Today’s Gospel text is the Magnificat. It’s a song of praise that Mary sings because God has chosen Mary for something extraordinary.
Now when I think of the word chosen, my mind usually moves in one of two directions. In one direction, I think about someone being chosen because of their accomplishments. Take a job promotion, for example: Generally a promotion happens because you’ve worked hard, gone above and beyond your responsibilities, maybe sucked up to the boss a bit, and so on. So that’s an example of being chosen as a reward.
The other direction my mind moves in is the idea of being chosen by chance. Take a draw or a raffle, for example: If there are a hundred names in a hat and your name gets pulled, then that’s just dumb luck. It really has nothing to do with what you’ve done.
Now, when God chose Mary, was it as reward or by chance? Well, I don’t think it was a reward for her accomplishments. Not to take anything away from Mary, but I’m sure there were other young, pious Jewish girls who would have served just fine. Does that mean God chose Mary by chance? Well, that hardly lines up with the God of purpose we meet all over the pages of Scripture.
So if it’s neither reward nor chance, how do we explain God’s choosing of Mary? Well, I think there’s a third option, which is that God chose Mary because of his grace. In other words, God in his wisdom and his kindness decided that this girl having this baby in this little town is the best way for him to show his love to the world. Grace always comes to us in the particular.
And so what we have here in the Magnificat is Mary responding to God’s having chosen her in this way. And her initial response is praise.
My soul magnifies the Lord. My spirit rejoices. This makes Mary truly happy, and she directs this happiness to God.
And then for the rest of the song she becomes specific. First, she is specific about the effect this has had on her. And then she is specific about the effect this is going to have on everybody. So let’s take those in turn.
First, the effect on Mary: When we read these stories about Mary, we often focus on how difficult this all must have been for her. After all, she was a young girl, not married, and found herself caught up in something she could not even imagine.
No doubt this was difficult for her, but that’s not what Mary focuses on. What she focuses on is how this has opened new possibilities for her. The way she describes it is like she has undergone a change in status, from “lowly” to “favored.” She used to be a nobody, but now she’s a somebody. And what changed her from lowly to favored is not hard work or dumb luck; what got her there is the gracious action of God.
So was this difficult on Mary? Yes, it was in some sense. But that doesn’t preclude the profound goodness this has brought to her. This has given her an entirely new perspective on her life and allowed her to see herself as a key player in God’s drama of salvation.
So God has graciously chosen Mary, and Mary experiences being chosen as a good thing, and something very liberating.
But this isn’t just about Mary, is it? Verse 50 signals a shift — “his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.” It’s as if Mary — after singing about the great blessing she’s received — turns to us and says, “This could be you too, you know.” And so then Mary’s song shifts from what it means to her to what it means for everyone else.
I began by talking about grace, about the way in which God shows his kindness to us. But I left out the most important part, which is that grace has a transformative effect. It doesn’t leave things as they were. Instead, God’s grace changes everything it touches. It changes individual lives, and it changes entire societies. In other words, God is up to something that will affect everybody. And it has to with what C.S. Lewis called the Great Reversal — the weak are lifted up, and the powerful are laid low.
Here’s how Mary puts it: God has scattered the proud. He has thrown the powerful off their thrones and lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty.
Now let’s stop here a minute and clear away some misunderstanding. I think there are two mistakes we can make when we think about this “Great Reversal”: to make ourselves the hero and to make others the villain.
Let’s take those in turn.
First, we can make ourselves the hero. Sometimes we hear this kind of language in the Bible — God scattering the proud, throwing the powerful off their thrones, lifting up the lowly, and so on — and we interpret this as a call for us to work hard at making the world a better place. We read this as if God is asking us to accomplish this.
There is some truth to this, of course. After all, we should be active in our faith, doing good in the world, working for justice when we can, and so on. But the text is not talking about us doing these things. To read it this way is to focus too much on us. You see, this passage is about God doing this, not us. We’re not the main actors. God is.
Notice too that God’s actions are all in the past tense: God has scattered the proud, he has thrown kings off thrones, and so on. This is not something new. This is the way God has been doing things all along.
Mary knew the Old Testament well, and she would have been thinking about names like Abraham, Moses, Hannah, Jeremiah — all heroes in the Jewish Scriptures, and all evidence that God lifts up the lowly. You see, these people are nothing special in and of themselves. Their “specialness” lies only in that God has chosen them too.
And so the Great Reversal is the story of Israel, and thus it’s the story of the Scripture. In other words, it’s just the way God does things — always has been, always will be.
So the question is: Do you want to be a part of what God is doing in the world? Then get with the program, but remember we’re only participants in something much larger than ourselves.
So that’s the error of making ourselves the hero. The other error is making others the villains. We have to be careful with this one, because it’s an easy trap to fall into.
Mary says God has scattered the proud. He has thrown the powerful off their thrones, and lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty.
So we can read that as criticism of people who have money or positions of power. And then we can think about someone richer than us or more powerful than us, and assume God is on our side but not theirs. We can then demonize these other people, and assume that they are the target of God’s scattering, laying low, sending away, etc.
But there are problems with this strategy. First, the text is not criticizing rich people simply because they have money, as if having money is evil. In truth, having money is neutral. God is much more interested in our attitude toward our money and in how we use, not so much in the amount we have.
You see, the problem with the rich is not that they’re rich; the problem with the rich is that they’re often forgetful. When we have money or power, it’s tempting to think we’re self-sufficient and to forget that God gives us all that we have. That’s the problem, not the numbers on our bank statement.
The other problem with making others the villains is that it leads us to assume that judgment is the last word. For God, judgment is a mean to bring us to repentance. And so God makes the powerful lowly, and scatters the proud, and sends the rich away not to punish them, but to bring them to a place of receptivity to him. God wants to favor them too.
Mary and Jesus both knew that everyone can be saved, so long as they’re able to recognize their need and be receptive to the Gospel. Everyone, including Caesar, can receive God’s love.
The text then ends with a promise: “He has helped his servant Israel, remembering to be merciful to Abraham and his descendants forever, just as he promised our ancestors.”
There are 2,000 years separating Abraham from Mary. Did God keep his promise during that time? Of course he did.
Now there are 2,000 years separating Mary from us. Is God going to keep his promises to us? Of course he will.
So, friends, as we head into the Christmas season, let us be thankful for the Gospel — the Great Reversal — the way God continues to turn the world upside down for our good. And let us, like Mary, allow ourselves to be caught up in God’s story — a story that has been going on long before, and a story that will continue long after us.
Thanks be to God.
The Rt. Rev. Joseph “Joey” Royal is a Guest Writer. He is Canadian Anglican bishop currently serving with the Christian Embassy of Canada, a non-profit organization dedicated to ministering to diplomats, politicians, and business leaders. He resides in Ottawa, Ontario, with his wife, Jennifer, and their son, Benjamin.
