ADVENT: The Song We have Longed to Sing
HOW TO SING AT CHRISTMAS
Advent 1992—December 6, 1992
Luke 1:46–55
46 And Mary said:
“My soul glorifies the Lord
47 and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
48 for he has been mindful
of the humble state of his servant.
From now on all generations will call me blessed,
49 for the Mighty One has done great things for me—
holy is his name.
50 His mercy extends to those who fear him,
from generation to generation.
51 He has performed mighty deeds with his arm;
he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.
52 He has brought down rulers from their thrones
but has lifted up the humble.
53 He has filled the hungry with good things
but has sent the rich away empty.
54 He has helped his servant Israel,
remembering to be merciful
55 to Abraham and his descendants forever,
even as he said to our fathers.”
Today I’d like to speak to you about the gospel reading that has already been read to you. It’s really, in a sense, the first Christmas carol, Mary’s song, the Magnificat. “And Mary said: ‘My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior …’ ” and so on.
At Christmas, people do a lot of singing. The churches are filled with more songs than usual, more music than usual. People sing Christmas carols, but how do they sing them? The reason I ask the question today is because a year ago today we looked at this very same passage, and I think it’s time to come back to look at it again in a slightly different aspect. It should astonish us all that Mary, in a sense, is the first Christian.
She’s not the first person saved, not the first believer in God, but she’s the first Christian in that she’s the first person who actually finds her life changed by the Christmas message, by the message God is becoming a human being. The Christmas message is God’s only child became humanity so humans might become God’s children. That’s the Christmas message. We said last year there’s a sense in which Mary is a great model for us today because when she hears the Christmas message, she’s changed; she’s totally changed. She, therefore, is a model for us.
How do you know you’re a Christian? Look at Mary and you’ll see what happened to her. When she first heard the gospel earlier in the chapter (not the part that just got read, but earlier), Gabriel the angel comes and announces God’s great plan. “Mary, you’re going to be overshadowed and a holy thing will be born out of your womb. God’s own Son is coming. God himself is becoming human flesh.” Of course, Mary at first can’t understand, she can’t comprehend it, she can’t really accept it.
Then at verse 46, we suddenly see she’s changed and she says, “My soul, my spirit.” What’s happened is she is being changed by the Christmas message in her very center, in her very depths. She doesn’t say, “I sense an improvement.” She doesn’t say, “I’ve discovered a new technique for overcoming negative thoughts.” Instead she says, “My soul, my spirit. I have been moved to the depths. I have been changed.” What she’s saying is, “I’ve never experienced anything that has moved me like this, that has gripped me like this. I’ve never been so emptied and then so filled. I’ve never been so stripped naked and then so clothed by this message.”
Every Christian who is a real Christian understands what she’s talking about. Any Christian knows Christianity is not something you decide upon. It’s almost like something from the outside comes and decides upon you. You sense a power from the outside intervening in your life. You sense a power from the outside coming in and shaking you to your depths. “My soul, my spirit.” What that means is, “My very being, my very center, my foundations.” That, we say (we looked at that last year, actually, in some detail), is what every Christian feels like.
Having said that, what is it that brings about this great change? The answer is the truths Mary is singing about. “My soul doth magnify. My spirit rejoices in God my Savior.” What’s brought about this cataclysmic change in her life? Then she goes on. In verse 48, the word for means (this is very important) because. “My soul, my spirit. I’ve been changed like this all because I see these truths.” When Mary sang the first Christmas carol, she was transported and totally changed. When you and I sing Christmas carols, all we get is a “slurpy,” warm, sentimental feeling. We think of chestnuts roasting on an open fire.
Mary is completely revolutionized. What’s the difference? I’ll tell you what the difference is. She knows what she’s singing about. She rejoices and she thinks and she grasps and, therefore, she’s gripped by the truths of the Christian message. What I want to just do today is show you what she’s singing about … what are these truths she allows to come and grab her … so you will know how to sing every Christmas carol?
