{"id":8763,"date":"2000-10-07T19:50:13","date_gmt":"2000-10-07T17:50:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theologie.whp.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/?p=8763"},"modified":"2025-04-10T10:00:56","modified_gmt":"2025-04-10T08:00:56","slug":"luke-146-55","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/luke-146-55\/","title":{"rendered":"Luke 1:46-55"},"content":{"rendered":"

„Pray Without Asking“ | Sermon Series on Mary<\/span><\/span> | <\/span>16th Sunday after Trinity |8th October 2000 | <\/span>Luke 1:46-55 | <\/span>Bruce E. Shields |<\/span><\/span><\/h3>\n

Pray without asking?! What sort of statement is
\nthat? Isn\u0092t that precisely what prayer is\u0097asking? Why would anybody
\npray without asking God for something? Not surprising, those questions. They
\nare very revealing. We assume that people pray in order to get something or
\nperhaps to escape something, which is the other side of the same coin. In
\neither case we are enlisting God on our side to do something for us\u0097we are
\nasking God for something. <\/span><\/p>\n

But our text shows Mary offering a prayer in
\nwhich she never asks for any help, any strength, any guidance, any stuff,
\neither for herself or for anybody else. She prays without asking. In fact,
\nafter her opening statement of praise and thanksgiving, she never refers to
\nherself again. As Martin Luther suggested(1) we can learn a lot about prayer
\nfrom Mary. <\/span><\/p>\n

We can learn from her example. Her opening
\nstatement is pure praise: \u0093My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit
\nrejoices in God my Savior.\u0094 Here Mary refers herself to God and her
\nattention never wavers from God again throughout the prayer. What worship we
\nsee here! What total absorption in God! <\/span><\/p>\n

Her attitude seems to come not so much from
\nhumility as from surprise. \u0093For he has looked with favor on the lowliness
\nof his servant\u0085the Mighty One has done great things for me.\u0094 Luther
\nwrote, \u0093No one knows less about humility than he who is truly
\nhumble.\u0094(2) Mary was impressed with two aspects of her reality: her own
\ncommonness and God\u0092s shocking choice to bring the Messiah through her.
\nWhat we see as humility in Mary is actually realism. She was just a common
\nwoman; and God in grace chose her to bear the Messiah. That kind of humility
\nresults from adoration of God. <\/span><\/p>\n

Mary\u0092s surprise is almost palpable when
\nshe says, \u0093From now on all generations will call me blessed.\u0094 Her
\nrelative Elizabeth had just greeted her with that word. \u0093Blessed are you
\namong women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb,\u0094 she cried out. And
\nElizabeth finished her greeting with, \u0093And blessed is she who believed
\nthat there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.\u0094
\nOne can almost see young Mary, amazed already by the message from the angel,
\nnow trying to get her mind around her older relative\u0092s calling her
\nblessed, <\/span><\/p>\n

What can she say but, \u0093holy is his
\nname.\u0094? I teach courses in worship to seminary students. Those men and
\nwomen have been trained in the rigors of academic research and writing. They
\nare accustomed to spending long hours reading books, translating Greek and
\nHebrew texts, contemplating deep theological and philosophical issues. But when
\nI give them a class assignment to spend five minutes a day in prayers of
\nadoration and worship, with no mixture of thanksgiving, petition, or
\nintercession, they discover that they are not prepared for that. They come back
\ntalking about how hard adoration is. I send them to the Psalms and to the
\nMagnificat, where they can learn about how to talk with God unselfishly. They
\nlearn to say, \u0093Holy is your name,\u0094 in many different ways. They
\ndiscipline themselves to concentrate on the reality of God instead of on God as
\na resource for their own needs and desires, This is a real discipline\u0097one
\nthat Mary displays vividly for us in the Magnificat. <\/span><\/p>\n

What follows in the prayer is what Luther
\nenumerates as the six works of God.(3) The first of these is mercy: \u0093His
\nmercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.\u0094 I wonder
\nsometimes why we who lead others in prayer so often begin by concentrating on
\nthe great power and wisdom of God. Usually our prayers (and here I am preaching
\nto myself) reveal how impressed we are with the beauty and grandeur of
\nGod\u0092s creation. We seem at times to be complimenting God on his wisdom in
\ncreating us human beings. Is it perhaps because power and knowledge have become
\nsuch important commodities in our own lives that we recognize them as something
\ndeserving praise, even in God? Might it also reveal our devaluing of those
\n\u0093M\u0094 words, meekness and mercy? All Mary could see at first was the
\nmercy of God, and that came first even before the strong arm of God, which is
\nnext. <\/span><\/p>\n

