[00:00:07] Welcome to that makes total sense, a podcast dedicated to exploring God's generosity and justice. I'm Alexis Busetti, a Christian aiming to ask good questions and encouraging you to do the same.
[00:00:20] Every one of us is wired by God to live out generosity and justice, but the how sometimes Elusa that makes total sense is a way for us to get together, posture ourselves as learners, and challenge one another to practice generosity and justice in a tangible way every day.
[00:00:41] Merry Christmas, everybody.
[00:00:44] Just a few thoughts today on Mary's magnificat as we celebrate the Christmas season.
[00:00:55] This is a scripture that probably many of us read when we were growing up or read around the Christmas tree, and it's certainly a special one, and I want to start actually just by reading it aloud, and then I'll get into just a few thoughts that I had as I meditated and studied this scripture. So this is from Luke one, verses 39 through 56.
[00:01:23] In those days, Mary set out and went with haste to a judean town in the hill country, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the child leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry, blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.
[00:01:47] And why has this happened to me that the mother of my lord comes to me?
[00:01:53] For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.
[00:02:07] And Mary said, my soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowly state of his servant. Surely from now on all generations will call me blessed, for the mighty one has done great things for me. And holy is his name. Indeed, his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with his arm. He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty. He has come to the aid of his child Israel in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham, and to his descendants forever.
[00:02:59] And Mary remained with her about three months and then returned to her home.
[00:03:08] Mary is magnificott.
[00:03:11] This is the song Mary shared with Elizabeth when they were celebrating their pregnancies together, and they were carrying each of them prophets. Elizabeth was a little further along in her term with John the Baptist than Mary was at the time with Jesus.
[00:03:28] But they were each carrying prophets. And sometimes, though, we miss that each of these women were prophets in their own rights.
[00:03:37] In this scriptural scene, we get our first glimpse of Mary as a parent and as a prophet. And Mary was an example to us. I think of how we can live and move and have our being in Christ as we work to usher in his kingdom.
[00:03:55] Mary was attentive.
[00:03:58] She spoke what was true, and she committed herself to the work of her son's kingdom.
[00:04:05] I want us to imagine the scene that I just read. And right before this visit where Mary comes to see Elizabeth, Luke tells us about Elizabeth's family's experience, that she was a relative of Mary and her husband. Zechariah was serving his priestly term in the temple when he was visited by an angel. It's the same one who later visits Mary, and he tells them similar news.
[00:04:31] Gabriel, the angel, tells Zechariah that his prayers have been answered and that his wife is going to become pregnant and give birth to a son who will have an extraordinary role in the kingdom of God.
[00:04:45] When Zechariah hears this news, he is literally dumbfounded, meaning he's unable to speak after this encounter because he absolutely just can't believe what he's just heard.
[00:05:00] So he goes home when his term at the temple is up, and sure enough, his wife of all of these years gets pregnant.
[00:05:08] Elizabeth socially separates herself for the first half of her pregnancy, taking those months to privately praise God.
[00:05:17] She's praising him not only because of this new life she's fostering in her womb, but also because God has now taken away the communal shame that she's endured as a barren woman her whole life.
[00:05:32] Right around the time that Elizabeth was starting to come out of her concealment, Mary receives a visit from the same angel who spoke to Zechariah earlier, and she gets similar news, but about herself.
[00:05:46] Mary is going to have a baby, but her situation is really different from that of Elizabeth and Zechariah.
[00:05:55] Mary isn't seasoned in her marriage, having spent years trying to conceive, she's not married at all.
[00:06:02] And she's realizing as she receives this news that it could destroy her relationship with her fiance before they're even able to make the formal commitment of marriage.
[00:06:13] She questions Gabriel because she understands this biology of how this whole childbearing thing works, and she accepts his news as being from the same God she's devoted her life to.
[00:06:29] And that's where we find ourselves. In this text that I just read, Mary needs some company.
[00:06:35] And after this angelic visit, she hurries to Elizabeth's house to receive it.
[00:06:42] Mary. In this scene, Mary the parent to be and the prophetess was attentive. She spoke what was true and she committed herself to kingdom work.
[00:06:56] Now, I mentioned that Elizabeth and Mary are both carrying prophets, but that they're also prophets themselves.
[00:07:02] We see in the scriptures all kinds of prophets, and they have some specific roles.