Not every Christmas carol. Certainly not Jingle Bells, and there are a few others. The sort of carols and Christmas hymns and anthems and so on you would sing in church services. Going to hear “Messiah,” singing during the “Messiah” sing-along, or singing “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing,” or “Joy to the World,” and so on. If you look, you’ll see the carols are really talking about great truths. It doesn’t say, “Joy to the world, because it’s good for your mental and physical health.” It says:
Joy to the world, the Savior reigns!
He rules the world with truth and grace,
and makes the nations prove
the glories of his righteousness.
The point is, the things Mary sings about are the things you’re going to be singing about for the next four weeks. Regardless of whether you’re a Christian or whether you’re not or whether you don’t know (which is the only three kinds of people there are in the world, I guess: people who know they are, the people who know they’re not, and the people who don’t know what they are), you will not find yourself just changed to the depths like Mary, transported and revolutionized by these truths, unless you know what you’re singing about.
If you know what you’re singing about, anything is possible for you. That’s the message of the Magnificat. Let me show you what she sings about and how she sings and what she’s thinking when she sings so you can do the same thing and you can know these same great benefits and privileges and blessings.
She sings about three things in here. She understands the message of Christmas, and so she’s singing about it. She sings about God’s nature, his purposes, and then about his adequacy. I’m not sure those are memorable points, but I’m going to try to make them that way so you remember them.
1. His nature
This is the first thing she gets to. We usually think of Christmas, we talk about Christmas, “humanistically.” That means we say, “The meaning of Christmas, the beautiful thing about Christmas, is people stop mistreating each other. At Christmastime, the rich and the poor come together and the various races come together and we start to really treat each other humanely. That’s the meaning of Christmas.” No, that’s the result of Christmas. That’s not the same thing.
If you sing like that, you will only get a warm feeling. Usually, you’ll only be humane for a couple of weeks. What happens to Mary … The permanent revolution happens because she sees the ultimate meaning of Christmas is the manifestation of the being and character of God. She glories in his attributes. What does she say right away? “… for the Mighty One has done great things … holy is his name. His mercy extends to those …” What is she doing? She’s glorying in the attributes of God.
The first thing she does is she says, “The meaning of Christmas is it shows me who God is. That’s the ultimate meaning. If I see who God is, if I’m changed by the manifestation of who God is, then I’ll be a humane person. If instead of looking first to God, I look to my relationships, I will find all I’ll be able to do is just whomp up enough warmth for a couple of weeks and then it will be gone.” She looks at it and, if you see, she sings about three attributes. Christmas tells us, certainly, these three things about God.
Look at these attributes. First of all, she says, “Christmas tells me he is mighty. The mighty One has done a great thing.” She has been told she’s going to give birth to the Son of God. What does she immediately realize that is a manifestation of? His might, his omnipotence. In the very beginning, earlier on in the chapter, Gabriel comes and says, “The Holy Spirit will overshadow you and you will conceive, and the child that is born will be the Son of God.” What does Mary say? “How can this be?” That’s a euphemism. What she’s really saying is, “Impossible!”
That’s what she’s saying, because Gabriel comes back and after he does a little bit of an explanation you see down in verse 34 (if you have a Bible) … Up earlier on in the chapter it says, “ ‘How will this be?’ Mary said. ‘I am a virgin. What are you talking about?’ ” What does Gabriel come back and say down in verse 37? “Nothing’s impossible with God. Mary,” Gabriel says, “Like all Jewish women you intellectually believe in the omnipotence of God but practically you don’t.”
Of course, that’s true of us. That’s the reason why you have to sing with feeling at Christmas. Christmas is an ultimate manifestation of the Almighty, the omnipotence of God. Is there anybody here who says, “I can’t believe the baby born in a manger was truly the preexisting second person of the Trinity, the “beginningless” Creator? I can’t believe that.” Not too long ago, there was a major, major book reviewed in the New York Times book review section. I won’t mention what it is … I don’t want to slander anybody.
