Our Fierce Joy

A couple of weeks ago we began Advent with the voice of John the Baptist crying out in the wilderness. Then last week we listened to the beautiful music of our choir sing songs moving us through the Christmas story. Well the gospel of Luke has a similar idea when it comes as he includes four songs in his narrative: Mary’s, Zechariah’s, the Angel’s song to the shepherds, and Simeon’s song.

Now this Sunday is special because we light the pink Advent candle. This Sunday is referred to as Gaudete Sunday or Joy Sunday coming from the Latin word for “rejoice.” This comes from the first word of the Latin introit in the Roman Catholic Church on the third Sunday of Advent. Joy Sunday dates back to the medieval period when the church felt there needed to be a reminder or a pause that even in the midst of our preparations, there is joy in the anticipation of the birth of Christ.

In our text today, we hear this beautiful pause in Luke’s gospel, but it isn’t a silent one. It is the voice of Mary singing. She has rushed to meet Elizabeth after receiving the angel Gabriel’s news. It is a moment filled with joy. Joy at seeing Elizabeth who when hearing Mary, her own child leaps for joy in her belly. Then Elizabeth names says her first Hail Mary calling her the “mother of my Lord.”

In seeing Elizabeth and hearing her confirm all that Gabriel had said, Mary is filled with the Holy Spirit and breaks out into a song of joy. She is singing “my soul magnifies the Lord.” Literally, my soul makes large the Lord, or my soul praises the greatness of the Lord, or my soul honors or glorifies the Lord. The Message translates this in by saying:

“ I’m bursting with God-news;

I’m dancing the song of my Savior God.

God took one good look at me, and look what happened—

I’m the most fortunate woman on earth!

What God has done for me will never be forgotten”

Mary, a nobody from nowhere, is favored by God and has been chosen to carry the Son of God.We think that God won’t show up in out-of-the-way places in ordinary lives. Well Mary throws that myth out the window with her song. There is a reversal of her status here as we now encounter her as theotokos or God-bearer.

But then, Mary starts to sing of other reversals: reversals of where pride and power are put in their place and the lowly are lifted up, a reversal of the hungry being filled and the rich being sent away empty, and finally a reversal again of God acting on behalf of Israel.

Mary isn’t the only one to sing a song like this. Hannah sings a similar song in 1 Samuel 2:1-10. Here you see similar language of joy along with the reversal between strong and weak, empty, and full, barren and with child. Other women like Miriam and Deborah also have songs in the Bible praising God for God’s action on behalf of Israel.

This is what God’s favoring looks like. If you look ahead in Luke 4:18-19 when Jesus begins his ministry, he proclaims the year of the Lord’s favor. What does that entail? Good news for the poor. Freedom for prisoners. Recovery of sight to the blind. To set the oppressed free. God’s favor is about freedom.

Mary’s song is not a sweet lullaby. It is music of the revolution of the kingdom of God, sung by an unwed pregnant teenager. Dietrich Bonhoeffer said “The song of Mary is the oldest Advent hymn. It is at once the most passionate, the wildest, one might even say the most revolutionary Advent hymn ever sung. This is not the gentle, tender, dreamy Mary whom we sometimes see in paintings.…This song has none of the sweet, nostalgic, or even playful tones of some of our Christmas carols. It is instead a hard, strong, inexorable song about the power of God and the powerlessness of humankind.” In fact, these words of Mary’s song were considered too controversial in some countries and thus heavily discouraged from being read, especially in Guatemala in the 1980’s.

But there is something else interesting about Mary’s song, about these joyful reversals. Did you catch it? Listen again.

The Lord has done great things for Mary. He has shown strength with his arm. He has scattered the proud. He has brought down the powerful. He has lifted the lowly. He has filled the hungry. He has sent the rich away empty. He has helped Israel.

The tense seems off. Shouldn’t it be future tense instead? While it may sound like Mary is speaking in the past tense, Mary here uses the aorist tense. Why does this even matter? The aorist tense in the Greek is neither a past tense of something that has already happened nor is it simply projecting the future. It is both/and. It is an event that has occured and yet also ongoing or unfolding. Huh? Now maybe we are the ones who now wish we could ask Mary “how can this be?”

Perhaps we think it is an odd verb choice since we don’t have this tense in the English. Julie Clawson says “Mary wasn't crazy. She was carrying the hope of the world inside her; she knew that God had entered the world in a dramatic way. This changed everything--but to accomplish the change, the hope had to be proclaimed with assurance. We don't just place our hope in a past event or a future reward; we live into it. Mary trusted so profoundly in the reality of the baby she carried that she asserted God's fulfillment of hope in the past, present and future.”

Mary had fierce joy, strong joy. It was a joy that flowed deep within her. It enabled her to pray bold prayers and to sing bold songs. Henri Nouwen said that “while happiness usually depends on circumstances, joy runs deeper. Joy is the experience of knowing that you are unconditionally loved and that nothing- sickness, failure, emotional distress, oppression, war, or even death- can take that away…Mary’s joy flows from a wellspring within her soul.”

Have you ever had that kind of joy? Joy of the Lord that actually gives you strength to stand and sing? Joy of the Lord that promises you that one day all will be set right. It’s more than a positive polly or a glass-half full situation. It is exuberant hope that stems from knowing and experiencing the love of God. A week ago I had to attend the special called session of the Annual Conference for disaffiliation. And after all the business of the session was over, these lovely dancers came out and danced to Joyful, Joyful We Adore thee. The song swelled and they danced and swayed and I thought “God is up to something. Even now. Even here.”

Mary knew that God was doing a new thing, and that it was about to be born. Howard Thurman has a beautiful poem that captures this sentiment.

Where refugees seek deliverance that never comes,

And the heart consumes itself, if it would live,

Where little children age before their time,

And life wears down the edges of the mind,

Where the old man sits with mind grown cold,

While bones and sinew, blood and cell, go slowly to death,

Where fear companions each day’s life,

And Perfect Love seems long delayed.

CHRISTMAS IS WAITING TO BE BORN:

In you, in me, in all [humanity].

Barbara Brown Taylor says that Mary sings “for every son and daughter who thought God has forgotten the promise to be with them forever, to love them forever, to give them fresh and endless life. Mary’s song is the theme of the hopeless.” Mary’s song rings out with joy for all of us who are waiting for Christmas to be born.

Mary started singing long ago. Today we get the joy of continuing her song. Together, may our souls magnify the Lord, for God has done great things for us.