That \u0093strength with his arm,\u0094 of
\ncourse, is shown in the mercy of his scattering \u0093the proud in the thoughts
\nof their hearts.\u0094 This is Luther\u0092s second work of God. Might
\n\u0093the proud in the thoughts of their hearts\u0094 not be a good description
\nof us who are much more impressed with power and wisdom than with mercy? This
\nscattering Mary refers to is a very thorough job. It describes something
\nhappening that causes the individual parts to go in all different directions at
\nonce. We say, \u0093every which-way.\u0094 That sounds frighteningly like a
\ngood description of our societies right now. They are going \u0093every
\nwhich-way at once.\u0094 They have no discernable direction. Maybe Mary knew
\nmore theology than we give her credit for. <\/span><\/p>\n

The third work of God listed here is \u0093He
\nhas brought down the powerful from their thrones.\u0094 Luther addressed his
\nlittle book on the Magnificat to Prince John Frederick, Duke of Saxony,
\nLandgrave of Thuringia, and Margrave of Meissen. The prince happened to be
\nLuther\u0092s patron, but that didn\u0092t deter Luther from warning him that
\nthe God who had given him great authority could also take it away. Mary knew
\nnot only her theology, but also her history. The stories of her ancestors
\nincluded many tales about haughty kings who had been brought down. The power of
\nGod and the power of humans are often in conflict; and when they conflict God
\nis not going to be brought down. Mary knew it, and we had better know it, too.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

Work number four is the corollary of
\nthree\u0097God has \u0093lifted up the lowly.\u0094 Mary could see in her own
\nexperience how God upsets the normal human patterns. The lift God gives to the
\nlowly is rarely as obvious as the lift Mary got, but God\u0092s revelation is
\nconsistent in this, that fortunes will be reversed sooner or later. When
\nGod\u0092s will is \u0093done on earth as it is in heaven,\u0094 the lowly will
\nbe lifted up, and we believers had better be involved in the process if we hope
\nto be part of the heavenly work. <\/span><\/p>\n

The fifth and sixth works of God are similar to
\nthree and four, with a different emphasis: \u0093God has filled the hungry with
\ngood things, and sent the rich away empty.\u0094 Again what appears to us as
\nthe natural order of society God turns on its head. The rich are hungry and the
\npoor are satisfied. The poor wipe the extra food off their lips while the rich
\ngo away as beggars. Can\u0092t you see the line at the rescue mission? The best
\ndressed are asking for food, and the people in rags are dishing it out. Talk
\nabout justice! <\/span><\/p>\n

Mary concludes her prayer by rooting her
\nworship of God firmly in the history of God\u0092s dealings with people. This
\nis not wishful thinking. This is not human projection. This is faith based on
\nexperience. \u0093He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his
\nmercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his
\ndescendants forever.\u0094 She knew the kind of God she was dealing with; and
\nshe knew not only from her personal experience but also from the experience of
\nher people through their history. That means she knew her Bible as the record
\nof that experience. The testimony of faithful men and women over two millennia
\nlay behind Mary\u0092s trust in the God who had chosen her for a special
\nmission. <\/span><\/p>\n

Thus the end of Mary\u0092s prayer is actually
\nits beginning. God has been the Lord of Mary\u0092s people for generations and
\nthat God has also been Mary\u0092s Lord, whom she now magnifies both by her
\nprayer and by her submission to the divine mission to which she has been
\ncalled\u0097a mission that will offer salvation from sin to the whole human
\nrace. <\/span><\/p>\n

And for this reason Mary has become a link in
\nthe chain of witnesses who bring us the truth about God\u0097the truth on which
\nwe can base our own prayers that begin, \u0093My soul magnifies the Lord, and
\nmy spirit rejoices in God my Savior.\u0094 That should be our prayer without
\nasking. <\/span><\/p>\n

(1) See Luther\u0092s little book The
\nMagnificat<\/i> in Luther\u0092s Works Volume 21, Jaroslav Pelikan, ed. (St.
\nLouis: Concordia Publishing House, 1956) 295-358. <\/span><\/p>\n

(2) Ibid., 313. <\/span><\/p>\n

(3) Ibid., 332-349.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Bruce E. Shields
\nEmmanuel School of
\nReligion
\nJohnson City, Tennessee, USA
\nE-Mail: ShieldsB@esr.edu<\/a><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Text: Luke 1:46-55 <\/span><\/p>\n

