Magnificat

Magnificat

Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson, Pastor

December 24, 2017

Scripture: Luke 1: 46-55

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

One of the wonderful things about Luke’s story of Jesus’ birth is that it contains three songs, ancient Christian hymns actually. Luke gives one to Zechariah, in his story the father of John the Baptist, one to Mary Jesus’ mother, and one to Simeon, someone the Holy Family meets in the temple when they take baby Jesus there for the first time. One of sort odd thing about these songs in the Christian tradition is that we usually refer to them by the Latin version of their first word or words. Zechariah’s song is known as the Benedictus, the first word of the song that in English is “Praise.” Simeon’s song is known as the Nunc Dimittis, Latin for “Now you are dismissing.” Mary’s song is known as “the Magnificat,” Magnificat being the first word of her song in Latin where the song begins “Magnificat anima mea Dominum.” The NIV translation that we just heard translates that word as “glorifies.” It is more traditionally translated as “magnifies,” I suppose because magnifies is an English word that derives from the Latin “Magnificat.” These translations presumably understand magnifies to mean glorifies. The Magnificat has been set to music so often that sometimes many of us want to sing it rather than just read it. Be that as it may, the Magnificat is a wonderful song that tells us a lot about how the earliest Christians understood the faith and about how the Gospel of Luke is going to relate Jesus’ story. I want to talk with you about the Magnificat this morning. To many of us Christians the words of the Magnificat are so familiar that I think we miss their meaning; and that’s a shame, for the Magnificat really is full of really important meaning.

Mary starts her song by saying that she glorifies the Lord and she rejoices in God her savior because “he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant.” Mary knows that God has chosen her for the sacred work of bearing the Christ child not because she is rich, not because she is powerful, not because the world holds her in high esteem, but precisely because none of those things is true about her. God has chosen a virtuous young woman of no special account in the world to bring God’s Son into the world. We see in her words here how the good news of Jesus Christ comes first and foremost to the humble, to the poor, to ordinary folk whom God esteems but the world does not. It is precisely because Mary is humble that she becomes the mother of Jesus.

Mary says that God’s “mercy extends to those who fear him, from generation to generation.” Her use of the word “fear” here shows that she lives and thinks entirely within the ancient traditions of her Jewish faith. Hebrew scripture frequently uses the phrase “the fear of God” to mean to believe in God, to love God, and to stand in awe of God. Mary doesn’t see what is happening with her and Jesus as standing outside the Jewish tradition but rather entirely within it. We see the same thing in the way her song ends. She closes her song saying that God “has helped his servant Israel, remembering to be merciful to Abraham and his descendant forever, even as he said to our fathers.” I’ll have a bit ore to say about that closing line shortly. God is doing anew thing in Mary, but it is a new thing entirely within a faith tradition that was already ancient in Mary’s time.

Those things about the Magnificat are important. Really important, but it’s what she says in the middle of her song that I think is the most important thing about it. It is part of her song, and part of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, that many Christians prefer to overlook. To ignore or to spiritualize out of its original meaning. In the middle of her song Mary says: “He [God] has performed mighty deeds with his arm; he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts. He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty.” Luke 1:51-53 There are several things to say about this passage, and some of you aren’t going to like some of them. But then I’m only with you for another week, so I’m going to give it to you straight.

First, these words seem a bit odd because they say that God has done things that it sure looks like God hasn’t done. It sure doesn’t look like all the proud people of the world have had their inmost thoughts scattered. They’re still strutting around being proud for all the wrong reasons. It sure doesn’t look like God has brought down mighty rulers from their thrones. I mean, mighty and mightily unjust rulers do get overthrown from time to time; but it sure seems like they often get replaced by other mighty and mightily unjust rulers. Mighty rulers sitting on thrones and acting unjustly, which are the rulers the Magnificat has in mind, haven’t exactly gone away. They’re still very much with us.

Then, has God lifted up the humble like Mary says God has done? Well, in God’s eyes maybe, but hardly in the world’s. Has God filled the hungry with good things but sent the rich away empty? Hardly. The world is full of people who are still hungry, and the rich are hardly empty. Oh, they may be spiritually empty. Many (not all) of them are, but they’re still very much full materially.

So what’s going on here? Well, what’s going on is what theologians call “already and not yet eschatology.” Don’t worry about what eschatology means. Ask me about it afterwards if you’re curious. The idea behind this obscure phrase is that God has already accomplished what God wants to accomplish in the world, it’s just that what God has accomplished hasn’t come to full fruition yet. The mighty rulers have been brought down, it’s just that they don’t know it yet. In a spiritual, cosmic sense God has done all these things Mary sings about. It’s just that those things await their fulfillment on earth.

OK. I suppose that’s obscure enough, but there’s something else really important to say about these verses. They are political, and they are economic. They just are. They speak of political power and economic stratification. They speak of the powerful and the lowly, of the rich and the poor. Yet these verses don’t just speak of political power and economic stratification. They say how God relates to political power and economic stratification. They say which side of power and economic imbalances God is on, and it’s not on the side of the rich and powerful. In Mary’s hymn God sides with the humble against the powerful, bringing down the mighty and lifting up the lowly. In Mary’s song God sides with the hungry against the rich, filling the hungry and sending the rich away empty. In Mary’s song, and indeed throughout the Gospel of Luke and through the whole Bible, that’s just how God is. God may anoint rulers, as God did with David and so many others; but God is always on the side of the ruled. Mary here echoes the ancient prophets like Amos and Micah. Maybe she had recently heard or read Amos bellowing “let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” Her songs suggests that she saw God the same way Amos had more than seven hundred years before her, that is, as the God who demands justice for the poor and the marginalized. Yes, I know. Some of you don’t like hearing me say things like that from the pulpit, and maybe especially not on Christmas Eve. Well relax. You won’t hear me say it again.

Now Mary’s lines about political and economic justice may leave you hungering for some good news. It is Christmas Eve after all, and we all long to hear the good new of Jesus’ birth at Christmastime. Actually, that God is on the side of the poor and the powerless is good news for most of the world’s people, although that may not be the kind of good news you’re seeking today. Fortunately Mary’s song ends with some other good news, although it may take a little unpacking to hear it as good news.

Mary’s song ends by saying that God “has helped his servant, Israel, remembering to be merciful to Abraham and his descendants forever, even as he said to our fathers.” Luke 1:54-55 So just how has God helped his servant Israel and remembered to be merciful to Abraham and his descendants? Well, precisely by sending them Jesus, the child Mary is bearing as she sings her song. Jesus is God’s mercy incarnate. Jesus is God’s help to Israel and to us. Mary doesn’t use the word the way Matthew’s Gospel does, but we know that Jesus is Immanuel, God with us. I’ll have a bit more to say about God With Us this evening, but God sending Jesus to us is the best news any of us has ever had or ever could have. In Jesus we know that God is with us always, no matter what. In Jesus we know that God loves God’s world despite all of the ways in which the world must disappoint God. In Jesus we know that God is here to help us through whatever we must get through in life. That’s how God has helped God’s people, by coming to us as one of us in Jesus.

So tonight as we gather for our annual Christmas Eve service and tomorrow on Christmas Day let us rejoice. Let us truly celebrate, for we celebrate the greatest gift God ever gave humanity, the gift of God’s Self, the gift of God’s son, the gift of Jesus Christ. May this Christmas truly be blessed time for all of us, a time of peace whatever the circumstances of our lives. A time of grace filling our hearts. A time of love—love of God, love of family, love of friends. Tonight at 9 we will celebrate here. Whether you join us for that service or not, may you have a blessed Christmas and a good, meaningful new year. Amen.