The author says, “I was a Christian for years before I finally realized there’s no way a first-century Jewish carpenter could believe or be the uncreated Creator.” He says, “I was a Christian until I realized that was impossible.” Mary thought that, too. He thinks he’s being very modern. He’s not very modern; he’s not at all very modern. Mary thought so, too. Gabriel said, “Your problem is simply this. Do you believe in God?” Now we say if you don’t believe in God, of course, Christmas is nothing. “Do you believe in God? If you believe in God, doesn’t it seem logical that God would have the power to do this?”
If there is a God, he would be almighty, because if there is a God, he has created all things. Therefore, he must be greater than all things. If you today say, “I have a lot of trouble,” just like that guy who wrote that book that was reviewed so well and so positively in the New York Times book review said, “I just can’t believe a human being was God.” What you really mean is, “I believe in a God, but it’s a limited God. I don’t believe in an almighty God. I don’t believe in an all-powerful God. I don’t believe that he’s mighty, because if he’s mighty, there’s no problem with this. If he’s mighty, this is a wonderful and glorious manifestation of this.”
A lot of us are in that boat. Even if you say, “Oh, yes. I do believe in not only God, but I do believe intellectually in the Christmas story, that God became incarnate as a human being.” Yet you’re scared to death to tell the truth this week because you know what’s going to happen to you if you do. You’re sitting here shaking in your boots, maybe repented about having done something cowardly this last week, something you should have done because the Ten Commandments required it, yet you didn’t do it.
Do you know what your problem is beneath the problem? The problem beneath the problem is you intellectually believe he’s mighty, but you don’t really believe he’s mighty. “How can this be? I don’t really believe that the One who said, ‘Be honest. Be pure. Be forgiving,’ is backing that up with his all might. If I believe that then I would step out and say, ‘I might get hurt in the short run by doing the right thing, but in the long run the mighty One is on my side. If God is for me, who can be against me?’ ” She sees his might in the Christmas story. Do you see Christmas as an expression of his might or do you see the Christmas stories as a nice set of sentimental stories that we can’t take literally any more? No wonder you’re not changed when you sing!
Secondly she sees he’s holy. Having heard about God becoming a human being, she says, “I now know he’s holy.” What’s that mean? The word holy means he’s opposed to sin; he will never get used to it. He’s a consuming fire. One of the problems with living in New York is you do get used to it. You’re used to hearing racial slurs. You’re used to seeing people sell themselves on the streets. You’re used to self-aggrandizement at work. You’re used to corruption. You’re used to people trying to cheat you. You get used to it. God will never get used to it.
His name is holy. That means his nature is acidic towards sin and evil. Mary seemed to understand though. Of course, she wasn’t told by Gabriel about the cross, she doesn’t know about the cross, and yet she knows the reason he’s coming is to deal with our guilt and sin. She doesn’t know how, but she says, “I know the reason you have come is because you’re holy.” Do you know how to do that, then? Can you sing, knowing the reason he’s coming is because of your flaws? As you sing, what you have to do is say, “Oh, Lord. Oh, Lord. To what lengths you went to save me! You are the God to whom the universe is a speck, and yet you became a speck.”
When it’s said, “The Holy Spirit will overshadow you and you will conceive and that holy thing you conceive will be the Son of God,” That means that God, the great God, didn’t just become a baby. At first it means he, at one point, was a single cell, the weakest form of life in the universe. The God to whom the universe was a speck became a speck. Why? You have to realize, “Because of my sin. Because of my guilt. He had to do something about it. Because of my flaws.”
Do you sing like that saying, “To what lengths you have come to help me deal with this sin, to deal with my guilt, to deal with my flaws?” Do you see Christmas as an expression of the holiness of God or do you see it as a set of nice stories that we can’t take literally anymore? No wonder you’re not changed when you sing!
Lastly, here’s the great thing. She does not simply see God as being holy and God as being powerful and mighty. She sees a third attribute, and if all three attributes aren’t there together, we’re lost. She says, first of all, “The mighty One.” Then secondly she says, “The Holy One.” Thirdly, she says, “The merciful One.” You need all three of those, and in Christmas they all come together and brightly shine forth.
