Singing Her Song
Fourth Sunday of Advent
The gospel is never more real than when it connects with us at our most human, our most vulnerable, in the midst of our existence as creatures susceptible to all sorts of struggles and all sorts of emotions. When I was a kid, my mom oversaw a crisis pregnancy center in Louisville, where every day the lobby would be packed with women, usually single, most of them teenagers, and many living in extreme poverty, who had come to the center in order to receive any one of the services the center offered. Most of all, they came because they needed someone to talk to, someone who would listen as they shared the overwhelming situation they found themselves in. Sitting in my mom’s office after school, doing my homework or helping out in some way, I couldn’t possibly have imagined the emotions most of those young women were experiencing.
Even today, more than thirty years later, having observed the experience of pregnancy and childbirth in a more up-close and personal way, it’s hard for me to wrap my mind around what those young women were feeling. I can’t help thinking about these young women when I read Luke’s account of perhaps the most famous woman in history, a woman who has been beatified and glorified, who has become an icon of godliness and an object of prayer and a subject of theological debate for millions upon millions of people in the two thousand years since she lived on earth, but who, before any of this, was simply a young woman, possibly a teenager, in an impossibly difficult situation—difficult to understand, difficult to explain, difficult to embrace.
As we move through the season of Advent, this is a time of anticipation—the church during this season remembers and embodies the spirit of a world awaiting the arrival of its rightful king and savior. Two thousand years ago, the people of God, having lived through exile and return, defeat and occupation, sin and repentance and forgiveness, were waiting for God to do the new thing that he had been promising through the prophets for generations. They were waiting for a kingdom of life and light and reconciliation to dawn. And in the midst of that waiting, there were some who began to see, if not completely understand, their part in the story that God was telling, and they began to sing about the things that God was doing. And among these who saw and sang of the work of the Lord is a woman who hardly needs any introduction.
The song of Mary, found in Luke 1:46-55, can certainly be read as an emotional outpouring from a young mother-to-be. But if we understand that Mary is also cast, perhaps unexpectedly, into the role of prophetic witness, bearing the good news into the world both literally and figuratively, her song takes on a powerful quality. It reminds us that God uses even the most unlikely, most unassuming, most overlooked men and women he can find to accomplish his purposes. The song is special, this story is special, not in spite of Mary’s ordinariness, but because of it. Because it demonstrates how God works, and how God has always worked. We can find in this song shades of the Old Testament witness to God’s concern, God’s deliverance, and God’s provision for his people. Her song takes up the joyful themes found in the song of Hannah, preserved in 1 Samuel, threads of the Psalms, which narrate in poetic form the story of God’s love for an often undeserving flock, and the strains of hope that echo through the prophets’ stanzas, written just a few centuries before Mary’s birth.
Mary’s song, then, gathers up the hopes and fears of her nation, her family, the children of Yahweh, and gives them a new voice. She sings of God’s awesome power and God’s compassionate love. She tells of God’s judgment and God’s mercy, both of which are embodied, in some mysterious and inexplicable way, in the tiny child growing inside her womb. As James Kay writes, “Mary sings not just a solo aria about her own destiny, but a freedom song on behalf of all the faithful poor in the land. She sings a song of freedom for all who, in their poverty and their wretchedness, still believe that God will make a way where there is no way. Like John the Baptist, Mary prophesies deliverance; she prophesies about a way that is coming in the wilderness of injustice. She sings of a God who "has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts"; who "has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly"; who "has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty." She exults in the God of Abraham; she exalts the God of Jesus Christ. Here at the beginning, Mary rejoices in God’s destiny -- for her, and for a world turned upside down.”
More than two thousand years removed from Mary’s joy-filled outburst of prophetic proclamation, it might seem difficult to reconcile Mary’s situation with our own, or to recognize Mary’s song as our own. This is especially true if we domesticate it, if we fall into the trap of viewing Mary as a docile figurine in a nativity crèche rather than a young, unmarried pregnant woman, if we see her song as words on a page rather than the heart-cry of a people in travail. If we are going to hear in Mary’s words something that doesn’t just resonate with us, but actually transforms us, it’s important to remember that God hasn’t stopped turning the world upside down.
Advent, then and now, is about incarnation. It’s about the earth-shattering realization that the God of the universe took on human flesh and entered the womb of a young woman precisely so that he could turn the world upside down, not just for a period of thirty-three years, but for all eternity. The message of Advent is the message that God did all of this for the sake of those in need, those who were lost and hurting, those who were hungry and forsaken, those who couldn’t help but acknowledge their brokenness and who couldn’t turn anywhere but to the one who promises to heal that brokenness.
We live in a world that is longing for a song like Mary’s, a song that proclaims the existence of a God who is mindful of our humble states. A God who fills the hungry with good things. A God of truth and love and life. If Mary’s song is going to be our own, we have to be willing to take the incarnation seriously, not just as a theological doctrine but as a reality that gives form to our identity, our mission, our way of being in the world. Like Mary, we have to take seriously our calling to bear Christ into this world, to allow our joys and hopes and fears be shaped by this awesome vocation to present our savior and our Lord to those who so desperately need to encounter him.
In order to do this, we can’t be too comfortable, either with this story or with the life to which it calls us. We have to be willing to identify with those who are struggling. We have to be willing to reach out to those who are hurting. We have to be willing to speak truth to those, including ourselves, who are proud and stubborn. We have to be willing to speak wisdom to those, including ourselves, who are wandering in the wilderness of confused desires. We have to be willing to speak mercy to those who are striving under the weight of bad decisions. We have to be willing to speak compassion to those who have been walked past or walked upon for too long. This might all seem difficult or even impossible to us. We might not know where to start. We might be overwhelmed with the amount of need that we see in our neighborhoods, our workplaces, even our own homes.
Mary’s song is a good place to start, because it reminds us that this is a work that God has been doing for generations, and that God will continue to do. Mary’s song invites us, compels us, even, to join in the work that God is doing. Mary’s song is a beautiful recognition that the God we serve is a God who pours out his love on any and everyone who will approach him with the kind of powerful assent, the kind of courageous submission that characterized Mary’s response to her Lord: “Let it be for me as you have said.” When we can say that—even more, when we can embody it, motivated by the kind of powerful love that calls forth order out of darkness, that calls a people to itself, that calls sin and death to account, then we can not only sing this song as our own; we can also live it as our own.
