Luke 1,39-55
The 4th Sunday of Advent | 22 December 2024 | Luke 1,39-55 | Richard O. Johnson |
In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth.
When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry, „Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.“
And Mary said,
„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.
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.
His mercy is for those who fear him
from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
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.
He has helped his servant Israel,
in remembrance of his mercy,
according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
to Abraham and to his descendants forever.“ (Luke 1.39-55 NRSV)
I suppose all families have their stories, the lore passed down through the years from one generation to another that helps to define, for better or for worse, what is true about the family. One of those stories in our family is about how my mother came to my soon-to-be wife a few weeks before our wedding. “I want to tell you,” my mother said, “something that my mother-in-law told me before we were married, and that is that ‘Johnson men are always right!’” My wife admits that she decided then and there to devote herself to proving my mother wrong.
Our text this morning is the Magnificat, the beautiful song of Mary from Luke 1—familiar words, and a text particular beloved by Martin Luther. Through much of his life, Luther would have recited or sung these words every day at Evening Prayer. He wrote an extended commentary on them in 1521, and one of the themes he highlights is the tendency in all of us human beings—all of us, not just Johnson men—to be convinced that we are right. “No rich or mighty man,” Luther says, “is so puffed up and bold as one such Mr. Smart Aleck who feels and knows that he is in the right, understands all about a matter, and is wiser than anyone else… Oh, how big a bubble we have here!”
“O, how big a bubble”
Luther sees this theme throughout the Magnificat, but especially in Mary’s description of her own lowliness, and in her words about God scattering the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. The older translation of that text talked about “the imagination of their hearts”—a much better translation, I believe. Human beings like to imagine that they know more than anyone else—but in the end, that is just an imaginary conceit.
Is that a fair rap? Are we really quite so obnoxious as all that? Yes, I think we probably are. I remember a prayer of confession from my childhood: “We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts.” That’s the nub of the problem, isn’t it? We have devices and desires, and we’re convinced that they are right, that what we think, what we want, what we believe—those things are right, at least in our minds.
But “Oh! How big a bubble we have here!” There are few things made clearer in Scripture than that God’s ways are not our ways, and God’s thoughts are not our thoughts. You know, that really bothers me! I want to be able to figure things out. I want to understand. You see, if I can understand, then I can be right—the way Johnson men are supposed to be!
Not knowing
But I can’t always understand. St. Anthony was a famous Christian monk in the early fourth century, widely known for his holiness and spiritual knowledge. The story is told of a group of younger monks who came to visit him one day, and he decided to test them. He gave them a Scripture text and then asked each one in turn to explain it. Each one did as best he could, but to each of them Anthony said, “No, you have not yet found the answer.” At last he came to Abba Joseph. “And what do you think the text means?” the saint asked him. Abba Joseph replied, “I do not know.” Anthony said to the others, “Truly Abba Joseph has found the way, for he said ‘I do not know.’”
Can you imagine how puzzled Mary must have been when Gabriel brought her the news that she was to bear the Messiah? Luke tells us just that—she was “much perplexed,” and she asked Gabriel, “How can this be?” But she becomes the example of Christian faith precisely because she is willing to accept and trust what she cannot understand. For Christian faith, that is always the direction that things flow: first we trust; later—maybe—we understand.
But our insistence on being right—it goes beyond the intellectual realm. It’s a very practical stubbornness, as well. We think that we are the master of our fate, the captain of our soul, and we get very huffy when God seems to push our life in a direction that we haven’t chosen.
Can you imagine how Mary must have felt as it began to sink in that she was to bear a child? What started out as an intellectual problem suddenly began to have some rather practical ramifications. This was not part of the game plan for her. This was not what she expected, not what she hoped. But she responded in a remarkable way. She said yes. She accepted. She trusted. “Let it be to me according to your word,” she replied, and then, shortly thereafter, she could sing, from the bottom of her heart, “My soul magnifies the Lord.”
True acceptance
Now let’s understand something here. Sometimes we think of “acceptance” as a kind of “just deal with it, there’s no other choice” response. Maybe we’re like the young boy who was running around the house in a frenzy, as young boys sometimes do. He was chasing the cat, jumping on the furniture, driving everyone to distraction. His mother asked him several times to stop, but he kept at it. Finally in exasperation, she picked him up, sat him down on the floor and told him, in that uncompromising maternal voice, not to move a muscle. Crossing his arms defiantly, he said, “I may be sitting down on the outside, but I’m standing up on the inside!”
There’s a bit of that in all of us. We get backed into a corner, forced into something we didn’t choose, and we just grit our teeth and go on. Something unpleasant or unexpected happens, we say, “Just grin and bear it.” “Life hands you lemons, make lemonade.” All that is well and good; it certainly beats lamenting and complaining about one’s lot!
But that is not Mary’s response. Mary’s response is far deeper than this. She does not merely stoically accept what God has sent her; rather she embraces it and sees it as mercy. She embraces it as God’s will for her, and therefore as something good and gracious.
How does she do it? I think the key is in the last line of the Magnificat, where Mary speaks of “the promise God made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.” Her trust is connected quite explicitly to God’s promise. God has promised to show mercy on his people, to care for his people. Sometimes that promise may reveal itself in unexpected ways; but the promise is good, the promise is secure, and Mary trusts it implicitly.
Deeper down
Olive Wynon tells the story of a Quaker, writing to a friend who was dealing with something very difficult. “I know thee can say, ‘Thy will be done,’” he wrote, “but thee must say it deeper down.” To say, “Thy will be done” deeper down—that’s what Mary shows us. She says it, you see, not just with her mind, but with her soul and her spirit, with her heart—really with her whole life! “Let it be to me according to your word.”
“And that,” Luther says, “is a right soul, and one that fears God.” Or, as Elizabeth puts it, that is why Mary is blessed: because she has trusted that God’s word is true, and that his will for her is good and right.
In the Small Catechism, Luther ponders the petition, “Thy will be done.” “The good and gracious will of God is surely done without our prayer,” he admits, “but we ask in this prayer that it may be done also in us.” That is really Mary’s prayer, isn’t it? “Let it be to me according to your will.” When that prayer can take root in our own hearts, then from the heart we sing out with Mary, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.”
© The Rev. Richard O. Johnson (retired)
Webster, NY
roj@nccn.net