Magnificat:
Third Sunday in Advent, Year B
Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11; Psalm 126; Luke
1:47-55; 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24; John 1:6-8, 19-28
On this Third Sunday in Advent, it is time to return to the Four Questions that are the
background for these Commentaries, which actually began with Year C.
1) What is the nature of God?
Violent or non-violent?
2) What is the nature of Jesus’
message? Inclusive or exclusive?
3) What is faith? Literal
belief, or commitment to the great work of justice-compassion?
4) What is deliverance?
Salvation from hell, or liberation from injustice?
Questions 3 and 4 are the ones to focus on for now: What is
Faith? Literal belief (in a virgin birth and the physical
resuscitation of a corpse) or commitment to the great work of justice
compassion? What is Deliverance? Salvation from hell in the
next life (retribution for sin, moral or cardinal); or liberation from
injustice in this life?
Along with the consideration of those questions, the primary
contemporary scholarly text upon which to base discussion is The First Christmas (Marcus
J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan, HarperOne, 2007).
The Third Sunday in Advent (sometimes the 4th Sunday) is when
Protestants can celebrate Mary, the mother of Jesus. Mary’s Song,
praising God for choosing her to be the vessel for bringing God’s
salvation into the world, usually is interpreted as beginning with
Mary’s own personal humility, and ending with a declaration of
liberation from injustice: the powerful are brought down from their
thrones, the lowly are lifted up, the hungry are filled with good
things, the rich are sent away empty. Luke’s poem – which may
have been a favorite chant or hymn in first and second century
Christian communities – echos both Isaiah 61, and the song of Hannah,
the mother of the prophet Samuel, who anointed King David (1 Samuel 2:1-10). The
imagery is rich, the metaphors are many, and traditional
interpretations are valid as far as they go. But as Borg and
Crossan point out (p. 197), to see only the personal side, i.e., a personal spiritual
meaning, individual salvation from petty sin, or personal liberation
from poverty and oppression, misses half the point. The other
half is the political meaning. But beyond even Crossan and Borg,
if the personal is political, which the
feminist movement of the 1960s declared, the missing political half
requires personal transformation, as Christians (and others) sign onto
the Great Work of justice-compassion.
Luke’s prologue to his interpretation of Jesus’s message follows a
biblical tradition reaching back to the ancient tribal people who
perhaps were the first to see the human struggle for justice and peace
as a struggle between Covenant and Empire. Whenever God acted on
behalf of the people to restore justice, or to give an identity and
political power to a besieged nation, God’s intention was carried out
through women: Sarah, Rachel, the unnamed mother of Moses, Ruth,
Hannah, and others. Sometimes God lifted the curse of barrenness
(or age). Sometimes the women took matters into their own hands.
Luke’s Mary is a later creation. By the time Luke was writing
(end of the 1st Century, perhaps as late as the first quarter of the
2nd) the idea of gods consorting with humans to produce earthly heros
(such as Cesar Augustus) was de jour.
But this time the hero turned out to be the opposite of what was
expected. True to form, Luke’s Mary points out the great
overturning of the political, social, and religious world brought about
by Jesus. The last is first. The rich are poor. The
poor are rich. The powerful are brought down, the disenfranchised
are lifted up. As the medieval carol puts it, “Masters
in this Hall . . . Noel
sing we loud: God to day has poor folk raiséd and has
cast-a-down the proud.”
Liberal Christian exiles, recovering Catholics, and other refugees from
religious abuse are well aware of how the Church since the 4th Century
has switched sides. Instead of a mandate for distributive
justice, the Church has an “option
for the poor” – preferential, but still an option.
Worse, we have fallen into the convenient detour that pairs “salvation”
with “sin,” thereby throwing everybody completely off the path.
“Salvation” in the 1st Century and for thousands of years earlier meant
deliverance from enemies. Sort of like the cavalry arriving at
the last minute in those old U.S. westerns. That is
salvation. Sin has nothing to do with it – unless of course the
people inside the circled wagons intended to rob the natives of their
land and livelihood.
