then as faithful people, this season for us needs to be about bigger things than the shopping mall and the parties and the food and the nostalgic scenes of sweet baby Jesus in a warm and cozy stable.

I wish I had easy answers for you (and for me) to these questions, but I think even Mary understood that life, and faith, and birthing blessings is complicated.

I do know that sometimes it’s hard for me to acknowledge that I need this blessing.  It’s hard for me to live trusting that God is at the center of my living, rather than my possessions, or my positions of power, or my need to be in control of the universe.

And, it is even more difficult to believe that I might indeed be, in some small way, like Mary – bearing a blessing waiting to be born into the world.

My prayer in this Advent season is that I will be able to sing with Mary the Good News of what is about to take place - the Good News about the one that came to be a deeper and fuller manifestation of God’s love into the world. 

My prayer is that I will be able to let go enough of my human made universe to recognize my own lowliness – my own need for God.  My prayer is that I might say yes to my part as a Christian called to birth that blessing into being again this year.

So I ask myself and I ask you as we approach Christmas…What is the blessing you are bearing in this Advent season?  Amen.