Mary - a heroine and freedom singer

Sermon about Luke 1:46-55

There is hope in song. Sometimes, really, the only hope left. Or at least the only way to express all of our feelings when what we feel in our heart isn’t what we see in the world around us.

I promised you all that you would hear about our travels and vacation soon. Here is the first little tidbit.

When we stayed in Montgomery, I took the kids to Birmingham for a day. To visit 16th street Baptist Church and to honor the young girls killed there in the name of White supremacy.

As always in places telling the stories of killed, lynched, and tortured black bodies, most of the other visitors on our tour were black. In this case black teenagers and families with kids between 2 and 7 years old. There was also one other white mom with her teenage son. And us. 

While listening to the events of that dreadful Sunday in 1963, some of the teenagers and black moms started weeping. They saw the images of 4 beautiful girls and looked at their children and knew that this could have been their kids at a different place and a different time. And worst of all, that this could still happen to their kids today. That black kids are still much more vulnerable to be killed than white kids. 

I sat there, crying silently, feeling their pain and mine. We walked into the sanctuary. We looked at the beautiful stain-glass windows. Hearing the story about how the congregation had to vote 3 times before they could accept the gift of a Welsh artist creating the first Black Christ in the South in their new window. The congregation was too afraid to be bombed again. For a window depicting Christ. We saw Jesus opening the door to anyone asking to be let in in another window. He is all restored now. After the bombing, half of Jesus’ face had been blown away and there was a hole where his heart would have been. Members said: “Jesus hid his face over the death of the girls and it broke his heart.”

There was an atmosphere of hopelessness in the room. A feeling that this white fight for power will never vanish or give up. Some of us asked questions, trying to rationalize or at least understand what the building was revealing to us. The immense pain of our people caused by our people. The pain of our brothers and sisters in Christ caused by other brothers and sisters in Christ.

And then, one of the Black moms asked our guide if he could play the organ for us. Just a little bit. He walked up and started playing “We shall overcome”. And we all just sang, muffled through our masks. But we sang. To me, that was the moment when I was reminded of the power of song, the power of faith, and the power of God and God’s people again. Suddenly, we were a weeping room filled with hope against all odds. There was connection and energy to continue the fight for equity and justice for all. We were not just hoping for a happily ever after, we were hoping because we have seen it come true in God’s work through God’s people before. Through our ancestors, marching throughout times. And we were one in hoping for it to come true in our kids. Trusting in a God who has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
53 who has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty. […]
55 According to the promise he made to our ancestors,
to Abraham and to his descendants forever.”

Yes, we shall overcome. 

“We shall overcome” is in many ways a modern version of the Magnificat, the song that Mary sang thousands of years ago. Both are songs of unceasing hope against all odds. Of praise for what has to happen to keep humans alive on earth as something that has already come true in God’s saving grace. Now, it’s on us to make it visible on earth.

Note, how Mary sings in the past tense! She claims that God has done great things for her. That God already has shown strength with God’s arm, scattering the proud. That God has already brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly, filling the hungry with good things, sending the rich away empty. It has already happened. The change has been made. By God.

What a revolutionary victory song. From the mouth of a teenage soon-to-be mom who has nothing better to do than to challenge everything about her situation. While most people would consider her a failure, impregnated by a stranger, fleeing across the country to her cousin, Mary has the relentless and unbroken, fearless attitude of a sassy teenager, a young lady who doesn’t accept the narrative people around her hold to be true. Mary celebrates what in the eyes of the world is her greatest sin. Her pregnancy out of wedlock. Mary doesn’t hide her growing belly shamefully. She has the entire world see it. And she claims to be the luckiest of all women, chosen by God, pregnant with God, keeping God safe, feeding God, carrying God. 

And like Millions of people before her without a voice to be heard by anybody in power and like millions of people after her, Mary sings. And she uses coded language. Words that other oppressed Jews of her time would easily recognize and understand. Words that have little to do with the meek and mild Mary painted in churches all over the world.

This song is the song of a heroine, a warrior, a fighter, the God-bearer.

In order to see that revolutionary Mary, we have to move beyond the popular image and look at what in the words of the Magnificat Luke reveals about Mary. It’s the song Mary sings when she meets Elizabeth. 

The text of the song is a revolutionary text full of historical meaning that would have been clear to its first-century listeners. But the radical nature of this song has been lost as successive generations have set it to music and prettied it up as best they can. Not so in the first century. Luke does not intend her to be “mother Mary meek and mild.” The references, with which the author and his audience would be familiar, are to heroines of Israel, to revolution, and to war.

The song of the Magnificat is written in the style of two other songs from the Scriptures that would have been so familiar to Luke’s audiences. 

Elizabeth addresses Mary as “Blessed…among women.” This was not a normal greeting. 

There are only two other texts in the Scriptures where this phrase is used. In the Book of Judges, Deborah, who was herself a prophetess and a judge of Israel sings, “Blessed among women be Jael”.  And Deborah’s song goes on to tell us who Jael was and what she did. She won a war by killing the commander in chief Sisera.

Sisera was the commander of the Canaanite army. As the Israelites seemed to be winning Sisera fled to the camp of his ally Heber the Kenite—who was married to Jael. Jael invites Sesera into her tent, offers him hospitality, and after a meal of milk and curds he falls asleep. While Sesera the enemy of the Israelites lies sleeping, Jael bashes a tent peg through his skull. And for this Jael is heralded as a great heroine of the people as Deborah sings her praises calling her blessed among women. Definitely not a meek and merry and mild woman.

