Introduction: One thing that is certain about the Christmas season is that there is always a great deal of singing. Sometimes, we go Christmas caroling, at our Christmas Eve worship services the congregation participates by singing, we sing along to Christmas music that is played in stores as we shop, even the teller at the bank confessed to sometimes singing along with the Christmas music that plays in her employer’s lobby. What is it about singing? Well, even when it’s not Christmas, one of the important aspects to singing is that it allows us to express our feelings, particularly our feelings of praise. An event that moves us, whether it is a touchdown pass, or at “A” on our report card, or the birth of Jesus, is really incomplete until we express how we feel about it.

 

One of the dads of a cross country teammate of Thais’ confided in me a couple of years ago that after his son had broken a particular course record, father and son went home and danced and sang in celebration in their kitchen. Though they had shared a hug and a handshake just after the race was over, it wasn’t until that expression of joy took place in the kitchen that the boy’s accomplishment was really brought to completion.

 

Did you know that the opening of Luke’s gospel is filled with singing?  Though we may miss it because it does not come to us in sheet music form, as the birth of Jesus unfolds, almost everybody sings. Zechariah sings, Elizabeth sings, the angels sing, Simeon sings…but the most famous song is sung by an overwhelmed teenage girl named Mary. Mary hears astounding news. She is to be the mother of the Son of God. And so, when her relative Elizabeth confirms that she isn’t crazy, Mary breaks out in a song of praise, as if to complete the joy which she was feeling.

 

But did you listen well to what she sang? Mary does not mince her words. Her praise song is a song of revolution. In her song, Mary glorifies (or magnifies) the Lord, the text tells us. It means that she acknowledged his greatness and sought to bring attention to it, kind of like you would place lights and ornaments on a Christmas tree. And in bringing attention to the Lord, Mary was bringing attention to three revolutionary ideas. Her song celebrated that this invasion of God into his world in the person of his Son Jesus would bring about a moral, a social, and an economic revolution. It was a revolution that would come about not as soldiers charged, but as hearts are changed by God to live according to the counter-cultural principles of his kingdom.

 

Mary’s song is an invitation to us to join her in her praise, and to participate in this revolution that God is bringing about. E. Stanley Jones, a Methodist missionary of the last century who did a great deal of work in India among the lowest classes, calls Mary’s song “the most revolutionary document in all the world!” Or, as an older commentator has put it, “There is loveliness in [this song] but in that loveliness there is dynamite” (W. Barclay). So let’s consider this lovely, revolutionary song, and consider the dynamite it contains.

 

I. Moral Revolution – Confronting Human Pride

            A. The first component of the revolution is a moral one. Mary describes it this way: He [God] has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts (v. 51b). Now, when we think about this moral revolution, certainly we might be inclined to consider that Jesus came to confront the immorality that exists in the world. There is obviously a great deal of it, and Jesus calls us to leave it. But that’s only the beginning. Just as important is the fact that Jesus also came to confront all the morality that exists in the world. There is no clearer expositor of this point today than Tim Keller. He points out the two paradigms by which we can live. The first paradigm is the human, religious paradigm. It’s the paradigm by which most people who think there is a God live. It’s the paradigm that says, “If there is a god, you relate to him by being good. If I am good, he’ll accept me.” That, suggests Keller, is the basic principle of all religions. The second paradigm is revolutionary. It is the paradigm of the revolutionary good news of Jesus Christ. If religion says, “I obey, therefore I am accepted by God,” the gospel declares, “I am fully accepted by God, therefore I obey.” Do you hear the revolutionary difference?

 

            B. The problem with morality, with saying “I obey, therefore God accepts me,” is at least two-fold. First, we are led to believe that God owes us. We’ve given him something – our obedience – therefore he’s in our debt. Second, and to the point of Mary’s song, it leads to pride. “I am great!” we conclude, “I am saved because I have done enough good things to merit God’s blessing.” That’s why the older brother, in a parable Jesus taught, was so upset. He knew he had performed well, he knew he was a moral guy, but he was just as far from the Father as his younger, highly immoral brother. In his inmost thoughts, he was proud. The grace of the Father, that says you can only be rescued by God when you admit that you don’t deserve it, could not touch him. True love can only be received, not earned. Mary herself realized that. She was blessed, not because she had done anything great, simply because she was willing to receive what God had promised. Jesus came to confront human pride. It was nothing short of a moral revolution.

