Mary's Prayer

This morning, as I sit in my comfortable house surrounded by my comfortable things, I am thinking about Mary's prayer found in Luke.  She has rushed away from her hometown because the pregnancy will cause a stir, if it hasn't already, and retreats to her cousin's home.  In our rush to meet Jesus, we often miss the scandal of his arrival.  Since his birth is miraculous, it appears that we wave a magic wand and say, God is his father.  The problem is that Luke recognized the scandal.  Not only would the Roman empire have been ready for the proclamation, Son of God, most of its citizens knew who wore the title and it would not be attached to a boy born of a woman of low status. In our backward glance with its twenty-twenty vision, everything is tidy and fully understood, But the scandal was that God would choose a young woman of no status to usher in his kingdom.  Her prayer emphasizes Luke's larger point that the good news is for everyone, period.  Hear the world turning up side down in her words:

And Mary said,
‘My soul magnifies the Lord, 
   and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour, 
for he has looked with favour 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 for ever.’

The proud are shut out, the high will no longer remain in power, and the poor will sing God's redemptive praises.

I am struck this year by my comfort.  What if I am the proud, the powerful, and the wealthy?  Since the focus of the prayer is often on its simplicity and beauty, the condemnation appears lost on us.  What if the prayer no longer includes us?  I think I have focused on this passage differently this week because of the events that surround this Advent season.  In the week since a present day murder of the innocents, we have continued to see men in high places speak for God to explain the tragedy.  Perhaps they would be wise to follow the ancient Hebrew tradition of sitting quietly with those who mourn, rather than talking.  

When asked to point to a Biblical text that supported the political position of gun rights, Richard Land, head of the public policy agency for the Southern Baptist Convention, used "due undo others."  And the head of the National Rifle Association, Wayne LaPierre, called for the armed guards to stand at school entrances to make sure the tragic episode never happened again.  Shouldn't Mary's prayer cause us some hesitation with our posturing?  Mary claims that fear will no longer dominate a world that feeds off it.  The mighty want the masses to live in fear because it means they can continue to control the terms of living.  

Mary's "magnificat" explodes that idea.  The masses, in Luke it would be everyone not in power, live in faith that God rectifies the world and governs with mercy.  My sense of this week is that Mary has wept over all of us.  Children die every day---the city of Oakland, CA averages twenty deaths per year around its schools and across the nation we hear very little of that loss of innocents---and yet we continue to hold on the status quo because we are comfortable.  The kingdom of God is near when a mother cries when she loses a child and a father stands against injustice.  The arc of God's justice bends toward them.  My hope this Advent season, and throughout the years, is that we remember that God chooses strange places "to be with us" so we need to be still and know that God is God, and we are not God.