The Scope of God's Promised Peace

Luke 1:46-55

The Fourth Sunday in Advent: Peace

         A week or so ago, my ten year old daughter Rebecca -- who I’m delighted to declare is developing well as a pianist and likes to sing -- informed me that she’d like to write a song.   Then she confessed her concern about not knowing what to write about.     I replied by telling her – and not for the first time -- about the first song I ever wrote.   

         I was ten.   The instrument was my first guitar, which I’d received for Christmas.   The song was called “Life In a Fishbowl.”     I remember it had a basic D-G-A7 chord progression and steady downward strum pattern.  The opening lyrics were as follows – “Life in a fishbowl, swimming around, in my aqua town.”   My words took a more dramatic, adventurous turn next, as I penned lines about “little plastic men trying to capture me again.”

          Obviously, the thing that inspired me to write my first song was a simple fishbowl.   It was a little liquid estate.    It had colorful rocks, some plastic seaweed, a fake rock arch, and at least one little plastic scuba diver who – despite my lyrics -- really didn’t pose a threat to the fish.    It was home to the oh-so-originally named Goldy and Rusty, both of whom I’d won at an elementary school fair game table.  

            As I explained to Rebecca, the inspiration was right in front of me … just part of my home life.  I don’t recall there being any serious moment of contemplating that fishbowl, of suddenly feeling overwhelmingly inspired to write and sing about it.   Yet it’s clear to me now that this song wasn’t just about identifying myself with a particular object and wet pets.   Having been raised on Hank Williams songs like “Lonesome Whippoorwill,” I was schooled from the start on expressing emotions with figurative language.    So I believe even at that early age I had envisioned the fishbowl as a metaphor for my life.   Looking at it from the outside in, it magnified more than the rocks on the bottom … it magnified tough truth about my home life.    

            I could relate to those fish, confined as they were to a space where there wasn’t much real freedom and where the waters were filthy most all of the time.    I could relate to feeling unsafe, as though everyday was a cycle of being captured, released, captured again.   I could relate to feeling as though I lived in a transparent glass house.  In metaphor, I believe I was singing on some level about growing up in the pollution of the alcoholism that flowed through my home life.           

            To me, then, this was an early song about feeling marginalized … about not feeling like my life was ever going to be lived in the mainstream; a song about struggle, about not feeling any deep security and peace.    

            Someday, I’ll explain all this more to Rebecca.   That dad was singing about fish and little plastic men is rather enough for her to ponder and chuckle about for now.   But perhaps eventually it will help her know where to start and to recognize how even seemingly simple things might have greater broader symbolic meaning.     My hope for today in sharing this personal anecdote is that it will alert us to recognize the same with our Bible passage for this fourth, and final, Sunday in Advent.

            Luke 1:46-55 is often called “Mary’s Song.”    As we read it, and as we hear it read, it is at first listen a simple, sweet song of gratitude and praise.     She boldly sings of her spirit rejoicing in the Lord, of feeling and being regarded as blessed.     This is perfectly understandable considering what had happened to her just prior to her heart-song.   She’d been visited by the angel Gabriel and told she had been chosen to conceive, by the power of the Holy Spirit, the very Son of God.    She then visited her relative Elizabeth, whose own rather miraculous pregnancy confirmed this holy calling.    Mary’s response to all this was to believe with all her heart, mind and soul that nothing is impossible for God and so she joyfully accepted her appointment as an instrument of divine mercy.    And so she sang her song of praise to the Mighty One who had done great things for her and for her ancestors in the faith.

            But this is not just a simple song of awe, gratitude and praise to God.  It’s not just a fishbowl glimpse into one life and one moment in time. 

            This passage is also and perhaps more widely known as The Magnificat.    This is the Latin word meaning to magnify and directly points to Luke 1, verse 46.   What is being magnified in Mary’s words flows much deeper … it floods straight over into God’s past, present and future merciful action in this world.    It streams into God’s great promises of peace and reconciliation for all people, and more specifically, as one Bible scholar has written, “for those who lurk on the fringes of the world’s hierarchy of value.”

            Mary was most certainly a lurker.    We should never overlook that this is a song sung by a teenage, unwed mom-to-be, who, if not for her fiancée’s intercession, most likely in her day would have been stoned to death.     Her song magnifies her harsh marginalization and thus also gives voice to every child of God who experiences devaluing by worldly measures.    To further quote the same Bible scholar I just mentioned, Mary’s message about the Mighty One doing great things can be applied to “anyone who has been marginalized by society, by culture, even by the church … it may be a message that offers newness in the midst of racial or economic discrimination … it may mean a message of newness from a wheelchair or a nursing home … or in the midst of grief and loss or barrenness of body or soul.”

            The newness being magnified is the broad-scoped reversal of fortunes from the merciful heart of God.  It magnifies the faithful fact that God’s good and holy standards will always trump the worldly standards that create injustices of every stripe.   It is the grand, eternal reversal of sin centered in the advent, birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus, Mary’s child, God’s Son, our Emmanuel, the Christ.  

             The amazing scope of this reversal is promptly pointed to by Luke in his use of the Greek word megas ((pronounced megas).   The root of this word, which is the biblical basis of magnificat, refers to measurement of space and its dimensions.  It is meant to get us thinking about God’s great mass and weight, God’s spacious breadth, God’s long measure and height, and God’s eternal stature.    It doesn’t magnify God’s mercy by zooming in, but by zooming out!   So Mary sings of her soul glorifying the vast greatness of God in her life and in the life of the whole world – a greatness that holds in highest regard every lowly, hungry servant and steadfastly honors the merciful promises made to Hebrew forbearers.   

            Quite a lot of deep meaning for such a small and sacred ditty, don’t you think?  
Really hammers home the point that Mary’s pregnancy and her joyful, grateful willingness to be an instrument of God’s merciful peace symbolizes much more than just what was happening in one poor but deeply blessed girls life.  We thank God for Luke’s recording of this song!

            How are you hearing it?   Like so many songs that have intimate yet timeless meaning for our lives, and for the world, what does it mean to you?   How are you being, and how have you been, marginalized in your life?    What mercy comes to you at the margins?

            My ten year old boy written song about marginalization was blessed with God’s amazing grace and reversal of fortune.   The swamp of all kinds of family abuses was cleansed; replaced in my life by a steady stream of prayerful reflection and spiritual direction.  He has led me beside still waters.    Every song, poem, sermon, newsletter article and just everything I write I try to magnify the scope of God’s promised peace for all.    And, as Mary knew well, the beautiful thing about faithful witness is that it gets shared through the ages, generation to generation, to the glory of our truly great God.   Amen.