Mary knew

Luke 1:26-56

            This is the most wonderful time of year, isn’t it? Lights and presents and cookies and 20-below zero—hey, two of three ain’t bad!—and music! Christmas music! And Christmas music is a wonderful combination of all the best and the worst of all music. It’s the calm of “Silent Night” and the sweet ding-dong of “Carol of the Bells;” it’s the beautiful melodic canvasses painted by “Coventry Carol” and the joyful exuberance of “Jingle Bells.” It’s so much good stuff, and then it’s terrible songs like “Santa Baby” and “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”—just go ahead and write off any song with “baby” in the title—and it’s other smarmy music that I’m not going to list because odds are some of you love it and that’s your own opinion, and, hey, we all like some terrible things.

            But there is one song that has to be mentioned on this Sunday where we read Mary’s Magnificat, because the Magnificat itself is so stupendous and timeless and bold. Whether it’s Marty Haugen’s version we’re about to sing, “My Soul Proclaims Your Greatness” or the “Canticle of the Turning” or many-a-Vespers service, Mary’s words have been put to music in many magnificent ways I suppose largely because the lyrics are so good. But there is a bad apple—a little song that some of you love because it’s beautiful and Pentatonix does a great version of it and it’s got a lovely melody and soaring bridge. It sounds lovely; it’s just that the words don’t add up. I’m talking, of course, about “Mary, Did You Know?”

            Now before you call me the Christmas Grinch that I undoubtedly am I just have to point out one little detail that jumps off the page from the first chapter of Luke every time I hear this song. “Mary knew!” If anyone in the Gospels knew who Jesus was it was Mary. She might be the only one but gosh darn she knew! She got it. Her song is a testimony to a revolution that she sees coming even when others are burying their heads in the sand.

            Mary’s Magnificat is the song that the world needs. It works for every time in history and every people; both those with power and those without. It is first a song of praise: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior” and second a song of revolution: “He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.” Mary’s song is the song of a persecuted people in desperate need of redemption. It is a song chanted at the powers-that-be, a song that signifies, in the words of the “Canticle of the Turning” that “the world is about to change.” This is Les Mis long before Les Mis; it’s an American plantation slave song from long before the white man came to America. This song is on the short list of songs that best stand for what humans stand for, and it is a testimony to how much Mary understood. She knew what Jesus represented, but, more than that, she knew who he was. The world would never be the same.

            Still more, she also saw a bit of this future. She knew that the revolution was not apart from history, recalling, as she did, Abraham and his descendants. She knew that Christ meant a new world even amidst the broken-down old one. She knew it was not going to be easy—this process of removing tyrants from their thrones, of feeding the poor and sending the rich away hungry. Tyrants do what they do when their throne is ripped from them—they drop bombs, they kill people in the streets, they maim, they torture. The rich do what they do when something is denied them—they take it by other means, they use systems to protect their interests, they hide behind legalities. Mary knew all this because she knew Jesus. And Jesus came to frustrate the rich and the powerful, the kings and the princes, because Jesus testified to something different: That great power was not enough, that riches and wealth and freedom are not enough; that the only party that keeps rocking when all other parties end is one that leads through the place the rich and the powerful are running from.

            Mary knew, as Herod proves in Matthew’s account of Jesus’ birth, that tyrannical leaders fear nothing quite so much as a rallying cry of hope. They fear a baby more than a sword. And yet, they do not even know why. They fear Mary’s revolution-language, not understanding its humble, fragile nature; it’s dependence on self-sacrifice. They fear that power may be taken from them when they should fear the power they already have. They hear Mary’s song as a threat, but Mary understands the promise of joy in the morning. She knows what it is that she carries—it is the hope of all of us. So don’t ask Mary if she knew! Ask yourself.

            Do you know?

            Because it’s not so easy to believe in this Jesus. Not most days of the week. Turn on the TV and watch those images of women and children murdered under Civil War in Syria. Read those stories from Egypt of Coptic Christians martyred for going to church in the same way you are today. Listen to all the bad that is in the world and don’t turn away, because if Mary’s song is to matter for our lives it has to speak for moments such as these. It has to be hope for the downtrodden, because Mary’s hope is their only hope. They don’t have hope for a better life here—not now, not in the way any political revolution can change. Nor do they have the power to make right what has been wrong—what power have we to raise the dead? And because it is their only hope it is our only hope, because we are connected with one another in ways that we never fail to undervalue, united as one body not just by flesh and blood but by the work of God’s spirit through us. Mary’s song is about flattening the chasm that exists between you and me.

            We are one body of Christ, Paul says this, but Mary seems to have gotten it first! She was the first one to feel that intimate connection—and of course she would; we are Christ’s body but she was his mother! And if we’re all connected, then the rich and the poor and the tyrants and their subjects are one and the same and we are all lost together, all in need together. There is no getting away from who I am—woefully insignificant—and yet here is a child who is going to change all that. Not all at once; not always so that I will see it. But he will take on what I cannot for the sake of the life I wish I could lead.

            The world is about to change. Mary knew it. Somedays so do we. It doesn’t mean it’s all roses—revolutions never are—but it means that God has so promised that we are in this together that nothing can separate us any longer from the love of God, because nothing can separate us from Christ, and because of Christ nothing can separate us from each other. There will come a day where these divisions are obliterated. Until then, we seek what Mary knew in her heart, and we are freed, like Mary, from fear of what it might mean, because surely God has blessed us.

            We know because Mary knew, no matter what the song says.