Micah 5:2–5a
Luke 1:46b–55
Hebrews 10:5–10
Luke 1:39–45 [46–55]
Year C
I.N.I.
Power to the poets!
Hail to the songwriters!
Thanks be to God for Mary, peasant girl from Nazareth, thrilled with news that the hymn we will soon sing calls Unexpected and Mysterious, eager to run to her now preggers cousin to connect their common experience of expecting.
In this story and the entire story told by the gospel writer Luke, the Holy Spirit is all over the place. The Holy Spirit, the unnamed angel said to Zechariah, would fill John up. The Holy Spirit, the angel Gabriel said, will hover over Mary. And in today’s story of Visitation Elizabeth gets zapped by the Holy Spirit and gushes with praise for Mary, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.” Elizabeth sings her praise.
It’s a day for poets and songwriters, for sure.
Here’s a poem, simply called “Mary”
In the time of waiting
In the time of hoping
one of the bright and swift messengers of God
went to a village called Nazareth
greeted and startled
a young woman named Mary
with a message of a
new dawning.
Swift over crag
Scrambling over valley floor
Bright with expectation
Mary, Miriam,
went to a village in the hill country
greeted and startled
her kinswoman named Elizabeth,
whose child within her danced with knowing.
And thus assured
And thus filled
Mary sang
“My soul magnifies the LORD.”
Mary sang
“My spirit rejoices.”
Thus Mary sang forth
the sun
for the time of
dawning.
--Susan Palo Cherwien (From Crossings: Meditations for Worship: St. Louis, MO, Morningstar Music Publishers © 2003, p. 96)
It’s the song that does it. It is the song, basso profundo, ground bass, root chant for Evening Prayer from ancient times, that in winsome and feckle fashion promotes a revolution.
Walter Wangerin, storyteller extraordinaire, relates the encounter between Mary and Elizabeth as if Mary herself is speaking
How did she know? How could she know?
Oh, Yeshi: her tummy as big as a melon, Elizabeth waddled over and took my hands and bent and kissed me, causing me to tingle.
“As soon as you spoke,” she said, “my baby jumped. He jumped for joy that you are here, the mother of our Lord!”
And that too! She knew who you were to be!
Her giggles, the wrinkles all over her face: they were like timbrels, and I couldn’t help it. I began to clap. I shuffled my feet. I danced! And I—me, Yeshi, your foolish mama: I started to sing.
“My soul proclaims you great!” I sang to our God. Elizabeth, that old lady! She danced as well.
Well, and my words weren’t mine at all. They fell like rain.
--(from Jesus: A Novel: Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, © 2005, p. 45)
It’s Mary song that speaks of God’s great reversal. Bringing down the mighty. Raising up the lowly. Filling the hungry with good things. Sending the rich away empty.
Mary, young peasant, finds the words on her lips that bring her in company with prophets like Micah, speaking of promise fulfilled, hopes satisfied, oppression brought to a halt.
Centuries before, Mary the singer joins with her namesake Miriam as with tambourine and dance emerging from the dreadful years of captivity from the Egyptians, through the sea, onward home toward Canaan.
She is joined by the prophet Micah in speaking of the power of the unexpected, the little town of Bethlehem featuring big in God’s great project of restoring a scattered community.
Centuries later, Mary is joined by poet and singers, African Americans in their Spirituals voicing against slavery while dreaming of the crossing over to Jordan, South Africans singing Freedom Songs against Apartheid in four-part harmony Freedom is coming, Germans from East and West breaking into folk songs while the Berlin Wall came crashing down.
Today we sing Mary’s song that continues to magnify the Lord, enlarging God’s activity in delivering us from sin’s crushing grip.
We know that the other baby that kicks in Mary will be named Jesus, meaning the one who saves.
We look for Christ’s coming to break cycles of poverty and inside bring economic justice.
We pray that God will bring to an end to systems that leave bellies empty and instead redistribute food from those that sit on surpluses to those stuck in drought.
We plead that God will stir up the power of the crucified and risen Christ, who showed his strength in weakness, and brought in a new age filled with the Spirit all over the place.
We rejoice with peasant poet Mary that God looks with favor on us still, as we wait and watch, as we fill ourselves with God’s abundant love and mercy breaking through in our feast of new life in bread and wine.
We might just dance up and down the aisle.
We might just break a smile and giggle at the power of God in little old us on a Sunday morning.
We might just praise God, magnify the Lord, and seek lost and lonely souls to rejoice in God coming to earth as a baby and a Savior, Jesus Christ, and with Mary, poets, and songwriters sing of a revolution:
Come, Holy Spirit…
Come, Holy Spirit…
Maranatha!
Come, Lord Come.
I.N.I.
The Rev. Timothy J. Keyl, Pastor
Christ the King Lutheran Church
| CtK Home
| Back to Pastor's Page
|