Joy to the World: Mary's Song.

The Magnifcat (Luke 1:46-55); It’s sung across the globe around this time of year in thousands of churches. It’s called the Magnificat because that’s the first word in the Latin version. My soul magnifies the Lord – we’re talking magnifying in the telescope sense rather than microscope. We’re not taking something small and making it bigger, we’re looking at something huge and getting a detailed glimpse of a fraction of it.

It’s exciting. My Soul Glorifies the Lord and my Spirit rejoices in God my saviour!

We’ve lost the music and the tune she sang it to but you can almost hear the passion and excitement and wonder and amazement in Mary’s voice as this incredible experience begins to sink in. It’s like when an athlete becomes world champion all the interviews afterwards are loaded with phrases like ‘I can’t believe what has happened, it hasn’t sunk in yet’. People trying to put into words the extreme emotion they’re bursting with. And that’s what Mary is doing... but why?

She’s maybe 13/14/15 years old. She’s just been told she’s pregnant. She’s signed up to nine months of scandal because Nazareth, where she’s grown up and where she lives and where she’s engaged to the local tradesman, is a small town where everyone knows everybody else’s business. And a pregnancy outside of marriage will not go untalked about – oh no! Conversations over garden fences, outside Sainsbury’s, on buses, in the street – they’ll all be about Mary. Poor little knocked-up Mary.

But still she sings.
And what she sings gives us a hint of the kind of girl she is.

Her song is loaded with lyrics that praise God, and she uses language inspired by the Old Testament psalms and songs. She is clearly a girl that knows both her Bible and her God.

One of my favourite verses in the whole bible is in Psalm 25 and it says ‘The Lord confides in those who fear him’. God confides in those who love him, who respect him, who honour him. God shares his secrets and his plans and his ideas with those who are his friends. God gets close to those who are on his side and whispers ‘hey, this is what I’m going to do.’ God instigates his silent revolution by confiding in a young girl who loved him – I’m sending the Messiah now and, Mary, I’m entrusting him to you.

When Mary hears from the Angel Gabriel, the message is loaded with Messianic language – all the lingo that the Jews would instantly know referred to the chosen one.

He will be great, The Son of the most High
The Throne of his father, David – that’s messiah
Ruling over the house of Jacob forever – that’s messiah
His kingdom will never end, He will be called the son of God – it’s all about the messiah

Even his name – Jesus, which is Greek for Yeshua or Joshua, means The Lord Saves. It’s all Messiah talk. It’s all Liberator language. And it’s all in the message that Gabriel brings to Mary.

But what is astonishing is that God could’ve picked any girl to have Baby Jesus. Why was Mary so special? Well, look at the kind of God she sings about;
He has been mindful of the humble state of his servant girl.
His mercy extends to those who fear him.
He has scattered the proud and brought down rulers but has lifted up the humble
He has sent the rich away empty but has filled the hungry with good things
While pretty much everyone else was expecting the Messiah to be the all action hero that would chase the Romans out of town and establish Israel as the superpower of the age, Mary is worshipping a God that loves the poor and the humble. Mary’s messiah is merciful and mindful of the meek and lowly. God chose Mary to be the Mother of his son because she caught the vision of what the Chosen One was really going to be like. And who better to teach the child as he grows up than Mary?

See, Jesus was fully divine but he was also 100% human. Ok, he had a supernatural conception but from then on he was just like us - He had a natural birth, he was a normal baby. He had to learn everything just as we did. To think that he could sit up in the Manger and spout facts about sub-atomic physics is ludicrous. To think he could even sit up in the manger straight away full stop is just as ridiculous. He was a normal human baby. He knew nothing.

He had to learn everything and Mary was the perfect mother for him because she was a girl on God’s wavelength. God’s silent revolution – the coming of the Kingdom of God – was in good hands. She would teach him to be merciful. She would show him how to love the unlovable. She would watch him grow strong, full with wisdom and the grace of God. She would see him grow in wisdom and stature and in favour with God and men.

And because it’s Christmastime we usually stop at this part of the story – but remember, this baby boy grows up to love the poor like no other. He grows up to wholeheartedly include the social outcasts, the rejects, the people society had forgotten and ignored. He becomes the man that hangs out with tax-collectors, prostitutes, lepers – the ‘despised’ and ‘dirty’ and ‘inappropriate’ people to be seen with. He was the epitome of mercy, the epitome of humility. He was the perfect example of everything Mary sang about.



Now, when we get an opportunity to work with God, we can choose to freak out and panic at all the unknowns and everything that could possibly go wrong and all the “it’s not supposed to be like this!” moments OR we can choose, like Mary, to focus on the thing we are most certain of – that God is good, that he shows mercy to those who fear/love/honour/respect him, that he confides in those who fear him...
And that leads us to praise him, it fuels our worship, it stirs our hearts to get excited that God is installing his kingdom and we’re a part of it. God is changing peoples’ lives, he’s improving communities, he’s challenging the status quo, he’s holding leaders to account, he’s loving the poor, he’s showing mercy, he’s feeding the hungry, he’s bringing heaven to earth piece by piece and he’s choosing to use us to do it -- That’s why Mary was singing, That’s why Mary’s song is so significant; because it was God’s silent revolution starting with one teenage girl’s song and it's getting louder and louder and we can join in – Our Souls Glorify the Lord and our Spirits rejoice in God our saviour!.