Mary Makes a Piece of Philosophical Art in Praise of Her Saviour
Luke’s portrait of Mary continues. Here again we see she is a thinker and now we know also that she’s a poet! (Reminds me of her later adopted son, the Apostle John, whose Gospel is the most philosophical and poetic.)
Remember in all this that obedience and submission to God has brought Mary into a potentially dangerous, scandalous, and disreputable position. But even with all its uncertainty and difficulty, she chooses to contemplate and rejoice and praise and worship. She is walking by faith, trusting that if God is on the move, it’s good and desirable and she wants to participate! She’s just so glad to be chosen by God to be used by him.
So she crafts a piece of art to mull it over and express herself (like people before her in the Old Testament, not least Hannah in 1 Samuel 2). Mary’s song/poem is often given the Latin title ‘Magnificat’ from the word ‘magnify’, which is an apt title for the theme of the whole poem, for it magnifies God, enlarging our picture of him and enlarging our hearts to know him more truly.
Again, as a wonderful heroine of the faith, we need to study and emulate Mary.
Is Your God Big Enough to Worship?
46
God is the main character of Luke’s narrative, but rarely is he directly attributed with action or speech—instead he comes through in the responses of his creatures.
Luke here invites us to join our souls with Mary’s in ‘magnifying’ the Lord: making him (that is, acknowledging him as) large and great and awesome and beautiful and glorious and worthy of praise and honour and adoration and worship
The first thing we learn is thus that Mary’s God is big enough for her worship: think on that. Do you worship God? Do you ever abandon yourself in whole-hearted praise and adoration of God just because he’s so worth it, because he’s so glorious and radiant and admirable and desirable? So good and awesome that you just want to speak out good things about him, shout to him and to the world how great and lovely and beautiful and amazing he is?
Is our conception of God small? Or is he ‘that than which a greater cannot be conceived’ (as the medieval theologian Anselm rather abstractly but precisely put it)?
Let’s allow Mary’s song to broaden our view of God and expand the capability of our hearts to worship him.
The Joy Bringer, The Divine Warrior
47
Mary’s God is the source of her spiritual joy: knowing and experiencing God naturally and spontaneously provokes a response of joy and gladness in Mary. God simply is what he is and does what he does, and Mary simply rejoices in his incomparable goodness and beauty from her heart.
Mary’s God is her Saviour: a Rescuer, Deliverer, Hero (imagery that is part of a holy Divine Warrior motif running throughout the Bible) – he is not indifferent or inert, but active and involved. He knows about us and is moved to compassionate action on our behalf because of our distress.
Mary says he is ‘my’ Saviour. We can apply this knowledge of God not just to some people ‘over there’, but directly to ourselves personally, our lives and circumstances.
God Notices the Nobodies
48
Mary’s God is mindful of her
We’re not overlooked by this mighty God. We’re not too ‘low’ and insignificant to be noticed by him.
Every one of us needs a sense of identity and every one of us is chasing after it one way or another. We need recognition and meaning, a sense of our place and purpose and ‘image’ and ‘renown’, whether great or small, ambitious or simple. The question is not whether we need or try to obtain this, but how we do so and where we try to find it.
God Gives Identity and Reputation
Mary identifies herself as God’s ‘servant’: she thus places herself within his household and at his disposal. She acknowledges this as her identity rather than trying to forge some identity of her own, making her mark in the world out of her own resources, serving her own reputation and needs. No, Mary’s God is her Master and Owner. The One in charge of her care and provision and purpose and status and the One she delights to obey.
Mary’s God is the One in charge of her reputation: She’s ecstatic about almighty God’s attention on her! She doesn’t take this for granted. She ‘gets’ that this is a huge act of incredible grace that God has brought into her life by this miracle of divine messianic pregnancy. She knows that from now on people will hear her name and think ‘that was someone richly blessed by God’.
49
Mary’s God is mighty on her behalf: She is weak, but he is strong (as the children’s song goes; see also 2 Corinthians 12:9-10). She finds that God’s massive might is exercised on her behalf, for her good and blessing and is just amazed and humbled and delighted.
In Awe of the Holy One
Mary’s God is holy: his very character and reputation (‘name’) is holy. He is ‘set apart’ in a category of one: There is no other like him (as the O.T. repeatedly affirms). He is ‘wholly other’ than the creation and he is of an infinite degree of purity—goodness, righteousness, and justice on a level we can never fathom. You can count on him to be this way. God is always true to his own character. And he is awesome and wonderful in his holiness.
The mystery of this purity and otherness are captured in New Testament lines like:
‘who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see. To him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen’ (1 Timothy 6:16).
‘God is light, and in him is no darkness at all’ (1 John 1:5).
‘[L]et us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire’ (Hebrews 12:28-29).
Holy Love
50
Mary’s God is merciful: This same God who is so Other to us, so radically different than us in his very nature, especially in his moral purity, yet looks on us with ‘mercy’: compassion, kindness, tenderness, with a heart that is moved with pity at the sight of our misery, moved to respond favourably toward us to alleviate our suffering (even if we brought it on ourselves). Putting these two central attributes of God together, John Wesley summed up God as ‘Holy Love’.