Imagine a savvy organization that does a leveraged buyout and buys a company. The company is losing money; it’s awash in red ink. What does the company do? The company looks and sees this new company it’s bought is just full of incompetent management from top to bottom. So what do you do? Fire them all, blot them out, put in new people. Is that illegal? No, they have the right. Is that impractical? No, they have the power. It’s smart.
Now God comes to us. Because he’s powerful, he has the right to blot us out. Why? Look at the world. It’s morally incompetent from top to bottom. He has the power, so it’s not impractical. He has the holiness. He has the right. Thank goodness he also has the mercy. If he was just powerful and holy, he would do what any good company would do who’s just bought out another company that’s incompetent.
Every head rolls; fire them all. They have the right. They have the power. It’s a smart thing to do, but God is also merciful. He will restore us. He will redeem us. He will cut the head off of our sin instead of cut the head off of our bodies. That’s the reason why she sees what the hymn writer said:
For his mercies shall endure
Ever faithful, ever sure.
Do you see Christmas as an expression and a revelation of the being of God? None of these attributes left out makes sense of Christmas. It’s all of them together. God is powerful; that’s the reason why the baby born in the manger was God. God is holy; that’s the reason why the baby born in the manger was God. God is merciful; he looks down and he sees our misery and he sees our suffering and our loneliness and our alienation, and he wants to do something about it.
Because he’s holy, he must do something. Because he’s merciful, he wants to do something. Because he’s powerful, he can do something, and he does it. Do you sing thinking about the attributes? Do you glory in his attributes? Do you start by saying, “I see who God is now in a way I never could have seen otherwise?” If you don’t, you won’t be changed like she is.
2. His purposes
Down here, after she’s gone through his attributes and talks about his mighty deeds and so forth, she says, “He has performed mighty deeds with his arm; he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts. He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. […] He has helped his servant Israel, remembering to be merciful to Abraham and his descendants forever, even as he said …” Here’s what we learn.
She starts to sing about the fact that he has fulfilled his historical purposes. First of all, notice she’s talking about something that happens in history. One of the great things and one of the most irritating things about Christianity is it’s not a private religion. Even though she says, “He has done great things for me, of course,” almost all of the hymn is about what he has done in history, what he’s done out in the world. This is one of the most interesting things about our modern society.
You can go into any bookstore and there are whole sections of books that have been packaged and are being advertised as Christmas gifts, and they’re alternative religions, they’re metaphysical systems, they’re self-help philosophies. They’re all based on radically different understandings of reality than Christmas. For Christmas buy a gift, and the gift is another religion. That makes a lot of sense. If you pick up any of those religions and you look at them, you will see they are totally and radically private.
They all say, “Here, revealed through our thinking or our research or whatever, are principles of successful living.” That’s what they all say. “If you apply them, you will start to understand yourself better and you will see prosperity and success in your life or you will touch ultimate reality.” Christianity is an inveterately and inescapably and irritably public religion. Mary does not sing, she does not magnify God, for what he is doing inside her. She magnifies God because he has changed the nature of things, he has changed the order of the universe, he has changed the nature of the world because of things he’s done in history outside of her.
Put it this way. What she is saying is God has brought a myth into “factness.” The myth has become fact. Deep heaven has punched a hole with an omnipotent fist in the ceiling of history and now it’s down on our heads. God, by sending his Son, Jesus Christ, has radically changed every human being’s relationship with him.
Now every person in the whole world is called to a moment of crisis, whether you believe it or not. You can receive him and you can have the welcome of the Father, or else you lose all hope. That’s the message of Christianity. It’s always been a historical religion; that’s the reason everybody hates it. All the other philosophies are deeply subjective, deeply private. Christianity does not proclaim, “Now what consenting adults do in the privacy of their own lives can change their lives forever and turn them into successful people.”
No. What Christianity, what the gospel of Christmas proclaims is God has done something outside of you in history that’s completely changed the relationship of every human being to God, and a moment of crisis is upon you. You must choose this day who you will serve. Boy, we hate that. Boy, the modern culture hates that terribly and yet that’s what she sings about.
