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| "My soul magnifies the Lord" said Mary the Godbearer |
© 2021-2024 Seth Olson
Emmanuel, God with us, let my words be your words and when my words are not your words, let your people be wise enough to know the same. Amen.
I grew up attending St. Andrew’s Parish in Southside Birmingham. Unique in its high church “smells and bells” style of worship—and its radical sense of hospitality—after going to church with friends, I realized my church was… different.
For example, we didn’t have a Christmas pageant on Christmas Eve. There was a very brief children’s play with only Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus on the night before Christmas. Instead at Epiphany when the wise men showed we would tell the full story of Jesus’ birth. Year-after-year I wanted to play the same part—not Joseph, nor shepherd, nor a wise man, but the inn keeper. Odd, right?
You may recall when Mary and Joseph traveled to Bethlehem for the census there was no room for them in the Inn. The innkeeper appears nowhere in the story but is implied. Why did I want to play this negative character? Maybe this is something to take to my therapist. As I have reflected on my penchant for this part, a few reasons why I liked it emerge.
First, the innkeeper only had the one line, “Sorry, there’s no room in the inn.” Even after almost 30 years I nailed it! Second, I got to sit in a pew all by myself so that when Mary and Joseph walked down the aisle knocking as they looked for a place to stay, I could deny their request. Which gets to the final and most convicting reason why I enjoyed this role. The innkeeper got to deny the Holy Family, including the prenatal Jesus, a place to stay.
Oomphf! This is what the innkeeper did, right? The man who owned the inn denied them access to a room. Except, in the Epiphany pageant at St. Andrew’s, the innkeeper had a stable that he let Mary and Joseph use, so maybe there is redemption in the Inn (#dadjoke #priestjoke). Regardless, if we back up in the story as Luke tells it, before Mary and Joseph went to Bethlehem, right after the Angel Gabriel visited Mary, we find two figures who did not deny God a place to stay, but instead welcomed Christ in exemplary ways.
In today’s good news, we experience something wholly different from a denial of Christ—today, we encounter a story utterly holy dripping with the power of God’s spirit. Two pregnant women and their visceral, feeling-soaked, prophetic conversation take center stage. Mary’s visit with Elizabeth shines a spotlight on the great hope of all who follow in the Way of Christ. What is that hope? We will get there, so keep listening, but first, let us go to the Judean hill country.
Today’s gospel story opens with “In those days,” harkening back to “the days of King Herod”[1] mentioned earlier in the story. Even though we might expect God to be moving amongst the powerful, the angel Gabriel had just visited not the palace, but Mary, a lowly servant of God. Truly, Gabriel had been busy.
Earlier in Luke, God’s messenger visited Zechariah as he offered incense in the Temple. Gabriel told the priest that even in his wife’s old age, Elizabeth would have a child, and they were to name him John. Being the stubborn priest that he was, Zechariah questioned God’s messenger. What happened next might have been why Elizabeth and he were finally able to conceive a child—Gabriel made Zechariah unable to speak until the child was to be born. The priest had to be quiet, and maybe he finally listened to his wife. Next thing you know, Elizabeth was pregnant with John the Baptist.
Fast forward in Luke’s account to find Gabriel announcing that Mary would bear a son as well. The angel told her, this child would be the Son of the Most High God. Even with two thousand years between this news and us, it still strikes me as shocking! Gabriel told Mary this unbelievable announcement and solidified the claim by informing her that her relative, the once barren Elizabeth, was now pregnant. Mary unlike Zechariah did not question this surprising report from God’s messenger. Instead, she said, “Let it be unto me according to your word,” then headed for the hill country and Elizabeth, which gets us to today’s story.
I imagine Mary and Elizabeth embraced sweetly—the two holy children leaping within their mothers’ sacred wombs. Immediately from Elizabeth a blessing broke forth upon Mary—blessed are you among women, blessed is the fruit of your womb, blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord. The elder pronounced a three-fold beatitude upon Mary. The third of which might have been a veiled insult at her husband Zechariah who like many willful priests did not immediately believe what God’s messenger was saying.
Mary upon hearing Elizabeth’s words, proclaimed some of the loveliest and most challenging words in all of Holy Scripture. She replied with what we know as The Magnificat—named such for the first line—My soul magnifies the Lord. The first few lines are all about Mary’s state of blessedness that Elizabeth was describing:
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.[2]
Don’t stop paying attention here. Yes, these beautiful beginning bits focus on Mary’s blessed nature, but then the Theotokos, the God-bearer, announced a prophetic description of blessing. In it, she told us who God was, is, and always will be—and who we are called to be in response.
[God’s] 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 forever.[3]
Mary, the bearer of God’s Son, pronounced a truth she intimately knew. She was blessed not just because she bore God’s Son, but also because she knew God’s way:
· Mercy for those who lovingly hold God in awe.
· Separating those who take pride in themselves alone.
· Dethroning the powerful, while exalting those society overlooks.
· Filling the hungry, telling the rich they’ve already had their fill—inviting them to share?
· Holding the people of God in a merciful embrace forever.
This is God’s way, and it is to be ours too!
Elizabeth’s geriatric pregnancy opened her eyes to see her relative in a new way, such that she could pronounce a blessing upon Mary. Mary’s out-of-wedlock, divine pregnancy gave her the courage to see herself as blessed and to point out God’s countercultural ways. Far from denying God a place to stay—these women prepared God mansions in which to dwell. We are called to do the same, which leads us to the ultimate hope, which I hinted at earlier:
All of us, no matter who we are, what we’ve done, where were from; all of us regardless of our gender, skin color, age, nationality, sexual orientation, ability, or social status; all of us are called to make room for Christ and to bear Christ into this world, and we do this best by living into the virtues set forth in Mary’s prophetic words.
The great theologian, philosopher, and mystic Meister Eckhart wrote it far more eloquently than I ever could:
We are all meant to be mothers of God. What good is it to me if this eternal birth of the divine Son takes place unceasingly, but does not take place within myself? And, what good is it to me if Mary is full of grace if I am not also full of grace? What good is it to me for the Creator to give birth to his Son if I do not also give birth to him in my time and my culture? This, then, is the fullness of time: When the Son of Man is begotten in us.[4]
In this season be it our care and delight to prepare a place for Christ to dwell—not just in a manger but in us. May we be blessed like Zechariah and be quiet, so that we might hear God. May we be blessed like Elizabeth and see the blessings of others, so that we might exalt one another. May we be blessed like Mary and bear Christ in ourselves, so that God’s reign thrives in our time, place, and culture!
May our souls magnify the Lord. Amen.
[1] Luke 1:5
[2] Luke 1:47-49
[3] Luke 1:50-55
[4] Meister Eckhart, Be Mothers of God retrieved on the Catholic Storeroom. http://www.catholicstoreroom.com/category/quotes/quote-author/meister-eckhart-1260-1328/ [accessed December 18, 2024].
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