Pray without asking?! What sort of statement is
that? Isn\u0092t that precisely what prayer is\u0097asking? Why would anybody
pray without asking God for something? Not surprising, those questions. They
are very revealing. We assume that people pray in order to get something or
perhaps to escape something, which is the other side of the same coin. In
either case we are enlisting God on our side to do something for us\u0097we are
asking God for something. <\/span><\/p>\n

But our text shows Mary offering a prayer in
which she never asks for any help, any strength, any guidance, any stuff,
either for herself or for anybody else. She prays without asking. In fact,
after her opening statement of praise and thanksgiving, she never refers to
herself again. As Martin Luther suggested(1) we can learn a lot about prayer
from Mary. <\/span><\/p>\n

We can learn from her example. Her opening
statement is pure praise: \u0093My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit
rejoices in God my Savior.\u0094 Here Mary refers herself to God and her
attention never wavers from God again throughout the prayer. What worship we
see here! What total absorption in God! <\/span><\/p>\n

Her attitude seems to come not so much from
humility as from surprise. \u0093For he has looked with favor on the lowliness
of his servant\u0085the Mighty One has done great things for me.\u0094 Luther
wrote, \u0093No one knows less about humility than he who is truly
humble.\u0094(2) Mary was impressed with two aspects of her reality: her own
commonness and God\u0092s shocking choice to bring the Messiah through her.
What we see as humility in Mary is actually realism. She was just a common
woman; and God in grace chose her to bear the Messiah. That kind of humility
results from adoration of God. <\/span><\/p>\n

Mary\u0092s surprise is almost palpable when
she says, \u0093From now on all generations will call me blessed.\u0094 Her
relative Elizabeth had just greeted her with that word. \u0093Blessed are you
among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb,\u0094 she cried out. And
Elizabeth finished her greeting with, \u0093And blessed is she who believed
that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.\u0094
One can almost see young Mary, amazed already by the message from the angel,
now trying to get her mind around her older relative\u0092s calling her
blessed, <\/span><\/p>\n

What can she say but, \u0093holy is his
name.\u0094? I teach courses in worship to seminary students. Those men and
women have been trained in the rigors of academic research and writing. They
are accustomed to spending long hours reading books, translating Greek and
Hebrew texts, contemplating deep theological and philosophical issues. But when
I give them a class assignment to spend five minutes a day in prayers of
adoration and worship, with no mixture of thanksgiving, petition, or
intercession, they discover that they are not prepared for that. They come back
talking about how hard adoration is. I send them to the Psalms and to the
Magnificat, where they can learn about how to talk with God unselfishly. They
learn to say, \u0093Holy is your name,\u0094 in many different ways. They
discipline themselves to concentrate on the reality of God instead of on God as
a resource for their own needs and desires, This is a real discipline\u0097one
that Mary displays vividly for us in the Magnificat. <\/span><\/p>\n

What follows in the prayer is what Luther
enumerates as the six works of God.(3) The first of these is mercy: \u0093His
mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.\u0094 I wonder
sometimes why we who lead others in prayer so often begin by concentrating on
the great power and wisdom of God. Usually our prayers (and here I am preaching
to myself) reveal how impressed we are with the beauty and grandeur of
God\u0092s creation. We seem at times to be complimenting God on his wisdom in
creating us human beings. Is it perhaps because power and knowledge have become
such important commodities in our own lives that we recognize them as something
deserving praise, even in God? Might it also reveal our devaluing of those
\u0093M\u0094 words, meekness and mercy? All Mary could see at first was the
mercy of God, and that came first even before the strong arm of God, which is
next. <\/span><\/p>\n

That \u0093strength with his arm,\u0094 of
course, is shown in the mercy of his scattering \u0093the proud in the thoughts
of their hearts.\u0094 This is Luther\u0092s second work of God. Might
\u0093the proud in the thoughts of their hearts\u0094 not be a good description
of us who are much more impressed with power and wisdom than with mercy? This
scattering Mary refers to is a very thorough job. It describes something
happening that causes the individual parts to go in all different directions at
once. We say, \u0093every which-way.\u0094 That sounds frighteningly like a
good description of our societies right now. They are going \u0093every
which-way at once.\u0094 They have no discernable direction. Maybe Mary knew
more theology than we give her credit for. <\/span><\/p>\n

