Riffing on Christmas’ greatest hit
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.”
(Luke 1:46-48a, NRSV)
Luke’s gospel begins the story of Jesus like a Broadway musical — one song after another. The most famous is the Magnificat — from its first word in the old Latin Vulgate Bible: magnificat anima mea Dominum, “Magnifies my soul the Lord.” Mary is singing with her elder relative Elizabeth, soon after Mary’s conversation with the Angel Gabriel. Both women are pregnant, miraculously. Both women are full of the Holy Spirit — nervous, excited, bursting with life, like two giddy teenagers in love with God.
In this raw, honest, beautiful song (read it right now, I beg you), Mary celebrates God’s generosity, to her in particular — because Incarnation is all about the particular — and to the humble and the poor in general. She’s a low-class Jewish girl from a people betrayed by religious leaders and exploited by the Roman Empire. She knows what it’s like to be dismissed, ignored, disenfranchised, and silenced.
At the same time, she knows what it’s like to be noticed by God, and not just noticed but really seen, and not just seen but chosen. As the Rev. Aisha Brooks-Lytle puts it, quoting the mothers in her Black church tradition, “Mary knows what it’s like to be seen by God Almighty who sits high but looks low.”
Mary knows what it’s like to have everyone think you are small and insignificant — irrelevant, passive — and yet be called by God to a big life full of purpose and meaning. “The Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name.”
Then, Mary makes the theological leap from the particular to the universal, from her story to the human story. She sings of God’s mercy from generation to generation. She sings of God’s strong arm scattering the proud and sending the rich away. She sings of God’s generosity in filling the hungry with good things. She swells with hope for the hopeless, love for the unlovable, joy for any who are sunk in deep darkness. She sings a song of empowerment for the least, the last, the lost and the littlest.
Her song is still reverberating. You can hear it today. Because ever since that day at Elizabeth’s house, Mary’s song has been covered by people just like her.
Enslaved Africans in America sang Mary’s song. Their spirituals both praised God and protested the masters, who could keep them from church but could not keep them from God’s promises. Their versions of Mary’s song were called “Go Down, Moses” and “Wade in the Water” and “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.”
People who marched for civil rights sang Mary’s song, too. In the face of violent intimidation, they covered Mary’s song with “We Shall Overcome” and “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around” and “Come By Here, Lord.”
Even the great composer Beethoven riffed on Mary’s song. He wrote his ninth and most famous symphony near the end of his life, when he was sick, alienated from almost everyone, and completely deaf. He had never found love nor created the family he’d always wanted. And yet that’s when, by the grace of God, he wrote an enduring anthem to joy — a joy that knows suffering and transcends it. In the fourth and final movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, the choir sings “Joyful, joyful, we adore Thee, God of glory, Lord of love.” It’s a melody you’ll surely recognize called “Ode to Joy.” (Check out a documentary about this called “Following the Ninth.”)
In the years since then, Beethoven’s Ninth continues to magnify the Lord while rousing the spirits of those who are lowly and beaten-down like Mary. At Tiananmen Square in 1989, students played it over loudspeakers as the Chinese army came to crush their struggle for freedom. In Chile, women living under the Pinochet dictatorship sang it outside torture prisons, giving the men inside hope. Leonard Bernstein conducted it in Berlin on Christmas Day as the wall was being dismantled, calling the choir and the spectators to join its final movement as an “Ode to Freedom.”
Mary would understand.
Where do you hear Mary’s song today? I might have heard echoes of it last weekend in the movie “Wicked.” The crowd in the theater swelled with hope — just like Mary did — when Elphaba sang “Defying Gravity.” What do you think? What piece of music makes you feel seen, chosen, and hopeful? I would love it if you wrote and told me about it.
In all its versions, Mary’s bold and ageless song reaches beyond the brokenness and violence and ruthless self-interest that surrounds us, reaches deep down inside to where God’s promises are always found, and brings forth a vision of the future, a future that is just and joyful and merciful. This Christmas, may you, too, swell with hope, and break out in a song like hers.
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