JOY

Luke 1:46-55

There’s a line by cartoonist Jerry Van Amerongen which captures, for me, the emotions of Mary in our passage today.

“I feel like a tiny bird with a big song!”

Luke 1:46-55 is a big song. It is often referred to as the Magnificat from its first line in Latin, Magnificat anima mea Dominum, ‘My soul magnifies the Lord’. It is a big song that sings of the mercy of God reaching into the lives of ordinary people, of the mercy of God stretching across generations, of the mercy of God of dismantling the inequities of our world.

For this if you like, is a song about ‘Upsy Down Town’, about a God who turns our understanding of the world and the way it works on its head.

In Upsy Down Town, the sky is in the sea.
The rabbits in the nest where the birds should be.
The rain is falling up, instead of falling down.
Down in Upsy Down Town.

A song about upsy-down joy.

The start of this upsy-down joy is Mary’s wonder that God has chosen her to be the mother of Jesus: “… the Son of the Most High, [the one whom God will give] the throne of his ancestor David….[the one who] will reign over the house of Jacob forever and of his kingdom there will be no end.”

God chooses a young, poor, insignificant girl to be at the heart of the world’s salvation.

What kind of a selection process is this? What kind of crazy, mixed up, upside-down thinking would give this most important role – perhaps the most important role in human history – to a nobody – to a girl?

But two thousand years later we’ve read this passage often enough, seen enough of God at work, absorbed enough theology to be used to the idea that God’s choice of who will bear Christ is not based on how powerful or successful or ‘together’ we are – or are we…?

- When God chooses us to bear the Christ do we sometimes say, “Oh, no God, I’m not clever enough. I’m not articulate or outgoing. Oh, no God, my life’s a mess. You know my life. You know it’s a mess.” Whatever word we use is irrelevant. God only says to us, “I love you. I choose you because I love you.”

- Or we try to be good enough…to be worthy of God’s choice. We busy ourselves with religious activities – with doing good things – hoping God will like us. We agonise over whether we’re doing enough for God or whether what we’re doing is God’s will; whether we should be doing something else! But God only says. “I love you. I choose you because I love you.

Mary discovering that God loved her, that God looked with favour on her lowliness, sings with God, a divine duet;

My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour.

….Surely from now on all generations will call me blessed:

for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name.

Can we join the song – can we sing with joy that God has chosen us, his lowly servants?

For the sound is swelling as Mary sings on of how the way God acts – the crazy, mixed up, upside down way God acts - has spread this upsy-down joy throughout history.

For the Mighty One does not act like the mighty ones of our earth – the rulers and prime ministers and presidents and heads of global corporations whose mode of operation has been held up to the light by Wikileaks - but God’s might is holy – God’s mercy is merciful – and God’s might is faithful from generation to generation.

Wonderful being part of a church with so much history…

We can celebrate that we are part of a community that has joined the song. We are a choir singing with joy that God has chosen us, that God shows mercy to us from generation to generation.

But how do we respond when, as song continues to swell, the harmonies grow more complex? When we hear notes that sound strange or disturbing to us?

For Mary’s big song isn’t just ‘singing to the choir’, but a song of protest putting front and centre issues of global justice that we in the West prefer to downplay: that great wealth is created on the backs of the poor – that rich nations need poor nations to get rich – and that we elect governments usually to maintain this status quo. Despite the romance of new babies the birth stories in the gospels are speaking of social and political and economic upheaval.

But Mary’s song dares to sing, like the words of the old American hymn, “above earth’s lamentation.” In it we catch “the sweet, tho' far-off hymn that hails a new creation.

Mary’s is a song of upsy-down joy: where the proud are overcome, where the powerful are brought down from their positions of control, where the rich – who express no need for God – are sent away empty-handed. A song of upsy-down joy where the humble and lowly are lifted up; where those who hunger – for all the basic necessities and for God – who are filled with good things.

William Barclay writes, “There is loveliness in the Magnificat, but in that loveliness there is dynamite.”

Example from As It Is In Heaven…

We are being invited to join the mighty chorus of those who sing God’s song of joy; a song of God’s love and choice of each one of us, a song of God’s mercy from generation to generation; and a song about justice recreating our world.