Singing Daily with Mary
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
Our Gospel reading this morning primarily consists of the Magnificat, which is one of the staples of the Anglican prayer life. Thomas Cranmer, the founder of our prayer book tradition, believed that every Christian should prayer or sing this song every day, and not without good reason. The Magnificat had already been a part of the daily monastic prayer life for centuries before Thomas Cranmer, and it’s likely the tradition of praying and singing this song is even older than that. Have you ever wondered why Luke includes these songs (the Magnificat, the Benedictus, and the Nunc Dimittis) here at the beginning of his Gospel? It’s likely because the Christians in the first century were already praying and singing them as part of their worship of Jesus Christ.
So, what I want to do this morning, in the spirit of Thomas Cranmer, is commend the Magnificat to you as part of your daily prayer life. And here’s why. It’s not because I love liturgy or because it’s in the prayer book. I do love liturgy, and I do love the prayer book, but no one should love liturgy for the sake of liturgy.
I love liturgy and the prayer book for the same reason that a parent loves offering their child a healthy, well-balanced meal. I know for a fact that in the liturgy you are going to get everything that you need. You may not like eating your vegetables of confession and the prayer of humble access, but you need them. And what I want to suggest this morning is the Magnificat, rather than being just another prayer or song in our prayer book, actually offers a healthy corrective to much that ails contemporary Christianity.
You see, the Reformation, and then Protestantism, and then Evangelicalism as the worst example, enabled a mindset that Christianity and the experience of being a Christian was something like standing in front of buffet. At a buffet, you are the arbiter of what you’re going to consume or experience. Most American Christians today are standing in front of a buffet that consists of the entire history of Christian experience, the entire history of Christian tradition, and the entire history of Christian biblical interpretation, and they have decided, since they are the one holding the plate, that they are the ones who will pick and choose what parts they want to consume and what parts they want to ignore. This is “choose your own adventure” Christianity, and it’s dangerous at best and blasphemous at worst.
I want to explain this in a bit more detail because there is a real problem here, and I want you to understand why it is so important that we are receivers of Christian tradition rather than the arbiters of our own faith. Let’s take for example, sola scriptura, one of the five solas of the Reformation.
Sola Scriptura
Sola Scriptura
Sola Scriptura is the belief that the Bible is the sole source of authority for Christian faith and practice. In most American Christian traditions, you will hear this all the time, and in theory, that sounds like a great idea. That is, until you ask one fundamental question.
Whose reading of the Bible counts?
That is, whose reading of the Bible is it that counts as the sole source of authority for Christian faith and practice? Church tradition? Of course not. A commentator’s or expert’s? Nope. The pastor’s? Definitely not. The only reading of the Bible that counts is, you guessed it, your own. It’s your reading of the Bible that counts which is why people sell Bible studies and Study Bibles and commentaries to help YOU make informed decisions about what YOU think the Bible says. So, ultimately, if the Bible is the sole source of authority for Christian faith and practice and if it is your reading of the Bible and your reading of the Bible alone that counts, then guess what. YOU are the sole source of authority for your Christian faith and practice. Instead of sola scriptura, what we are left with is
Ego Solus
Ego Solus
I alone. Rather than being a receiver of Christian tradition and biblical interpretation, too many Christians today are standing before the buffet line picking and choosing what parts they want to put on their plate and what parts they want to leave behind.
The Problematic Buffet
The Problematic Buffet
And maybe… just maybe… if we just had the right tools, the right resources, the right small group, the right Bible study, the right church, the right commentary, the right pastor, the right whatever…. we’ll make the right choices.
But we haven’t, and what we have ended up with instead is American Christianity which is wildly defunct and has very little to do with the Gospel of Jesus Christ because it is a version of Christianity that we have assembled and not the faith passed down to us by those who tried to live faithful Christian lives before us. And frankly, it’s not just that we have left some things off our plate that should have been there, but in fact there’s a lot of other nonsense that has crept onto our plate it’s place.
The Value of Liturgy
The Value of Liturgy
Conversely, rather than choose your own adventure Christianity, what liturgy says is this: Here’s what the faithful who have gone before you think you need to hear and pray. Liturgy says, “Here is the faith as best as we understand it. Here is what it means to be a disciple of Jesus.”
You may not like it, just like children don’t like to eat their vegetable, but you need to hear that the two great commandments are to love God with all that you are and to love your neighbor as yourself. You need to recite your faith publically, and not to say “I believe” but “we believe” because the faith is not yours or mine but something we believe and try to live out together. You need to confess your sins and pray for yourself and others. You need to pray the Our Father and hear again the heart of Jesus. You need to learn again by action that the Gospel is something you receive, just as you receive the body and blood of Christ. You need to be dismissed back into the world and told that you don’t go out as the same joe shmo’s you were before, but rather you go from here with a mission: to love and serve the Lord. The Christians who have come before you say you need to do all that at least once a week, and probably more.
That’s why I love liturgy because as your priest I am your spiritual father, and the liturgy assures me that at least once a weak, you receive a well balanced meal, and you hear the Christian faith devoid of all the trappings of our contemporary culture. And, as your priest and spiritual father, I am telling you that the Magnificat should be a part of the daily rhythms of your life. I’m going to read it again, and I want you to listen and meditate on each line:
And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
This is a small thing, but we don’t magnify God like a magnifying glass. A magnifying glass takes something small and makes it appear larger than it is. That’s not what we do when we talk about God. When we talk about God, it’s like a telescope, where we take something great and glorious that is too big and too far away for us to see or even comprehend and we bring it within our field of view. We don’t make the small great, we make the awesome present. That’s how we should speak about our Lord. We should rejoice in him as Savior not because we’re so great and important, but because…
for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant. For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
Don’t you dare tell me that it’s unbiblical to think highly of Mary.
for he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name.
Has God done great things for you?
And his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.
Who does God have mercy on? Those who fear him.
He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts;
And who does God scatter with the strength of his arm? The proud.
he has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate;
God tears down who? The mighty. And God exalts who? Those of humble estate. Which side would you rather be on?
he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty.
Again, which side would you rather be on?
He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy,
as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his offspring forever.”
Mary knows that God has been faithful to the promise he made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Singing Daily with Mary
Singing Daily with Mary
The Magnificat is the Gospel. It shows as clearly as anything can the priorities of the Gospel. So, let me put this as simply as I can. If your priorities, if your vision of what matters in this world, are not aligned with the Magnificat, then your priorities are defined by your culture and not the Gospel. Mary sings of the reversal coming upon the world through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and yet so many Christians today seem to place a whole lot of value on the those things that Mary wants nothing to do with, in part (at least) because we would rather chose our own version of Christian faithfulness rather than to sing with the mother of our Lord. There is no easy, immediate solution to this problem, but maybe, if Christians today would pray her song every day, as it seems Christians have for as long as we can tell, our world might start to look a lot more like the world of which Mary sings.
Amen.