The third work of God listed here is \u0093He
has brought down the powerful from their thrones.\u0094 Luther addressed his
little book on the Magnificat to Prince John Frederick, Duke of Saxony,
Landgrave of Thuringia, and Margrave of Meissen. The prince happened to be
Luther\u0092s patron, but that didn\u0092t deter Luther from warning him that
the God who had given him great authority could also take it away. Mary knew
not only her theology, but also her history. The stories of her ancestors
included many tales about haughty kings who had been brought down. The power of
God and the power of humans are often in conflict; and when they conflict God
is not going to be brought down. Mary knew it, and we had better know it, too.
<\/span><\/p>\n

Work number four is the corollary of
three\u0097God has \u0093lifted up the lowly.\u0094 Mary could see in her own
experience how God upsets the normal human patterns. The lift God gives to the
lowly is rarely as obvious as the lift Mary got, but God\u0092s revelation is
consistent in this, that fortunes will be reversed sooner or later. When
God\u0092s will is \u0093done on earth as it is in heaven,\u0094 the lowly will
be lifted up, and we believers had better be involved in the process if we hope
to be part of the heavenly work. <\/span><\/p>\n

The fifth and sixth works of God are similar to
three and four, with a different emphasis: \u0093God has filled the hungry with
good things, and sent the rich away empty.\u0094 Again what appears to us as
the natural order of society God turns on its head. The rich are hungry and the
poor are satisfied. The poor wipe the extra food off their lips while the rich
go away as beggars. Can\u0092t you see the line at the rescue mission? The best
dressed are asking for food, and the people in rags are dishing it out. Talk
about justice! <\/span><\/p>\n

Mary concludes her prayer by rooting her
worship of God firmly in the history of God\u0092s dealings with people. This
is not wishful thinking. This is not human projection. This is faith based on
experience. \u0093He 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.\u0094 She knew the kind of God she was dealing with; and
she knew not only from her personal experience but also from the experience of
her people through their history. That means she knew her Bible as the record
of that experience. The testimony of faithful men and women over two millennia
lay behind Mary\u0092s trust in the God who had chosen her for a special
mission. <\/span><\/p>\n

Thus the end of Mary\u0092s prayer is actually
its beginning. God has been the Lord of Mary\u0092s people for generations and
that God has also been Mary\u0092s Lord, whom she now magnifies both by her
prayer and by her submission to the divine mission to which she has been
called\u0097a mission that will offer salvation from sin to the whole human
race. <\/span><\/p>\n

And for this reason Mary has become a link in
the chain of witnesses who bring us the truth about God\u0097the truth on which
we can base our own prayers that begin, \u0093My soul magnifies the Lord, and
my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.\u0094 That should be our prayer without
asking. <\/span><\/p>\n

(1) See Luther\u0092s little book The
Magnificat<\/i> in Luther\u0092s Works Volume 21, Jaroslav Pelikan, ed. (St.
Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1956) 295-358. <\/span><\/p>\n

(2) Ibid., 313. <\/span><\/p>\n

(3) Ibid., 332-349. <\/span><\/p>\n

Bruce E. Shields
Emmanuel School of
Religion
Johnson City, Tennessee, USA
E-Mail: ShieldsB@esr.edu<\/a><\/b><\/span>\u200b<\/span><\/p>\n

_<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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„Pray Without Asking“ | Sermon Series on Mary | 16th Sunday after Trinity |8th October 2000 | Luke 1:46-55 | Bruce E. Shields | Pray without asking?! What sort of statement is that? Isn\u0092t that precisely what prayer is\u0097asking? Why would anybody pray without asking God for something? Not surprising, those questions. They are very […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8543,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38,727,157,1536,108,110,262,349,907,3,109,126],"tags":[],"beitragende":[],"predigtform":[],"predigtreihe":[],"bibelstelle":[],"class_list":["post-8763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lukas","category-archiv","category-beitragende","category-bruce-e-shields","category-current","category-engl","category-kapitel-01-chapter-01","category-kasus","category-pr-maria","category-nt","category-predigten","category-predigtreihen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8763"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8763\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22586,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8763\/revisions\/22586"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8763"},{"taxonomy":"beitragende","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/beitragende?post=8763"},{"taxonomy":"predigtform","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/predigtform?post=8763"},{"taxonomy":"predigtreihe","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/predigtreihe?post=8763"},{"taxonomy":"bibelstelle","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bibelstelle?post=8763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}