Singing Mary’s Song In the Dark

How Can We Rejoice?

Yesterday was the 3rd Sunday in Advent. It’s called Gaudete meaning Rejoice! We light the pink candle in the Advent Wreath and in the highly liturgical churches, the priests wear pink robes. It’s a shout of joy for what we believe is coming in spite of what is; the light that the darkness cannot put out.

It’s also Mary’s Sunday when the readings includes the Magnificat, her song of defiant joy in anticipation of the birth of Jesus. As I write, I’m remembering the words from O Holy Night.

A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices,
for yonder breaks a new and glorious morn!

Plagiarizing my own words, here’s what I wrote about Mary’s song in Surprised by Mary: How the Christ Who Was Born through Mary Can Be Born Again through You. (p. 17-19. )

The Song of Joyful Dissent

I’ve heard the Magnificat called “an aria of freedom,” a “hymn of social protest,” and a “song of liberation.” It boldly announces the vision of life the way God intends it. I should not have been surprised to learn the military junta in Argentina banned public recitations of Mary’s song in the 1970s when the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo published it as their declaration of nonviolent opposition. They were working to find and return their children and grandchildren who had disappeared. A decade later authorities in Guatemala banned it as well. They were following the nineteenth-century example of the East India Company who removed the Magnificat from the order for evening prayer.

“My soul magnifies the Lord,
    and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
 for he has looked with favor on the lowly state 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;
indeed, 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 imagination 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 come to the aid of his child Israel,
    in remembrance of his mercy,
 according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
    to Abraham and to his descendants forever.” (Luke 1:46-55)

We may be inspired by Mary’s words, but we know how this weary world works.

What are the odds that arrogant politicians will be scattered in the false delusions of their own greatness?

How likely is it that powerful people will be brought low, while ordinary, powerless folks are lifted up?

What chance is there, in a world where the rich keeping getting richer and the poor keep getting poorer, that the people with the least will be filled with good things while the wealthy go away empty-handed?

Mary’s Spirit-impregnated vision carries us back to the Spirit-impregnated hopes of the Hebrew prophets, even as we look toward the day when the kingdoms of this earth really do become of the Kingdom of God (Rev 11:15). Her singing touches deep places of our souls where we remember what God did in the past, are called to participate in what God is doing in the present and grasp for the hope of what God will do in the future.

The Surprise in the Song

Here’s the surprise: Mary sang as if what was promised had already come! Her bearing the Son of God created the possibility for something new, unexpected, and unpredictable to happen in her and through her for this world. God’s yet-to-be realized Kingdom was being formed in her. As she bore Christ in her womb, she dared to believe that she was participating in the fulfillment of God’s promise right here, right now. That’s hope!

William Sloane Coffin spoke in the spirit of the Magnificat when he described hope as “a state of mind independent of the state of the world . . . Hope enables us to keep a steady eye on remote ends.”

He declared that hopeful people are “critical of the present only because they hold such a bright view of the future.”  In an interview with NPR he , declared:

“If your heart is full of hope, you can be persistent when you can’t be optimistic. You can keep your faith despite the evidence, knowing that only in so doing does the evidence have any chance of changing. While I am not optimistic, I am always hopeful.”

Even when it’s hard to be optimistic—which it often is!—Mary’s song inspires us to be hopeful. It challenges us to live now in ways that are consistent with the way that became flesh in Jesus. There’s no need to wait! We can live now in ways that anticipate the way things will one day be. We can become part of the answer to our persistent prayer for God’s Kingdom to come and God’s will to be done on earth as it is in Heaven. We can live into that hope the way a pregnant woman bears the hope of the new life in in her womb.

If ever in my lifetime we needed to hear Mary’s song of daring dissent and hopeful joy, we need to hear it today!

May Mary’s defiant song of joy be our song in this Advent season.

Jim