She’s singing about mighty deeds. She’s singing about bringing down rulers. She’s not singing about what happened inside her. She’s saying, “What happened inside me is great because of what’s happened out there.” The most interesting thing is that she says, “And this all happened even as he promised.” Even as. She says, “Even as he promised to Abraham. Even as he promised to our fathers.” Do you remember earlier in the fall we talked about God’s promise to Abraham?
God went to Abraham and said, “Abraham, come out of your tent. Look up at the stars; try to count them. So shall thy seed be. So shall thy descendants be. Out of your seed, out of your descendants, will come One and by him all the nations of the earth will be blessed.” That’s the promise to Abraham 2,000 years before Mary sang this song. Not only had the people of God been waiting 2,000 years for God to come forward with the fulfillment of this promise, but it had been 400 years since Malachi wrote, 400 years since there had even been a prophet, 400 years since there had even been a new prophecy or a new promise or a new word from God.
Surely every rational person would say, “God must have forgotten us. None of these things will ever come true.” Yet here’s what the message of Christmas is. God never forgets, but he cannot be fitted into our time frames and our calendars and our Daytimers. He cannot even be fitted into our concepts of time. He will never forget, but he’s a God outside of time. It may take a long time by our reckoning. “… even as …” He will always do what he said. He said he would intervene in history, he said he would put down all rebellion, he said he would send his Son, he said he would come back. Whatever he said he will do, that’s God’s method.
That is another message of Christmas. Unless you sing the carols knowing that this is his method and that this is one of the messages of Christmas, your life won’t be changed. The message of Christmas is that you never know when God will come. It was the worst possible time. Not only had it been 2,000 years since he made the promise to Abraham, it had been 400 years since there had even seemed to be a prophet. The Jewish people to whom all these promises had come about the Messiah and so on, they were oppressed at this point. They didn’t even have their own sovereignty. They were under Roman rule.
Everything was going wrong. Everything seemed to contradict all the promises. Yet Mary realizes that Christmas is about the purposes of God, the unchanging, historical purposes of God. The message of Christmas is not just that God will make you happy if you turn to him and do these things but that God has changed the world. The message of Christmas is God changed the world even as he said he would, even as he promised. You have to remember that God is outside of time. He’s in the eternal now.
God relates to time the way you would relate to a river if you stood at the top of a great mountain and you looked down to see the river. You might see boats on the river, and everybody in the river only sees their little part of the river, but you see them all at once. God’s relationship to every moment in time is the same. He sees them all at once, he relates to them all at once, he has an immediate relationship to every one of them. As a result, we cannot understand how he does things.
It is foolish, Christmas teaches us, to ever try to work him into our timeframes. You will never know when he comes because he’s outside of time, but he will come because he’s a God that changes not. Don’t you see that’s the message of Christmas? You never know when he’ll come. I come to church and sometimes I come in and I say, “Boy, I have a great sermon,” and it’s just okay; I dry up. Other times I come in, I’m dry as a bone, and down comes God. You know it and I know it. Why? What does that teach us? God will always come, but you never know when.
You work with somebody. They don’t ever seem to change. You pray over them, you think about them, you talk to them, and they never seem to change. Then over here you say something to somebody, and God comes down into their lives and everything changes. You say, “What is going on here?” You never know when God will come, but he will come. That’s God; that’s how he is. Do you see Christmas as an expression of the unchanging historical purposes of God to intervene in history? He will do what he says.
He says, “The good work I’ve begun in you I will bring to completion on the day of Christ.” If you’re a Christian, every flaw, every grudge, every sadness, every fear, every bitterness, every bad habit in your life will come down. It will fall before his triumphant grace. It will fall flat. He will have triumph over every one of them. He said so.
For his mercies shall endure
Ever faithful, ever sure.
But in his time. Do you see Christmas means he will always come, but in his time? He will do what he has promised. He will come and knock down flat the opposition to himself in history, but in his time. Or do you see Christmas as just a series of nice sentimental stories that we can’t take literally anymore? No wonder you’re not changed as you sing!
