This is how the joy of the
Incarnation begins. Two women in silhouette, willowy and graceful
despite the bumps of growing pregnancy beneath their long, flowing robes …
Mary, just an innocent teenage girl, and Elizabeth, an older woman made wise by
years of disappointment, by slow years of waiting. Bellies almost touching,
they lean in to each other, face to face, whispering of strange things. They
share the secret of new life in the sunlight, by a spring. Until the Holy
Spirit comes down, that is, and songs of praise are drawn out from them, songs
that grow from longing into joy, beyond anything that they could imagine.
The Magnificat, Mary’s jubilant song of praise, begins with Mary’s amazement
that God has come to her, to a poor Jewish peasant girl from the Galilee. She
knows that her life has been nothing special. She milks goats and hauls water.
She bakes bread. She stays home. She waits. She stays home some more. She longs
for something more. She longs for meaning, for justice, for goodness, for
wholeness, just as we do. Mary’s song of joy begins with her own ordinary life,
humble and lowly as it is. Slowly, her words grow into her longing. She tells
of her own experience of transformation from emptiness to the fullness of life:
the slow change from girl to mother, the astounding change from lowly peasant
to Mother of God.
Christian philosopher Paul Ricoeur
explains that we truly know God only in particularities, in what is individual,
unrepeatable, and unique. For Ricoeur, God is revealed in the face of an
individual and irreplaceable human being; God is revealed to us in a particular
moment captured in a work of art; in the uniqueness of a glimpse of the natural
world, at a certain time, in a certain light.1 It’s the same with
joy: Have you ever been pierced by joy as you look over at a loved one, at a
fellow human being who is as unique as their own fingerprint? Has joy ever
washed over you as you contemplate a particular landscape, when the sun happens
to come through the clouds in a certain way, in a way that might never happen
again were you to visit that place hundreds and hundreds of times? Perhaps you’ve
felt joy as you hear a certain translation of a certain verse of scripture,
read at a certain time of day? Joy, like God, is revealed in particularities.
Slowly, as Mary sings her song, her
words shift from her own particular situation to the experience of her people. Mary
knows the songs of other mothers who have found themselves miraculously with
child. The Hebrew scriptures are filled with these stories. She knows
about 100-year-old mothers like Sara. She knows the stories of barren and
desolate mothers like Hannah. She knows the ancient words of Hannah’s song of
thanksgiving over a long-desired child. She even echoes Hannah’s words: “My heart exults in the Lord; my strength is
exalted in my God … There is no Rock like our God.”2
Mary’s words carry her from her own
transformation to all of the times in Israel’s history that God has lifted
oppression, fed the hungry, punished the unjust, or raised up the poor. It is
as if her words get away from her, radiating out across time. They gain power
and strength until the words themselves seem to cause the transformations of
which she speaks. Her words seem to make present the future for which we all
long: “God has cast down the mighty from their thrones,” she cries. “God has lifted up the lowly. God has
filled the hungry with good things, and the rich God has sent away
empty… God has remembered God’s promise of mercy.”
Don and I watched an old Christmas movie the other night called Last
Holiday. The main character is a black woman whose life is filled with
drudgery and a clear lack of joy. To top it all off, she learns that she has a
rare disease and has only three weeks to live. In one scene, she is
stands in her church choir, filled with anger and sadness at her plight. She suddenly
bursts out in lament, quietly at first, “Lord, why in heavens me?!” As she
sings, her words become louder and more fervent. Slowly, the congregation picks
up her song. Her words run away from her, and her rant against God somehow becomes
an expression of joyful praise throughout the entire congregation. People begin
to dance and sway, stomp and shout. This movie scene reminds me how the
unbearable conditions of slavery produced a unique kind of worship that mixes
lament and praise, suffering and joy-filled longing. African-American
spirituals express a painful longing for freedom and justice, always on the
edge of joy. As our words escape us, somehow painful longing can become joyful
thanksgiving.
When we hear Mary’s song, even we
rich and mighty ones join in with joy. Have you ever wondered how we might fit
into the scenes that Mary describes? Mary’s words should frighten us, for we
are the powerful ones. We are the ones who are about to get knocked off of our
thrones. We are the rich of this world who are about to get sent away hungry.
But instead of frightening us, Mary’s words of upheaval seem to warm our hearts.
The images of liberation and joy over the end of oppression grow from her story
in such a way that we recognize their difficult truth. We join in the joy of
liberation despite ourselves.
In
these dark days, when was the last time that you shared your longing with a
loved one, in the quiet, in the sunlight, by a spring? If you try it, though,
watch out. For the words that you utter will belong to God, and they will shake
your world to its foundations.
1Paul Ricoeur, L’unique et le singulier,
(Liege : Alice Editions, 1999), 46-47.
2 I Samuel 2:1-2.
No comments:
Post a Comment