The Turning

The Turning
Luke 1:39-56
3rd Sunday of Advent
16 December 2007

If we think of her at all, we think of her as “gentle Mary, meek and mild.” A sweet young mother, expecting her first baby. She will make her quiet way onto the stage of our Christmas story, a silent figure traveling in the dark on a donkey, looking for a room with her equally quiet husband. Then, still quietly, still sweetly, she will wrap her babe in swaddling clothes and lay him in a manger, for all of us to adore with her, before she exits just as softly as she came, leaving our visions of a “silent night, holy night” intact. And then we can put her away for another year.

But before [we can get to] that (questionably) quiet night, Luke holds up an altogether different vision of this young woman. Having received the shocking news that she is expecting a baby, and having given her powerful consent – her life-altering, world-altering “Yes” to God – she now races to see her older cousin Elizabeth, who is also impossibly pregnant. Elizabeth’s baby leaps in her womb at the sound of Mary’s voice, and Elizabeth recognizes what God has done. The scene or their visitation is charming, and might, because of that, seem irrelevant. Just a couple of women swapping pregnancy stories. Nothing like what has come before it – angels appearing and announcing big news – nothing like what will come after it – the child of God being born in a stable and angels announcing that news as well. There are no angels and no annunciations here. This is just two women, talking. That Luke takes the time to tell of this encounter means that it is not an unnecessary aside, but that it is crucial to the story. And it is crucial to our understanding of what this birth is to mean – in large part because of what happens next.

This quiet little girl Mary opens her mouth to sing, and what comes out is no gentle lullaby. She starts out mildly enough: “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.” Then she moves a little towards the audacious but still not terribly controversial next words: “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.”

These are the first gorgeous, luminous words of what we have come to call the Magnificat, which simply means “magnify,” a song that points first and foremost to God’s greatness. She starts with where God’s story intersects with her story; her song begins with what God has done for her. Her song is shot through with thanksgiving, and joy.

But then she kicks the tune up a notch, moves from what God has done for her to what God is doing and is going to do for all the world. She turns from seemingly simple praise to overtly radical prophecy, and what comes out of her mouth is as fierce and dangerous as anything any wild desert prophet dared to utter: “God’s mercy is for those who fear him…. He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.” There is fire in her voice.

For so long, Christians have sung this song with a sense of pleasant sentimentality. I have heard it set to the sweetest, most upbeat little tunes. Perhaps our listening has now grown too soft to hear the sharp edge of this ferocious song. The young mother-to-be is not singing a happy church song about how nice God is. She is raising her voice about the overturning of everything we know, rejoicing at the end of the world as we know it, lifting her eyes to a new creation. She is reveling in the downfall of the rich, the powerful, the proud. Her song is subversion, and the author of that subversion is God himself.

Is this not a little terrifying? Some in power have certainly found it so. In the 1980s, dictators in Guatemala actually outlawed the public reading of the Magnificat because of its revolutionary tones. They were on to something. Her words are radical, her claims are bold. Here is a poor, pregnant teenage girl. Jewish in a land occupied by Rome. Female in a world run by men. Pregnant under questionable circumstances. If anyone is at the bottom of the world’s order, it is her. Yet, by the power of God, she sings a song of defiance, a song declaring the inversion of social, political, and economic reality. If such a thing can be true, then the ones on the thrones, the ones in the halls of power, the ones with full bellies and full wallets, have reason to be scared.

Doesn’t that mean you and me? Maybe our wallets aren’t as full as we wish them to be, but for the most part, in the global scheme of things, we are the powerful, the rich, the proud. We are the self-made men and women at the top of the chain. If the world is about to turn, doesn’t that mean we will lose our place? Doesn’t it mean we will lose our grip on all the good we have gotten for ourselves? Isn’t this terrifying to consider?

And yet, isn’t there something in us that wants to sing with her? Surely we cannot – must not – leave this season having sung our Christmas songs only with nostalgia and sentimentality. Isn’t there something in us that wants to sing thanksgiving – real thanksgiving, for real blessing – with her? And isn’t there something in us that wants to sing her defiance, too? Defiance of the world’s standards of power and the world’s categories of the possible. Defiance of all the mechanisms that violate, oppress, and impoverish some, and numb, seduce, and prop up others. Don’t we want to claim with Mary that the world is going to turn, that we are all subject to God’s power, and that this power is going to lift the low and fill the hungry and liberate the captive?

But how on earth can we sing of our own downfall? Because that is what this song is. Our downfall. The death of our self-made versions of reality. The overthrow of any who find themselves at the top. The dethronement of all worldly power – including our own. The mockery of everything we have put in God’s place – including ourselves. And an invitation to declare with Mary that we, too, are God’s servants, we, too, bow before God’s rule and turn towards God’s reality. No one who sings this song can be resigned to things staying the way they are. No one who sings this song can close their ears to the many others who are singing it from the same position as Mary – poor, hungry, powerless, at bottom.

She is singing it still, singing it with all of them – the Iraqi child and the Afghani woman, the homeless man and the teenage mother, the scared young soldier and the grieving widow- and more, a million million more. Can you hear their voices? Can you hear hers? She still sings her song with them, and through them, and over all of them, and over all of us, too.

And she sings it for her little baby, the One whose whole life became the words and the tune and the meaning of that song. The song of our downfall, the song of our new birth and our real life. The world is turning now, it turns on his cradle, turns on his cross, turns on his empty tomb. And if we want to lift our voice with hers, to join our life with his, we will turn too.