The second woman in the Scriptures who is hailed as blessed is Judith. Judith is also a heroine of Israel.  Her story takes place as the Assyrians are laying siege to the town of Bethulia, where the Israelites have almost run out of water. Judith leaves the city, allows herself to be captured by the Assyrians and taken to their leader Holofernes. Judith pretends to be fleeing from the Hebrews and offers to betray them to Holofernes. Holofernes welcomes Judith and offers her hospitality.

Judith then seduces Holofernes. After taking him to bed, while he is sleeping, Judith chops off his head with his own sword. She tucks his severed head in her food bag, escapes, and returns to the Israelites. When she returns to her town, one of the elders greets her with the words, “O daughter, you are blessed by the Most High God above all other women on earth.” Later at a party giving to celebrate her victory, Judith sings a song to God in which God’s support for the oppressed is proclaimed, just as Mary proclaims that the rich and mighty will be brought down.

Note how in both stories women didn’t only use their smarts and boldness but also their bodies and beauty to seduce the men they are about to kill. Women’s bodies don’t just fall victim to men in the bible. They can also be turned into weapons. Sometimes even by God.

Luke makes other references in his narrative, which would have been equally clear to his first-century audiences. Starting with that angel who appears to Mary. Today the angel Gabriel is usually portrayed as a white effeminate male in a flowing white gown. But this depiction is not one that would have been recognized as Gabriel in the first century. Back then Gabriel was understood to be the angel of war. The mere mention of Gabriel would have conjured up images of a fierce warrior clothed in amour, ready to do battle on the side of the Israelites.

The name that the warrior angel insists on for Mary’s child is Jesus. Jesus is the Greek form of the Hebrew, Joshua. Joshua succeeded Moses, conquered Canaan, and established the twelve tribes of Israel in the Promised Land. Joshua was a hero and a warrior. Luke makes a deliberate link suggesting to his readers that Jesus will follow in the same mold.

First-century audiences would have been very familiar with the parallels being drawn. Mary is being clearly established as a revolutionary heroine, in a nationalistic and violent tradition.  And the Magnificat is a song of revolution which proclaims the downfall of the prevailing order.  The Magnificat is a rallying cry to overturn the established order of wealth; a tune intended to rouse the troops or at least the people in great numbers.

The church has told the story of Mary in its own particular way for centuries, holding up the image of unattainable femininity to women and men. An image that offers an example of the perfect woman as both virgin and mother, pretty beyond measures and hard-working, to be protected and strong. It’s an ideal many of us women know just too well.

That image may have suited the purposes of an institution and a society that had a vested interest in having women behave in a certain way. Yet the time has come to tell Mary’s story differently. For in a world where over half the population is oppressed by attitudes that kill, maim, terrorize, oppress and enslave in poverty, isn’t it time we heard the story of a God who can do great things against all the odds. Isn’t it time to hear the story of God told in ways that liberate, and empower those who have been most afflicted? Isn’t it time to hear Mary’s story told in ways that proclaim God’s plan for justice in a world obsessed with violence?

We can re-inscribe the image of Mary as the passive handmaiden of the Lord or we can tell the story of Mary who with steely grit, courage and support struggles to raise her son not as a mamzer, a fatherless kid, but as a child of God.  What to the world might look like a teenage mom raising a kid out of wedlock, hard enough today, often a death sentence back then, that is actually a strong woman raising the son of God. There are no fatherless kids whatsoever and there have never been. According to God in Christ Jesus. There is no shame in having a child, ever. 

The truth is: Mary had the courage to say yes, to trust God.  Mary had the courage to let something grow inside her.  She had the courage to harbor a Child of God in her body.  Do we have the courage to harbor Christ in our bodies?  When the power of God overshadows you will you have the courage to trust God? Will you have the courage to be a bearer of God to the world? 

That’s the terrifying challenge that this story offers.  To be at God’s disposal, to become filled with God’s life–for the sake of the world.  But be warned, God-bearing is more than a little inconvenient:  it can be heart-breaking and even lethal.  Bearing God to the world means letting some of God’s passion for the world become flesh and that can be costly.      

Anyone resisting powers and evil knows that cost to bearing truth. 16th street Baptist church in Birmingham embodies that truth. It’s in its stones and bones, in its voices and prayers, in its glass-stained windows and bathrooms. The entire place is a witness to the costs of bearing God to the world. When churches aren’t safe places anymore, when white Christians lay bombs in Black churches, the foundation of our faith and our world is shaken. When the cry for justice is met with dogs and teargas, water canons, and jailing over 800 kids for marching and singing for their freedom to be, the foundation of our faith and our world is shaken. 

And no, the congregation at 16th street Baptist church didn’t just get out of this stronger and more united than ever. Many families left, traumatized, they couldn’t bear the presence of this room and its memories. Many chose never to speak about it, too painful were the memories. What was left was the hope against all odds that God was not just working towards justice. But that justice already is a reality with God and therefor will prevail.  A Magnificat singing through the stones. That Gal 4,7 holds true where Paul writes: “So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God.” That we shall overcome one day. With Mary and all the Saints leading us…
55 according to the promise God made to our ancestors,
to Abraham and to his descendants forever.

Amen.