The Fourth Sunday of Advent
Micah 5:2-5a; Luke 1:47-55
This morning we are examining two scriptural songs. The first is a Messianic prophecy from the prophet Micah, words that foretell the coming of the Christ. The second is the Song of Mary, the prophetic proclamation of Jesus’s mother about God’s plans for the world and Mary’s own part in those plans.
So let us turn first to the prophet Micah. Like most of the prophets, Micah is written in the context of deep disruption, of empires rolling through Israel and deporting its people, spreading them out across the known world, creating the Jewish Diaspora. Micah alternates between warning the people about the ways that they are violating God’s law and assuring them that God will return to God’s people.
Most Christians recognize only one verse from Micah. “What does the Lord require of you,” the prophet begins, “but to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God.” Do justice. Love kindness. Walk humbly with God.
But what sort of injustice and unkindness does Micah have in mind that needs to be corrected? It is very clearly the exploitation of the poor by those with power. God says, “Can I forget the treasures of wickedness in the house of the wicked, and the scant measure that is accursed? Can I tolerate wicked scales and a bag of dishonest weights? You wealthy are full of violence; your inhabitants speak lies, with tongues of deceit in their mouths…. Their hands are skilled to do evil; the official and the judge ask for a bribe, and the powerful dictate what they desire; they pervert justice” (Micah 6:10-12, 7:3). Everyone is trying to cheat their neighbors, and the powerful are piling up fortunes of ill-gotten gain.
But, Micah assures the people, there is someone coming who will help to set things right, a successor of King David who will change things forever. From the town of Bethlehem there will come a ruler for Israel. Like a shepherd cares for the sheep, he will make sure that the people are fed. He will bring security to the people. He will bring justice. He will bring peace.
Several centuries later, the angel Gabriel appears to a young woman to declare the fulfillment of the prophecy. Her name is Mariam, or Mary. He tells her that she is going to have a son Jesus, who will be a great king and be called the Son of God. There is only one problem, of course: she doesn’t have a husband, and she has never slept with a man. But Gabriel doesn’t seem to think that is a problem at all. Mary will conceive a son by the Holy Spirit.
No big deal for God, maybe, but it certainly must have been a big deal for Mary. Here she is going to be an unwed mother, a social pariah. She is afraid, alone.
At the same time, Mary’s cousin, Elizabeth, is about six weeks along in her pregnancy, carrying John the Baptist. Mary has just gotten pregnant. Mary decides to travel to visit Elizabeth down in the hill country of Judea. It’s about 60 miles.
The moment Mary knocks on the door, Elizabeth is filled with the Holy Spirit and begins to prophesy like one of the Old Testament prophets. She declares that Mary is blessed among woman and that Elizabeth’s unborn child recognizes the importance of the child Mary is carrying—he leaps for joy when Mary arrives.
And once Elizabeth is finished with her prophecy, that’s when Mary breaks into song. It’s a pretty famous song now, the Canticle of Mary. Sometimes it’s called the Magnificat because the first word of it in Latin is magnificat—my soul magnifies the Lord. We don’t know what tune Mary used, but many a composer has done their best to put these words to music. There are several different settings in our hymnal.
If this were a modern musical, we would expect Mary to lament the situation she has found herself in. We would expect her to go on about the struggles of being an unwed mother, about the jeers and criticism she is forced to endure, about how everyone assumes she was unfaithful. We would expect Mary to be frightened by the appearance of the angel. And we would expect her to be frightened for the future.
But this is not the song of a frightened girl. It is not the song of someone who is lost or depressed. But it is still the song of a social outcast. It is the song of someone who has been pushed aside by society. And it is the song of someone who is confident that God is her savior.
First, Mary gives thanks to God for noticing her in her lowliness. She isn’t from a well-to-do family. She isn’t wealthy. What she is is an unwed mother. And yet God has chosen her to be the mother of the savior of the world. To most people, she appears to be lowly. But in God’s eyes she was the opposite. She was the favored one—very great indeed.
In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, she is known as θεοτόκος, the God-bearer, the one who gives birth to God. It’s a role that we can scarcely comprehend. What could it mean to be the Mother of God? And although it sounds incomprehensibly impressive now, it certainly wasn’t a glamorous role at the time. She may have known that the child she was carrying was something special, was the very Son of God, but precious few others did. And yet, Mary knows, and she praises God for her role in salvation history:
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.
But Mary does not only sing about her own role; she sings about God’s mighty acts of salvation for the whole world, and more specifically, for the lowly in society. These are not just warm and fluffy words, not empty platitudes. These are strong and sometimes harsh words, like those from the prophets of old.
“God pulls down the mighty from their thrones, and raises up the humble. The Lord fills the starving and lets the rich go hungry.”
Now, these are hard words for many of us, who are used to living relatively comfortable lives, who enjoy the power and the privilege we have inherited. Life has been pretty good up until now. Sure, we may face our own troubles and burdens. We may have challenges to deal with. But compared to the majority of people in the world, we have things pretty good. We have safe places to live. We have shelter from the weather. We have plenty of food to eat. We may not be the cream of the crop here in America, but if God turns the whole world upside down, we might just find ourselves in that upper crust that God is about to tear down. And that is something we would likely rather avoid. Mary’s prophesy about God’s justice might sound more like a threat to our ears than it sounds like good news.
But these are wonderful words of salvation for those on the underside of society. These are words of liberation for the oppressed, words of hope for the beleaguered, words of promise for the destitute. This is food for the hungry, jobs for the unemployed, sight for the blind, freedom for the oppressed, release for the captives, justice for the targeted. God is the champion of the poor and needy, the benefactor of those who suffer, the healer of those who are diseased, the comforter of those who weep. For the AIDS orphan in Africa, for the starving widow in India, for the dispossessed native in the Amazon, for the poor youth in the urban ghetto, for anyone who has been pushed aside or profiled or counted out, this is good news. This is gospel.
And this is the good news that Mary sings. She sings a song of liberation. She sings a song of mercy. She sings a song of justice. Justice for all those who have failed to receive justice at the hands of our human society. This is not the kind of justice that is meted out down the barrel of a gun or by a laser-targeted bomb. It is not the kind of justice that is executed in an electric chair or a prison cell.
No, God’s justice is something else entirely. God’s justice makes things right, it does not stop simply at punishing those who have done wrong. God’s justice gives power to the powerless. It cannot be bought, nor can it be bribed. God’s justice sees to the heart of things. It does not let something pass simply because the only people being hurt are people who have not been granted a voice to air their grievances. As Mary so boldly proclaims:
God has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
God has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.
To Mary’s mind, God is a powerful warrior, a mighty champion, who fights on the side of the poor and lowly. God is like a sort of divine Robin Hood, who sets right the things that powerful people have set wrong. That is the God to whom Mary sings her praise, a God who has chosen humble little her over so many other more prominent choices.
And when it comes right down to it, what greater love can we sing than of an Almighty God who humbly takes on human form, of a God who cares the most for those who have the least. That truly is good news. That truly is gospel.