Lifting up the lowly
Luke 1.46-55
Mary, Mother of our Lord.
Mary’s response to God’s call is remarkable. It is assumed that she was little more than a teenager when Gabriel delivered the message that she was to give birth to God’s son. Although she is engaged, she protests that she is a virgin – and so we remember her as St Mary the Virgin. Young, inexperienced, and yet she doesn’t reject God’s call, responding in words that echo those of the prophet Isaiah, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord, let it be with me according to your word.”
Mary, of course, was not the first young person to respond enthusiastically to a call from God – and nor was she the last. You might cynically think that people are more likely to respond like this when they are young. Maybe your own story includes a teenage conversion, something as all-encompassing and irrational as falling in love. I certainly remember the enthusiasms of my own teenage years, sometimes a little wistfully. I also remember being inspired by two other women - Mary Jones, from a Welsh-speaking farming family near Bala, who was passionate about reading the Bible in her own language; and Gladys Aylward, the small woman who was committed to bringing good news and social justice to women and children in China.
“Here am I, the servant of the Lord…” I was still a teenager when I articulated my sense that God was calling me to full-time Christian ministry, but as the stories of these three women tell us, we each have our own different contexts for work in God’s name. Mary certainly didn’t appreciate what pain she would endure in the coming years, when she made her positive response to God’s gift of a child. As a mother, she isn’t unusual in that; children bring many challenges with them. But as the mother of the Son of God, she faced maybe the greatest challenge of all.
Part of what makes Mary’s response so remarkable is the language she uses in the poetic response that Luke gives us in his gospel. We know this song as the Magnificat, from the Latin translation of its opening line. We shouldn’t wonder at the poetic ability of this girl – other young people have shown such talent – although we might want to ask questions about how her words came to be written down. Elizabeth, her cousin, is apparently a witness to this prophetic outpouring, as the two women are caught up in the wonder of what God has asked of them – each of them giving birth to an extraordinary child. Perhaps Luke gave Mary these words, and Zechariah, Elizabeth’s husband, his words of praise, because Luke was interested in how the coming of Jesus builds a bridge between the testimony of the Old Testament and the wider world into which this gospel, this good news, appears to have broken in.
Mary, if we assume that these are her words, certainly understands this breaking in. Many parents will remember the shock and awe of discovering a pregnancy, as well as the morning sickness. Parents with faith may well rejoice as Mary rejoices, and feel particularly thankful to God. When we were expecting our first child, Jo, my wife, read a wonderful book “Praying for your unborn child”, which helped us to track Ben’s development in the womb and pray accordingly. Gradually you come to realise that life will never be the same again. But for Mary there is the recognition that she has been asked to take on such responsibility that “generations” will remember her and call her “blessed”. How remarkable, indeed, that a young woman in first century Palestine should give her name to a church in Overton, along with thousands of others throughout the world.
But Mary understands that God, who is almighty, meets her in her “lowliness” – which may speak of her humility, her gentleness of spirit, despite great strength of character (we assume), or may point to her relative poverty. And this is hugely important – for Mary, for the salvation story which has Jesus at its centre, and for each one of us. Despite Gabriel speaking of Jesus being “great”, having “the throne of his ancestor David”, “and of his kingdom there will be no end”, Mary (or Luke, because he knows the end of the story) intuits that God is going to show his power now in a different way. This is not inconsistent – even the mention of David reminds us that God has a habit of choosing and using the smallest of us – but in Jesus, God’s concern to come alongside the poorest and the weakest will become truly embodied.
And so the Magnificat contains that wonderful couplet that seems to summarise the message of the whole; “He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly” or, if you prefer it, in the next verse, “he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.”
These are prophetic words because they tell us about God’s heart, about his preference for the way the world should be. This isn’t the way that life always is, and human beings continue to seek power and to wield it; in politics, in business, in the family and in the church. But in our generation, there has come a sickening recognition that the abuse of power has been rife in all these places – and our news media and our television dramas are full of examples, real and imagined, of abuse. The way of the world is to crush the lowly. Perhaps the uncovering of abuse in all its forms is helping us to lift up those who have been disregarded. In lockdown, we have perhaps come to realise the significance of the work of carers, those in our society who get closest to those who are most vulnerable. I know that after a month of living and working with people with learning disabilities, I had great admiration for the people who do this 24/7, 52 weeks of the year. Such care is a great responsibility but also a great privilege. As Bishop Gregory said in a pastoral letter in May, “After Covid, we shall resume life in community, and I believe that we are called by God not to forget the lessons for our society that we have learned in the crisis – that the poor and the vulnerable are those who should be first in our thoughts in our society, and that those who care for and heal are amongst the most important vocations and professions.”
The call of Mary by God is a sign of God’s desire to involve the poorest and the weakest in the work of his kingdom on earth. Mary’s words express the vision that no-one should feel themselves too lowly for God to notice them; and that, therefore, no-one should be too low for us to notice them either. Mary believes that “His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.” ‘Fear’ here is used in the sense of respect, or give attention to, not ‘be afraid of’. Remember when Gabriel comes to Mary he says, “Do not be afraid…” and Jesus later says to his disciples, after the resurrection, “Peace be with you.” Our relationship with God is not based on fear, in the way we often use that word, but is, like that teenager falling in love, about putting God at the centre of our lives. Saying “yes” to God will involve making changes and sacrifices – but perhaps the greatest change is accepting that God’s way is not our way, God’s priorities are not our priorities, and putting God first in our lives will also mean attending to the people that we might most naturally pull away from.
How can you live out Mary’s vision, as expressed in the Magnificat, this week? Which lowly people can you give more attention to, or how can you, as someone who thinks of themself as unworthy, serve God in the way he would want you to? Can you thank God for all that he has done for you, put him at the centre of your plans for the week, and know his strength is with you? Will you repent of the ways in which you have misused your power, in the home or in the workplace, and repent of your pride? Or will you stretch out your arms to allow God to lift you up, and be filled with the good things that God intends you to have?
Wherever you find yourself in Mary’s song, may its words be with you, challenge and refresh you, in the coming week and beyond.