[00:07:08] Now, we might often think about prophets as kind of, quote, being prophetic, as in telling the future. But that's only part of what a prophet might do sometimes to simplify it for myself. And I admit this is very simplified and not all encompassing. But I think about it this way, that one part of a prophet's job is to say, what is that? A prophet says, what is? A prophet declares what is true.
[00:07:40] Sometimes that can mean a prediction or a foretelling of something that's to come. But often it can mean a true telling of what's already happening.
[00:07:50] So we think about Nathan in the story of David and Bathsheba. Nathan the prophet tells David what is actually true in his situation.
[00:08:01] You see, before his encounter with Nathan, David saw his circumstances and his actions one way.
[00:08:09] And then Nathan's prophetic interaction with him brings David clarity, and he's able to see what actually is true in that scenario.
[00:08:21] This interaction, this conversation with the prophet, leads David to repentance.
[00:08:28] Jonah doesn't want to prophesy to Nineveh, but when he finally ends up going, he tells them what is true, that if they repent, they'll be saved. But if they don't repent, they'll see destruction.
[00:08:45] Ezekiel and Jeremiah use their whole bodies to prophesy to the people of Israel, admittedly doing some things that we see as kind of strange. And their peers saw as kind of strange, their audience saw as kind of strange. But they also verbalized what was true regarding their situations in exile.
[00:09:05] John the Baptist, who's about to be born to Elizabeth and Zechariah in this text, will spend his life also doing some things we might consider unusual.
[00:09:15] He's going to wear camel skins and eat bugs in the desert.
[00:09:19] But he will also spend his life verbally preparing people to hear the most important message from the most important prophet, Jesus, who will come spreading the good news that the kingdom of God was near when Mary and Elizabeth came together. In this text, Elizabeth calls Mary blessed or happy, and she says the same of the baby that Mary's carrying, Jesus.
[00:09:47] Elizabeth recognized that the presence of that baby, even in utero, has had an effect on her and her own baby that this parent to be, Elizabeth, can feel the movement increase in her belly when Mary shows up. And Elizabeth declares, blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.
[00:10:13] And then I asked this question of the text, what did Mary believe?
[00:10:18] And I think we hear her elaborate on just that in the magnificent that Mary believed the word from Gabriel about the baby that she was carrying. But she also believed that the Lord would fulfill what he had promised, not just to her, but to her people, Israel, and ultimately to the world.
[00:10:41] Mary prophesies with her song, her body, her pregnant body itself is a prophecy.
[00:10:50] She's carrying the Messiah.
[00:10:53] She says what is true from the Lord, and her song frames out what working toward the kingdom of God will entail.
[00:11:03] Mary, the prophetess and the parent, is an example to us in that respect. She was attentive. She spoke what was true, and she committed herself to kingdom work.
[00:11:14] She's aware that God has called her to participate in his work on earth and that it's not just for her, but for every generation, including us, to respond to his call. I want to read her song again and hope that we can meditate on these powerful words.
[00:11:37] Mary's song, my soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowly state of his servant.
[00:11:48] Surely from now on, all generations will call me blessed, for the mighty one has done great things for me. And holy is his name.
[00:11:56] Indeed, his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.
[00:12:01] He has shown strength with his arm. He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty. He has come to the aid of his child Israel in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham, and to his descendants forever.
[00:12:29] Now, this is a wild thing for a young, poor galilean woman to declare in first century Roman occupied Israel.
[00:12:41] What Mary just described is certainly not what she saw, but it was God's truth, and she spoke it anyway.
[00:12:53] I am quite sure she did not see the proud regularly being scattered or the powerful being brought low.
[00:13:01] She unfortunately did not see the hungry being filled and the rich being turned away empty. This was not the world she lived in.
[00:13:11] It's not the world we live in.
[00:13:14] But Mary believed the Lord even though it's not likely what she saw with her own eyes, she had probably spent her life hearing stories about her ancestors and God's rescue of them. She may have imagined what the crossing of the Red Sea must have looked like when the powerful were brought down and the lowly and enslaved were brought up and out of bondage.
[00:13:41] She has felt the strength of God's arm in his bringing back of her exiled people to their home.
[00:13:49] But she was also living in a reality that didn't look like any of those miraculous stories.
