Luke 1:46-55
And Mary said: “My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant.From now on all generations will call me blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things for me— holy is his name.
His mercy extends to those who fear him, from generation to generation. He 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. He has helped his servant Israel, remembering to be merciful to Abraham and his descendants forever, just as he promised our ancestors.”
Last week we set out to discover the promise of Christmas, beginning with the promise of truth. We thought about lament and hope as acts of prophetic truth telling, about the incarnation as the truth not only of God's word but also of God's presence, and about the promise that the Spirit will lead us into the fullness of the truth of God's love and our identity. The promise of truth leads us on to the promise of justice, which is our theme for this morning. The two have to be connected, because once we have told the truth of the world as lament and hope, and recognised the truth of Christ as God with us, and begun to learn the truth of the Spirit as promised to the disciples, to refuse or fail to act on that truth would be a great injustice. Or to put it more simply, in the words of former prime minister Benjamin Disraeli, “justice is truth in action”.
The reading we heard this morning is often known as Mary’s Song or the Magnificat, and is Mary's response to the angel's declaration that she will give birth to the child who will be called the Son of the Most High and whose kingdom will last forever, although it is spoken not to the angel but to her cousin Elizabeth, already carrying her own miracle baby who will come to be known as John the Baptist. Mary's first response to the surprise visit is to ask how this is possible, which seems entirely reasonable to me and suggests she was a girl with her head on her shoulders, and then she proclaims “may it be with me as you have said”. That Mary says yes to God is really important, and her song sees enthusiastic consent blossom into joyful celebration, as she speaks of all that God has done.
This may seem an odd thing to say, but the grammar of Mary's song is really interesting, because it is in the present perfect tense, indicating a completed action. “He has done great things...he has performed mighty deeds...he has scattered the proud...he has brought down rulers...he has filled the hungry...he has helped his servant.” There is an extent to which Mary's words are simply true, for God has done all of these things throughout history. But there is also an extent to which they are not completely true yet, for the humble are still downtrodden and the hungry are not all filled. It is as though Mary has stepped into the fulfilment of God's promise, and sees the end of all God is doing. She is standing on the holy mountain Isaiah spoke about in our reading last week, where none shall harm or destroy. She is in the holy city we saw at the conclusion of our study of Revelation, where there is nothing impure and the leaves of the tree of life are for the healing of the nations. Perhaps it is that the incarnation breaks open time and space, so that all of God's future promise begins to come through into the present.
And that promise arrives as justice, as a reordering of society, so that the humble are lifted up and the mighty are brought down, the hungry are filled and the rich are sent away empty, although I don't think we should read this as a reversal so much as a leveling. The humble and the mighty are at last made equal, as they always have been in God's sight, and the rich are not left destitute in order to feed the hungry, but are finally told they already have enough. Talk about justice can sometimes be quite vague, but there is something really grounded about the picture Mary gives us, something that allows us to imagine what justice looks like in practice, which is really very important, because we are called not just to passively wait for justice but actively work for it. Mary isn't just telling us what God will do, but laying out a blueprint for what we must do, as those who work with God for the good of all things.
Mary's song tells us that Christ’s coming was always about big picture stuff. Our personal relationships with God matter, and they are forever changed by the picture of God we see in Christ, but that is not all Christ came for, and we make God too small if that is all we are interested in. There can be tension between Christian traditions which prioritise personal salvation and those which prioritise social action, but as ever there is a balance to be found. God is working for the renewal of all things, and that means our structures and our systems, as well as our hearts and our minds. Evangelism must give people a vision of creation as God intends it to be, and justice must reveal the heart of God so that others can connect with it. To miss or downplay either is to do Christ and the world a great disservice.
We heard earlier that “justice is truth in action”, and here I want to bring in another quote, this time from theologian and activist Cornel West, who said “justice is what love looks like in public”. This is so very important. Justice is not cold or calculated, it is love out loud. It must be characterised by understanding and compassion. It must be strong as death and unyielding as the grave, burning like a mighty flame that rivers cannot sweep away. It must be both fierce and tender. It must be patient and kind, not self seeking or easily angered, always protecting and always persevering. And it must be unafraid to take the risk of being seen and speaking truth to power. Mary's song begins what Kate Bowler calls “a gentle revolution...so God could be the difference we didn’t know [we] needed.” May we too learn to be gentle revolutionaries.
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