Luke 1:39-45
The Rev. James R. Gorman
December 24, 2000 (4th Sunday of Advent)
A Boston comedian, raised as a Catholic, noted that when Catholics did the liturgy they sound like announcers at the horse races. He said, "Listen to the way we do the Hail Mary:""HAY-yel Mary full of grace de Lord is wit dee
blessed art dow amongst women 'n blessed is de fruit of die womb Jesus."There is a kind of sing-song quality to this passage of Luke's Gospel, and that may be because it has always been a song. In fact, it may have been a song even before Elizabeth used it in reference to Mary.
There are four songs, which we call "canticles", in the Christmas story as told by Luke (five if you count Elizabeth's Ave Maria). There is the song sung by Elizabeth's husband, the priest Zechariah, which is also called the Benedictus, from the Latin for "Blessed be [the God of Israel]" (Luke 1:67-79). There is the Canticle of Mary which is also called the Magnificat, from the Latin for "my soul magnifies the Lord." There is the song of the old man Simeon (the Nunc Dimitus) who, after seeing the baby, sang, "Lord, let now thy servant depart in peace" (2:28- 32). Finally, there is the song of the angels called the Gloria in excelsis Deo, which we sing as a refrain in "Angels We Have Heard On High." (2:13-14).
These four canticles have an interesting history. They were probably songs even before they were first uttered by Mary, Zechariah, the angels and Simeon. And unlike the songs or chanted psalms in the Temple, these songs may have come from Israel's underground. Sung first by the "poor ones" or "Anawim," these songs may have given hope to those who were physically poor [See Raymond Brown, The Birth of the Messiah p. 350 and following for a complex discussion of all this]. So, phrases such as "he will fill the hungry with good things and the rich he will send away empty" are phrases meant to give hope to a hopeless people, widowed by political realities and orphaned by history. What is unusual is that these songs are now treasured as part of our Christmas story.
Mary, Zechariah, and the old man Simeon may have known these songs, and when they were confronted with the extraordinary news of this strange birth, they sang these old songs as a way of placing a context around the birth of this child.
Elizabeth, who feels her son John the Baptist leap with joy in her own womb, says that this must be a sign that Mary is in a state of blessedness because she is bearing "my Lord." She responds with the Ave Maria.
Mary in turn responds with the marvelous words that she is not blessed because of anything she has done, but only that her soul magnifies the Lord and her spirit rejoices in God her savior. These two songs or canticles are among the most popular in all of Christian liturgy. They have been set to music again and again, and each time we hear them, it is as if we are hearing them for the very first time.
The meeting between Elizabeth and Mary is a touching one. Elizabeth is too old to bear a child and Mary, at perhaps 13, too young. Both pregnancies are impossible; both are understood in the light of God's complex and mysterious plan. These are both songs of an innocent trust in a plan that is larger than either of them.
Some years ago, a singer by the name of Madonna had a popular song entitled Like a Virgin, the lyrics of which are touching in an odd sort of way. The words, "Like a virgin, touched for the very first time," are sung by a woman who has been touched way too often and by way too many. It seems to be a song about innocence sung by a woman of experience. It is a song that seems to yearn for a time in which she could be like her namesake, the Madonna, and be "like a virgin, touched for the very first time."
This is surely a part of the attraction of this story that we tell this time of year. We have always been experienced in the ways of the world. We have always known too much, said too much, done too much. We know too much at too early an age, and thus, we are moved by a story in which a girl who is too young to know very much about sophisticated things simply takes the angel's word for it and says to herself, "Let it be." (Thus another song, by the Beatles, Let It Be: "When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom, let it be.")
There is something compelling about the simple trust that is evidenced in this encounter between Elizabeth and Mary. The world of true faith and trust is a naive world, in a certain way a pre-modern world--an innocent world, and only innocent people get to enter it. Or at least people who, tired of their sophistication, are willing for a moment at least, to become as innocent and trusting as a child so that they can inherit the mysteries of the Kingdom of God.
We are not, many of us, innocent, but we are, most of us, moved by innocence. Most of us yearn for innocence. When the virgin hears this preposterous story (preposterous to those of us who know too much) she simply says, "Let it be." "Let it be unto me according to thy word," she says. A word uttered in innocent trust. "My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my savior." Don't try to explain it, don't try to argue with it, don't try to deny it; simply, for the time being at least, let it be. Mary is a virgin, not just in the gynecological sense of that word, but in the innocent trust she places in what she believes is the very word of God. "Hail, Mary, blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus."
Thus we pause in the midst of a less than innocent world and try, as best we can, to believe that there was then and perhaps could be now, an innocence of a pure and unadulterated sort. We pause in the midst of the madness of a too sophisticated and knowledgeable world, to listen to the utterance of innocence. "Let it be."
Our yearning for the innocence of Mary's faith is not because we are anti-intellectual; nor is it because we would prefer a state of naive stupidity. It is because we are weary of some of the things human intellect has generated for modern life. Besides the wonderful conveniences, the microwave oven, the television, computers, penicillin, electricity, the telephone, the toilet that flushes automatically and the George Foreman grill, besides all that there are also other things that are less than wonderful. Oil spills, drug trafficking, releases of poisonous gases, wars and rumors of wars. So we yearn for Mary's virginal and somewhat unreasonable trust in words from on high.
National Public Radio is urbane and literate. That's why I listen to it. I think of myself as urbane and literate. Well-read. Conversant in all the modern questions, even if I don't have any of the answers.
Lately National Public Radio has been flirting with telling stories that are less than urbane. They have to do with the simple beauty of faith. A trusting piety that turns for a moment away from the worldliness of our urbane existence and turns toward an ancient proclamation that affirms more than our eyes and ears can see and hear.
Some years ago NPR ran this marvelous program about what is called in the liturgical tradition the O Antiphons. If you will turn with me to selection 120 in the Chalice Hymnal you will see what they were talking about. The O Antiphons came from a Gregorian Chant cycle that was used in the last 7 days of Advent. Starting last Monday night, monks in the Gregorian chanting tradition have been singing these, only in reverse of the cycle that is represented here [Chalice Hymnal lists "O Emmanuel" first].
Each Antiphon has a name for God in it: King of the Nations, Morning Star, Key of David, Root of Jesse, Adonai (which is Hebrew for "Lord"), Wisdom and finally, Emmanuel. These seven names for God are sung in Gregorian Chant these final nights in preparation for Christmas, concluding tonight with O Come O Come Emmanuel.
In the NPR story, they concluded the segment with the Washington Men's Camarada singing O Come O Come Emmanuel and they did an interesting thing. In the refrain "Rejoice, rejoice...", instead of holding the note out for three beats as you can see in hymn number 119, they cut the "rejoices" off at one beat. I found that irritating at first. Any disruption of the pattern of my favorite Advent hymn is irritating. Until I noticed that the men were singing in a cavernous cathedral--I'm guessing the Washington National Cathedral--and the echo in the cathedral carries their rejoicing out for the rest of the beats. It was marvelous indeed.
In the song of Mary, whose spirit rejoices in God her savior who has regarded the low estate of his servant, the rejoicing done by this innocent one was a brief and historically insignificant note struck 20 centuries ago, but it has echoed through all these centuries and now comes to us as something new. An innocence that we shall ever treasure. For we live in a world which is too addicted to the resolutions of our arguments by war; we live in a world in which our children know too much about sex; we live in a world in which the religious experience is replaced by the drug experience; we live in a world that is too self-made and not enough divinely made.
And for this brief moment, at least, we join the monks of old in singing O Come, O Come Emmanuel ...that we might rejoice, and our rejoicing be allowed to echo in all times and places.