[00:13:55] Even so, prophets like Mary and people like us can work to envision the kingdom of God, remembering what God is like, believing him for ourselves, and declaring the truth to the people around us.
[00:14:11] We too can speak what is in the kingdom of God.
[00:14:17] We can speak the truth.
[00:14:21] Mary believed that God would come to his people's aid, just like he had done over and over again by this time in their history.
[00:14:30] She believed the promise God made to Abraham and her ancestors and to his descendants, which through Jesus, would include you and me, by the way.
[00:14:40] She believed that there would be a fulfillment of what had been spoken to her. I believe both by Gabriel and through the scriptures that God is faithful in fulfilling his promises.
[00:14:53] And this is also part of what a prophet does.
[00:14:56] She reminds people that God is faithful.
[00:15:01] Jesus, another prophet, is God's faithfulness incarnate.
[00:15:08] He frequently spoke in his ministry of the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He reminded the people of Moses and the deliverance he led.
[00:15:17] Mary, the new parent and prophetess, lives her life in accordance with this speech.
[00:15:25] With her song, she reminds people of God's faithfulness. She was attentive. She spoke what was true, and she committed herself to kingdom work.
[00:15:38] Now, sometimes we hear Mary portrayed as a naive teenager, blindly accepting whatever the heavenly messenger told her would happen in her life because maybe she felt like she didn't have a choice.
[00:15:51] But I don't really think this portrayal is accurate.
[00:15:55] If we view Mary as a prophet, and I think that she is, then this picture of her just blindly accepting this is amiss.
[00:16:06] One thing we know from the prophets that I mentioned earlier is that they had agency.
[00:16:12] They had agency in how they interacted with God and with people and with the messages they were carrying.
[00:16:19] Nathan presumably didn't have to speak up at all to the king.
[00:16:24] Jonah, if we remember, initially got on a ship going the opposite direction of his assigned destination.
[00:16:32] Moses and Abraham both bargained with God.
[00:16:36] None of them just accepted their fates as it was without any interaction. And I don't believe Mary did either.
[00:16:46] I believe she moved forward with God because she trusted God and believed in God's faithfulness to her people over the centuries, and she led out of this trust.
[00:16:59] I don't think these were just words for Mary.
[00:17:03] I think this security in God's faithfulness is how she chose to live her life.
[00:17:09] And I think she probably lived this way both before she heard from Gabriel during her parenting of Jesus, and after a different angel told her that the Christ child she had known and raised and loved had been resurrected after she watched him die.
[00:17:34] Admittedly, the gospels don't share a lot about Mary's role inside the early community of believers, but arguably that has less to do with what was actually true of her and more to do with the fact that back then, like now, in some instances, Mary or women were seen as less than when it came to godly work. But church tradition tells us that Mary's influence extended even past the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, that she was likely one of the most prominent figures present at Pentecost, and that she was dedicated to continuing the kingdom work. Her son came announcing Mary dedicated her whole life before, during, and after her physical incarnate relationship with the Messiah.
[00:18:26] She dedicated her whole life to God's kingdom work.
[00:18:31] She was a prophet, a faithful disciple, a leader in the New Testament, Jesus following community.
[00:18:39] And it wasn't because she didn't have these roles, because she was particularly powerful.
[00:18:45] She had just preached and prophesied that God topples people who present themselves as powerful.
[00:18:52] Mary modeled her life on what Jesus showed a faithful follower to be humble, taken up with the weak and marginalized, compassionate, attentive, composed in the face of turbulent situations.
[00:19:09] We know Mary as all of these things and apparent and a prophetess.
[00:19:17] Before she even physically knew Jesus in the flesh, she was already imitating the kind of person he would grow to be because she had already seen and set her heart on God's faithfulness through the years.
[00:19:31] We too can imitate Jesus. I'm sorry. We too can imitate Mary as she imitated her son Jesus.
[00:19:40] Mary was attentive.
[00:19:42] She said what was true, and she committed herself to kingdom work.
[00:19:49] And this Christmas, I want to challenge and encourage us to do the same.
[00:19:56] In the name of Jesus. Amen.
[00:20:01] The links for all the resources mentioned in today's episode can be found in the show notes, music and podcast production by Seth Busetti. Be sure to give us a review on iTunes and subscribe at your favorite podcast listening app. You can also visit
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