 

II. Social Revolution – Confronting Human Distinctions

            A. Mary next sings praise for God’s social revolution: He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble (v. 52). Our lives, and our world, are filled with distinctions that we create between peoples. We create labels and levels based upon ability, or skin color, or gender, or social status, the list goes on. Most of these labels or levels that we create are designed to make us feel better about ourselves in comparison to others. “They live there, but I live here!” “They have that kind of gadget, but I have this kind.” “He got into that college, but I got into this one.” That list and logic goes on forever as well. But the social revolution that Jesus came to put into effect declares that the good news of the arrival of God’s kingdom is good news for all people, not just for some. Further, because our savior loved and gave himself for the world, all of us are equal, and equally valuable, at the foot of the cross. That is one reason why dictatorships have always sought to suffocate the message of Christ. Mary’s song is considered treason where those governments seek to rule.

 

            B. As we look at the life of Jesus, he lived out this social revolution in many ways. He ate and hung out with sinners, categories of people, from tax collectors to prostitutes, who were considered by the religious elite to be people to avoid. He ministered to Gentiles, people most Jews were glad they had not been born as. And he freely cared for, taught, and received women in his presence, people who were considered to be second class citizens. Not only that, the opening verses of Luke 8 reveal that Jesus welcomed different kinds of women, from Mary Magdalene to Joanna. Mary Magdalene was thought by many to have been a woman of ill repute, while Joanna, we learn, was the wife of a man named Chuza, significant because he was the manager of Herod’s household (Lk. 8:3). Thus, what we see is that Jesus welcomes all, from the social outcast, to those who live in palaces of kings. All, from President to plumber, are precious in his sight. In revealing this, he confronts, and warns against, our tendency to create distinctions between us and others, distinctions through which we try to set ourselves apart, and above, one another. That is not a value in the kingdom of God.

 

 

 

III. Economic Revolution – Confronting Human Aspirations 

            A. The third piece of the revolution that Jesus brings, which Mary celebrates in song, is an economic revolution. She puts it this way: He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty (v. 53). This piece of the revolution confronts human aspirations, aspirations which are directed toward the accumulation of more, the aspirations of a society where each person is out to acquire as much as he or she can. We see such aspirations in the recent contract for a new Red Sox pitcher – five years at $82.5 million. That’s paying a guy roughly over a half million per game. If he has a good outing, and throws 100 pitches, that’s just over $5,000 per pitch. If he has a bad outing, he can actually make more per pitch! But most fans have agreed that this contract is a necessary and good acquisition, and are willing to go to Fenway Park and pay $11 for a cup of beer to support it. We see such aspirations in people who walk by those Salvation Army bell ringers. I had occasion to stand outside the Kittery Trading Post a couple of weeks ago and watch one of those ringers. In the span of about ten minutes, several dozen people emerged from the store with arms full of packages, but only one of them stopped to throw a few bucks in the pot in support of the needy. Can our arms be too occupied clinging to our own stuff to be able to let go and help others? Unfortunately, they can.

 

The wise writer of Ecclesiastes observes: “Whoever loves money never has enough; whoever loves wealth in never satisfied . . . the abundance of a rich man permits him no sleep” (5:10-12). Yet our hearts keep getting fooled, don’t they? We aspire for more because we think it will satisfy us, but the rich, Mary reveals, will be sent away empty.

 

            B. The revolution Jesus brings can help realign our hearts, if we’re willing. The economic phase of his revolution reveals that giving, not acquiring is the solution. It is a threat to materialism to be sure. It is also not a damning of wealth, but a demanding that we use what we have to meet the needs of others. The Christian society that is the kingdom of God is one in which one does not have too much, while others have too little.

 

Conclusion:

Sometimes Christmas gifts come in a box that is stamped, “This side up.” God’s Christmas gift to the world that is Jesus shows us which side is truly up, but it can throw us for a loop because it reveals how upside down we’ve been living, morally, socially, and economically. And it’s dynamite because it reverses, 180 degrees, the world’s value system.

 

What’s also interesting about this mother’s song is that she sings it as if this revolution, this reversal, has already happened, and Jesus hasn’t even, at the time of singing, been born! Even 2,000 years after his birth, the world is still having trouble determining which side is up. But I think that Mary has been inspired to sing in what we might call the “prophetic perfect” tense. It is a tense in which the future work of God’s son is described with the certainty of a past event. Well, if it’s certain, that’s reason for celebration, reason to join Mary in her praise. More than that, it’s also an invitation to us to make sure that we are participating in this revolution. Contrary to what the world may believe, living according to the counter-cultural principles of the kingdom of God will not bring an end to our life; it will enable our life to finally begin.