Mary's Song

A teenage girl from a tiny village opens her mouth, and out comes a song so bold that people are still singing it two thousand years later.

Mary has just arrived at the home of her relative Elizabeth, in the hill country of Judah. Elizabeth has greeted her with a loud cry of blessing. Her own baby leaped for joy at the sound of Mary's voice. Now it is Mary's turn to answer. Remember who Mary is. She is not rich. She is not famous. She is engaged to a carpenter in Nazareth, a village most people had never heard of. And she is carrying the child the angel said would be called the Son of the Most High. So what does she say? She sings.

“My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.” Mary begins with her own heart. God has looked at her, a lowly servant, and chosen her. From now on, she says, every generation will call me blessed. Not because of anything she has done, but because the Mighty One has done great things for her. Holy is his name. And his mercy, she sings, is for everyone who fears him, from one generation to the next.

Then the song grows bigger, and braver. Mary sings about the way God turns the world upside down. He has shown strength with his arm. He has scattered the proud in the plans of their hearts. He has pulled the mighty down from their thrones, and he has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. Think about who was listening to songs like this. Ordinary people in a land ruled by Rome and by King Herod. Mary sings as if God's victory has already happened, because she is sure that it will.

At the end, Mary looks back a very long way. God has helped his servant Israel, she sings. He has remembered his mercy, just as he promised to our fathers, to Abraham and his children for ever. The baby she carries is not a new idea. He is God keeping a promise made centuries before. Luke then tells us simply that Mary stayed with Elizabeth about three months. Two women, waiting together, sharing meals and prayers and wonder. Then Mary went home to Nazareth.

Mary's song sounds a lot like an older one. In the first book of Samuel, a woman named Hannah, who had longed for a child, prays a song of thanks when her son Samuel is born. Hannah sings that the Lord brings low and lifts up, raises the poor from the dust, and that those who were full now hire themselves out for bread while the hungry are hungry no more. Mary knew her scriptures. Her song stands in Hannah's line. Christians later named Mary's song the Magnificat, from its first word in Latin.

Mary's song is in Luke chapter one, verses forty-six to fifty-six. A young woman with no power at all, singing about a God who lifts the lowly. So here is a question to carry with you. If you wrote your own song about what God has done, what would the first line be?