Micah 5: 2-5 (New Jerusalem Bible)
Luke 1: 46-55 (Common English Bible)
In the gospel of Luke we encounter the Magnificat. Mary’s celebration song about her pregnancy, but don’t expect a calm and peaceful lullaby, you better expect a revolutionary manifesto in the tradition of Emma Goldman, Dorothy Day and Mary Jones Harris, better known as Mother Jones.
Mary expresses a radical thankfulness for what the arrival of the Christ will mean within her womb as a human infant. It means the liberation of oppressed people and Mary uses language that reflects the triumph over the powerful through protest and peaceful resistance. She uses vivid symbols and jaw-dropping linguistics in each line of her song.
It does make sense this song appears in today’s lectionary as an alternative reading of the Psalms, because like a psalm it carries the weight of generations long before it and after the singer. And along with this song having importance for the broader community of faith, Mary’s manifiesto has a personal tone as she celebrates that God has given her a significant role in the fulfillment of the promises given to Abraham’s descendants.
Mary’s song has been chanted in monasteries and cathedrals, recited in small churches by evening candlelight, set to music with trumpets and kettledrum by Johanna Sebastian Bach and sung among Christians in Central America facing persecution from the rich Oligarchs there.
Why would Mary sing a song like this? Mary and her older cousin Elisabeth, the mother of John the Baptizer, shared a dream. It was the ancient dream of the Jewish people, the dream that one day all the prophets that predicted would come true. It was the promise of Israel’s God, Yahweh, that all nations would be blessed through Abraham descendents. But before that could happen, the powers that kept the world in bondage had to be overthrown. No one would normally thank God for a blessing if they remained poor, hungry, and oppressed. God would have to vanquish the powerful, like Mary and Elisabeth were fully aware of. They knew the tyranny of King Herod the Great and the oppression of the Roman Empire. Mary and Elisabeth, like so many Jewish people of their time, searched the Scriptures, studied the psalms and read the words of the prophets, which spoke of mercy, hope, fulfillment, with God coming to the rescue at last.
This is all part of Luke’s gospel as both John the Baptizer and his cousin Jesus became adults and became messengers of God’s long promised revolution, the victory over the powers of evil. Much of Mary’s song is what her grown first-born son preached and a warning not to trust in wealth because God’s Kingdom is focused on the poor.
If people become too preoccupied with getting rich or becoming a more famous status-symbol, one’s views can become distorted about the purpose of human freedom and salvation.
Jesus said directly, “I’ve come to preach the good news to the poor” (Luke 4: 18). But unfortunately, after 1700 years in the western church, both Protestant and Catholic, most ministers have done just the opposite. The emphasis has been preaching to the wealthy, the powerful and the famous, whether local or otherwise. Afterall, that could make the preacher more wealthy with a larger church building with that twisted theology. But that type of thinking liberates no one. The poor remain poor and the rich remain comfortable in the church pews. I daresay that billionaires like Elon Musk would be comfortable in most American churches even fawned upon, while someone entering that same church with tattered clothing would be ignored. What would Jesus do? I believe that without Elon Musk repenting of his selflessness, that Jesus would shake the dust of his sandals at such a person like Elon Musk.
During the first 300 years of the Jesus faith, his believers followed Jesus’ teachings very closely. But when Christianity became legal by the Roman Emperor Constantine in the year 313 AD, two things happened, one good and one bad. The good thing was Christians were no longer fed to the lions or persecuted, at least not in the Roman Empire, which was much of the known world then. The bad thing was that Jesus' faith became Romanized. And then the emphasis was about Empire instead of justice for the poor. And the same thing about our nation. The Jesus faith has been Americanized except for a few exceptions. This is why I believe no national flags should be shown in the sanctuary. The only symbol that needs to be shown in the sanctuary is behind me, the Cross of Christ, which is beyond any nationality. Unfortunately, I believe things are only going to get worse, with the rise of Christian Nationalism, something Jesus would condemn as he would with the heretical “prosperity gospel.”
When Mary sings the Magnificat it extends to all people and not just those in Judea. She knows how it feels to be poor, and not only poor, but an unmarried young woman who is pregnant living in a patriarchal society. She lived in an area where homes were so close to one another, that it was impossible to hide her pregnancy. But Mary didn’t care. She was carrying in her womb, something very special, the Messiah from God.
Mary does not receive the invitation to be the mother of Jesus as an isolated calling or a path of escape, instead she recognizes and embraces her first-born child as a blessing for all people. And she is happy for all generations to know her story.
In the reading from the Prophet Micah, it takes us back several hundred years before the time of Jesus. Micah was active in the Kingdom of Judah around the year 722 BC. He evisions an ideal king who will arise to govern God’s people after their exile from Babylon. This king will be different from a typical monarch. He will be known throughout the land as “the one of peace” and not conquest. Rather than being pictured with a raised sword or fist, his kingly posture is one of open-handed kindness, with the needs of the people under his care.
Perhaps most prophetic, he will not come from the centers of power like Jerusalem, but instead from the backwater town of Bethlehem, which Micah describes as one of the “little ones” among the towns of Judah. In Eugene Peterson’ paraphrase of the Bible, Micah calls Bethlehem, “the runt of the litter.”
Micah’s prophecy, in his description of the King who is to come, speaks a word of hope to his listeners by recalling one of God's persistent patterns, taking the least, the last and the lowly to raise them to do God’s work. It happened with David, from Bethlehem the youngest brother of his family who slayed the giant Goliath with a sling-shot and became Israel’s first king. It happened with Joseph, also the youngest of his brothers, who was sold into slavery and later became the Pharaoh's second-in-command. And the same with Moses, the infant put into a basket and later led his people out of slavery from Egypt. And I bet a lot of people didn’t know that Moses had a stuttering problem. I guess Cecil B. Demille didn’t want Charleston Heston doing that.
When we have these examples, we can appreciate the broader points of what these lectionary readings from the final Sunday of Advent mean. God gives power to the lowly and the forgotten, like Mary giving birth to the Messiah. This is how God works. In Mary’s song, she describes this pattern poetically better than anyone else could do. As Mary sings, “He has pulled the powerful down from their thrones and lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty-handed.”
Let Us Pray:
As we celebrate this holy season and its mystery, that continues to unfold before us and beyond us, throughout our salvation history. The person of Jesus will be with us until God’s full manifestation of God’s reign on earth. And during this time of Christmas, very close and near, and remember every Advent as a step closer to Christ’s return.
AMEN