3. His adequacy
Mary says of God, “He fills the hungry, but he sends the rich away empty.” She has anticipated the Beatitudes. What do the Beatitudes say? “Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are those who know they’re hungry. Blessed are those who admit they’re spiritually bankrupt.” Blessed are the poor in spirit means blessed are those who know they cannot meet their spiritual obligations, they cannot pay their spiritual debts, they are inadequate in themselves and only God can give them salvation, only God can give them pardon, and only God can give them power.
If you go into all these great bookstores to buy your anti-Christmas gifts for Christmas, if you go in and get one of these self-help religion books, do you know what they’ll say? They’ll say, “Do you know what you’re problem is? You don’t believe in yourself. You don’t see that you have what it takes. You don’t see that you have the power within you.” Sports hypnotists come in to help athletes see that they have what it takes. You have to believe in it. Businesses hire consultants to come in (they call them inspirational speakers) to tell the staff, “You have what it takes!”
The Bible says God will not work with people who believe that. Mary says the message of Christmas is not just that the gospel differs from human expectations; it turns human expectations on their heads. That’s why Mary predicts here, which is something that’s happened throughout history, that the more educated you are, the more wealthy you tend to be, the more powerful, certainly, you tend to be, the more you’re sure you have what it takes, the less likely you are to receive any of these things from God.
That’s the reason why revivals have always happened amongst the poor. That’s the reason of this great irony. In many cases the powerful and the elite reject the gospel. I was reading a letter from a former president of Harvard a hundred years ago. The former president of Harvard had a wife, and the president of Harvard and the wife were not believers. She wrote one of her Episcopalian friends and she said, “My dear, every Sunday, do you get down on your knees with your children and confess that you’re miserable sinners? Neither my children nor I will ever do such a thing.”
The richer you are (I don’t mean by money, really), but the more you think you have it, you will be turned away empty. That’s the reason why the hoi polloi will go in in droves. That’s the reason why the poor will be lifted up, and the hungry. Unfortunately, most of the people in this room, I think, are the kind of people who are in the greatest of dangers here. You’re educated people, in many cases, fairly successful people. You think you have what it takes. The Bible says you must become poor and you must become hungry.
You have to identify with the poor. The poor are not afraid to say, “I’m a sinner. I have needs. I need the blood atonement of God. God came just because I’m a sinner.” The poor are not too proud to say that, but we are. The poor are not too proud to believe in the supernatural, but we’re afraid it’s beneath us. That’s the reason why Christians, when they finally come to their senses whether rich or poor, tend to come together. That’s the reason why Christians have traditionally worked with the poor and helped the poor and even lived amongst the poor and brought them up.
Why? Because to become a Christian, you have to start to think somewhat like a poor person. You have to say, “I’m not such great shakes. I don’t have what it takes.” “He fills the hungry and the rich he sends away empty.” God is completely adequate, and only those who know they’re inadequate will ever receive. If you turn to him, he will give you everything you need.
For his mercies shall endure
Ever faithful, ever sure.
Do you, when you sing, sing about his adequacy? Do you, when you sing, sing about his unchanging historical purposes? Do you, when you sing, think about his attributes and glory and his holiness and his majesty? Do you center everything around him as you sing? Or do you think Christmas is really a lot of nice stories that you can’t take seriously anymore? No wonder you’re not changed as you sing! If you take this stuff seriously, “My soul, my spirit doth magnify, doth rejoice. For he has done great things for me and he will do great things for you.” Let’s pray.
Father, as we conclude our service, help us to immediately begin to sing to you in such a way that, as Mary, we rejoice in what we sing. We understand what we’re singing. We’re seeing what we’re singing. Help us to see and understand these things. There are people here, Lord, who see that in their pride, I guess in a sense, in their sense of adequacy, they don’t want to admit they’re sinners. They don’t want to admit the Son of God really did come. They don’t want to admit he came because of their sin. They feel like that’s all beneath them. Help them have the mindset of the poor so they will not be turned away empty.
Father, there are many of us here, believers, people who believe in you, and yet we do not rejoice, we do not have the power. We’re impatient. We’re wondering why you’re not coming through. We’re forgetting you always come through, but not in our time. We’re not rejoicing in your attributes, and we’re not making ourselves poor.