At the end of her song, just like the prophet who wrote the third
portion of Isaiah, Mary reminds us of God’s Covenant: “[God] has helped
. . . Israel in remembrance of [God’s] mercy, according to the promise
[God] made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants
forever.” God’s promise is of Covenant with the people who live
in distributive justice. Distributive justice – God’s justice –
is not the same as imperial justice. Imperial justice is
retributive justice, and the purpose is control: law and order.
Distributive justice – God’s justice – is radical fairness, which does
not result in the kind of law and order that brings about imperial
peace.
It is that radical fairness that Luke has Mary singing about.
Crossan and Borg propose that Luke’s purpose was to graphically
illustrate the difference between the radicality of God’s distributive
justice, embodied in Jesus, and the lie at the heart of Cesar’s Empire:
piety, war, victory. The peace of Empire depends on violence:
police power, military victory, social and political conformity.
God’s peace depends on participation, partnership, and love experienced
as the radical abandonment of self-interest.
Meanwhile, John – the voice in the wilderness – came as a witness to
the “true light, which enlightens everyone.” John’s gospel wastes
no time in introducing the Messiah (John 1:29-34, 2nd Sunday in
Epiphany in Year A) The Baptist’s call for repentance as told in
John’s gospel is far less important than in Luke’s version, which is
read in Year C. In John’s Gospel,
the Baptizer made it clear that he was not the Messiah. All he
was doing was getting people ready for deliverance from the darkness
and oppression of Cesar’s empire. Luke’s version underlines the
crucial ingredient, namely the full participation of ordinary people in
turning away from the relentless march of the normalcy of civilization
into injustice and away from God’s kingdom. But John’s
light-filled metaphor may be more subversive because it cloaks
revolution in subtle spiritual language.
The Revised Common Lectionary advises
that “If Proper III is not used on Christmas Day, it should be used at
some service during the Christmas cycle because of the significance of
John’s prologue.” So rather than stick with the cherry-picked
portion the Elves chose for this 3rd
Sunday in Advent for Year B, let’s go on with John’s metaphor from
verses 9 through 18. For
commentary that includes the Prologue, see Light Beings from Year A.
Borg and Crossan suggest that the birth stories of Matthew and Luke and
the opening verses from John are all prologues that set up Jesus as
God’s anointed One, who will act directly to bring about the
transformation of human society from the oppression of Empire to the
freedom found in God’s realm. When John’s gospel says, “Genuine
light – the kind that provides light for everyone – was coming into the
world,” the subtext is that the light provided by Cesar’s victories was
not genuine light. Cesar’s light – the light of Empire – provides
light for the Emperor’s administration only: for the lobbyists;
the multi-national companies that control food, clothing, energy,
education, information; for the rich; for the politicians, militarists,
enforcers, and supporters who carry out the Emperor’s agenda.
“Law was given through Moses,” John says, “[but] mercy and truth came
through Jesus the Anointed,” not Cesar – despite what all the monuments
say. John goes on: “No one has ever seen God,” even though Cesar
and his administration have proclaimed that Cesar is God on
earth. But it is Jesus, “the only son, an intimate of the Father
[close to the Father’s heart – NRSV] who has made [God] known.”
How does Jesus make God known in a post-modern, post-Christian, even
“post-Biblical” (Borg & Crossan), scientifically sophisticated,
globally connected society, where humanists ask (with good reason) “Why
believe in a god? Just be good for goodness’ sake”? Here we need
incarnational language and metaphor, because nothing else will work to
express the profound truth that Christians (or anyone) can choose to
believe: Jesus made God known through the life that Jesus
lived. Whenever anyone acts with distributive justice-compassion,
abandoning self-interest, then the partnership is joined, the Covenant
is renewed, and the Great Work continues. Then, as Luke’s Mary
sang about Jesus, Isaiah’s prophecy can be fulfilled in those who
“bring good news to the oppressed, . . . bind up the brokenhearted, . .
.proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners . . .”
In this context, Paul’s cherry-picked benediction from his letter to
the Thessalonians is right-on: “Do not quench the Spirit. Do not
despise the words of prophets . . . hold fast to what is good; abstain
from every form of evil. May the God of peace . . . sanctify you
entirely . . . the one who calls you is faithful, and he will do this.”
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