“My soul magnifies the Lord”
In the Church of Norway, we celebrate the Feast of the Annunciation on the Sunday closest to 25th March but never later than the fourth Sunday of Lent. So this is my homily for the day, held at Eid Church in Kvinnherad, Norway, this Sunday (17th March).
Texts: Jeremiah 33:14-17; Ephesians 1:3-6; Luke 1:46-55. Unless otherwise noted, I use the New Revised Standard Version of Scripture (NRSV).
Today we celebrate the Feast of the Annunciation by celebrating both baptism and the Eucharist. We celebrate that the Angel Gabriel came to Mary to announce to her that she was chosen by God to carry the Saviour, to give birth to Him. The angel told her that Jesus “will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High” (Luke 1:32). But she was not given an easy task. Being pregnant, and having a baby, can be wonderful. But for many it is not always so easy. Mary probably had not planned for this. She was betrothed to Joseph, and her getting this mission was probably not the most convenient. But she took the task upon herself, and said: “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word” (Luke 1:38).
After this, she traveled to visit her relative Elisabeth, who was then six months pregnant John the Baptist, perhaps to get support during a difficult time. And there, during the visit, Maria burst into praise – the song of praise which is today’s gospel reading:
My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour, for he has looked with favour on the lowliness 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.
We call this song of praise the Magnificat, from the first line of its Latin translation: Magnificat anima mea Dominum – “My soul magnifies the Lord.” God does not become ‘bigger,’ but He may get more room in our lives when we give Him praise.
Mary proclaims God’s greatness, she proclaims it. She emphasises that God is great and powerful, but not because he is like us, only bigger. No, God is completely different. He is the only one who is one with Himself. We only exist in relation to God. We would not have existed if we were not allowed to share in God’s own existence, if God did not continue to keep us in existence. We cannot understand this, but we can use images to grasp a little more of it. We can, for example, say that God is great. But this can be misunderstood. God is not like us, just really great, big or awesome. He is of a completely different character. A theologian I know put it this way: “Nothing is so big that God is not greater and nothing is so small that God is not smaller.” God is everywhere and in everything. God is a mystery, something we cannot comprehend. It is something we must experience, something we must participate in, first by God’s calling, which is perfected in baptism, then through the word, through preaching, prayer, and the Eucharist, as well as works of praise and the good works that God works in us. And this is the core of today’s gospel reading: God gives, we receive. God calls and we respond but only because He gives us the grace to do so.
God, the magnificent, called Mary – and she listened. And she responded through her song of praise, where she set out to account all the things God has done. The Magnificat is a beautiful song of praise which has been sung for approximately two millennia, to different melodies. There are many different versions and my favourites are the versions by Bach, Palestrina, and Thomas Tallis. But this song of praise is not primarily about being beautiful, but about what God has done:
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 thoughts of their hearts.
Yes, he actually scattered us all. For who od us have never been proud? I know I cannot boast that. But we have forgiveness if we approach Jesus in humility. But Mary continues, and what she sang was radical indeed:
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.
She turns the society she lived in upside down, where the poor and especially the women were far down the ladder. God, she says, is on the side of the poor, on those who do not have much power and influence in the earthly sense. She sings of justice and righteousness. But this is not only about earthy riches or poverty. For regardless of our status in society, we are all poor in our hearts. But this is where Jesus is our help. And the Feast of the Annunciation is all about Him. We celebrate it just over a week early, as the date is on 25th March, nine months – or one pregnancy – before Christmas. We celebrate that Jesus became a human being in Mary’s womb, that the God the magnificent became a small foetus, for our sake. That is the centre. As Christ Himself put it, and as I read in the beginning of the ritual of baptism, from John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”
Jesus came and gave us a path away from death, into salvation and life. Jesus entered humbly into our situation; he stooped to our lowest point, to death, and by his death and resurrection he transformed our death into life. He made himself small to lift us up. He, who was without sin, humbled Himself for us. And because he did this, we can be lifted up, no matter who we are and how rich or poor we are. But wealth is a real danger her. We are often too attached to our riches. God “brought down the powerful from their thrones” and He “sent the rich away empty.” This does not necessarily mean that being rich is bad but if you identify with your wealth, if being wealthy is how you define who you are, God will send you away empty.
But if you rather see what you have as gifts from God, then you can use what you have to honour Him. But then you also have to remember that before God we are all beggars, before Him, we all fall short.
But God, the one true God whom Mary praised, comes to us all and he looks to us all in our poverty, our spiritual poverty. As it is said in Isaiah 57:15:
For thus says the high and lofty one who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with those who are contrite and humble in spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite.
God looks to us all and offers consolation and salvation. Maria does not focus on herself, but points further, upwards, towards God, towards Jesus. But that does not mean that Mary is unimportant, or that we are unimportant. In John 15, Christ says that He is the vine, the true vine, and that we are the branches. The tree and its roots are of course more important than the branches, but that does not make the branches unimportant. That’s where the fruit comes from. When the apple or vine farmer picks the fruit, he picks from the branches, not directly from the trunk.
But the sequence is important – Jesus first, God first, then us. This is ‘the evangelical sequence.’ Jesus is first and we can rely in thanksgiving and love, as St. John the Apostle put it, in 1. John 4:11 and 19: “Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. … We love because he first loved us.” But our answer is also a gift, given by and through the Holy Spirit.
God is the one who sustains everything. And in the face of that, we are allowed to serve God and break out in praise, not merely by our own power, but by virtue of the grace God gave us in baptism. And that is what I will do now, by repeating today’s second reading, Ephesians 1:3-6, where St. Paul praises God for the salvation we have from God, in Jesus Christ, and in Him only:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love.
He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, who was, is, and will remain, one true God, world without end. Amen.