Philosophically, some philosophers (most famously, Aristotle) have noted that since all creation is in motion, we surely must trace all this finite movement back to an Unmoved Mover who starts it all going but who needs nothing to start him going for he is eternal, without beginning or end, self-existent and self-sufficient. There’s probably an important insight here about how the creation points to God as the Creator in the originating sense. But as a piece of reasoning all by itself without the revelation God has given us of himself in the Bible and in Jesus, it can be misleading. First of all, it’s not explicit as to whether that ‘Mover’ is still on the move! It is not clear whether he is still, moment by moment, active in sustaining his creation. Secondly, related to this, it can make God look very like an immovable, impersonal, uncaring Stone. The Bible praises God as our Rock in his steadfast love to be sure. But it is love that does not come through clearly in the idea of an Unmoved Mover. So some theologians have said we might be better, in light of the cross of Christ especially, to think of God as the Most Moved Mover! This too captures an obviously crucial insight about God. The Bible I think urges us to combine these pictures so that we see a God who is the Sovereign and Faithful Creator who is free to act according to his own holy wishes and who does not change on a whim and upon whom all things depend for their existence and who at the same time is utterly and compassionately involved with his creation, caring for all that he has made, moved by our misery to acts of pity and mercy.
‘This “mercy” is nothing less than God’s gracious initiative that is the presupposition for his creating humanity as his covenant partner and for his continued relationship with humanity in spite of the repeated opposition of men and women to his purpose’ (Green, 104).
Fear of God is Basic
Significantly, coming right off the back of her acknowledgement of God as Holy Love we see that Mary fears God.
What do you think of when you hear the word ‘fear’ in general? What about in relation to God?
‘The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge’ (Proverbs 1:7).
‘The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight’ (Proverbs 9:10).
The Bible consistently tells us that fear of God is basic. Why?
First of all, ‘fear’ is simply the proper response to the Holy One, the Self-Existent or Eternal One (Yahweh), the great I AM, the Alpha and Omega, the incomparably Good and Just and Beautiful One. This ‘fear’ is the worshipful reverence and awe spoken of in Hebrews 12:28 as well as the honour spoken of in 1 Timothy 6:16. This ‘fear’ is enthroning God above all else in our hearts, submitting to him from our core, acknowledging our absolute limit in him, bowing the knee, taking off our shoes on the holy ground of his presence.
It is also acknowledging our absolute pleasure in him for this ‘fear’ is also our delight in him, our loyalty and love for him as we reverence him. Fear of God is to brook no rival to him in the affection of our hearts.
Thus to ‘fear God’ is not static and abstract but to live our lives before his face, as pilgrims heading to our true home in him, honouring him and bringing fame and glory to his holy name by our actions and our relationships with others. To fear the Lord results in respecting the environment he has placed us in, respecting one another made in his image, caring for one another’s needs, living in just and loving community.
The Bible teaches that all good and right attitudes and actions are grounded in the fear of God. And where fear of God is missing, these good human things are undermined (e.g. Rom. 3:13-18). To live any other way than holy is to spit on God’s character, to ignore him and his fierce goodness, to have ‘no fear of God before our eyes’. And it always results not only in irreverence but inhumanity.
Again, holiness and mercy and fear all have to do with how big and worthy of worship God is. Is our God worth the praise and adoration and submission?
God is Not a Generational Thing
At this point Mary’s song moves outward from herself to encompass all of us explicitly: ‘The corporate implications of God’s activity now come into full view—as if the camera, previously focused more narrowly on Mary, has suddenly been pulled back to reveal the company of all Israel of which she is a part. Similarly, there are small hints that Israel is itself part of the larger company of all humanity who is the object of God’s mercy’ (Green, 104).
Mary’s God is faithful: this holy, mighty, saving, involved God lavishes his mercy and compassion on those who fear him in every generation. He does not change. God is not a ‘generational’ thing: some generations ‘go’ for him and some don’t. He is ever present and always the same in his character, always blessing the humble throughout history. The generation before us may or may not have feared God. We may think ‘well God was fine for them but he doesn’t work for us’. Or we may think ‘they didn’t fear God and we’re left in a Godless spiritual wasteland’. Either way, do we, in our generation, fear God? (And that is of course the best way we can help the next generation do so.)
Mary’s song invites us to do so and experience his merciful steadfastness for ourselves, in our times and places and cultures and ways and families and communities.
The Divine Clown Brings Down the Proud
51-53
Mary’s God bears his strong arm to bring down the proud and lift up the humble: again, her God is mighty and active in this world. She here especially highlights how God humbles the proud (even those who are proud ‘secretly’ in their hearts), those who rely on their power, influence, and wealth instead of on God, who show their lack of fear of God in their contempt for the poor, weak, and marginalised. In sending Jesus through Mary of Nazareth, God bypassed centres of power and demonstrated his own real power in a devious and decentralised way!
Mary’s God is the Ironic Reverser: again, her God comedically turns things on their head and puts the first last and the last first. Her God is a sardonic and farcical and slapstick Divine Clown and Divine Trickster and Divine Joker. He is no respecter of persons, but brings in his justice at the expense of those who think highly of themselves and to the hilarious joy of those who are without prestige.
Here we see the Divine Warrior in action and by his actions we see what kind of Warrior he is: ‘oppression of people, pride, claims of power, wealth… it is against such opposing forces that God has, in Mary’s image, come to do war. But he has done so not out of obligation but out of his mercy’ (Green, 104).
So, where are you and I at in relation to all this? Are we Proud, Strong, Rich, Enthroned? Or are we Humble, Weak, Poor, and Hungry? Are we on a collision course with our Maker where we will become De-throned? (Which of course does not have to be the last word if we’ll repent and believe after God graciously but decisively humbles us.)
Faith’s Forward Vision
Mary is of course looking forward in faith to how the Messiah will eventually overthrow all human pretenders to the throne and rule in righteousness, ending all oppression. Because of what God has already done in fulfilling his messianic promises (her virgin conception), she considers the rest of what he will yet do to be a matter of past tense!
This is how we also should view biblical prophecy – on the basis of the monumental and miraculous promises that have already come to pass (Incarnation, Atonement, Resurrection, Pentecost), we look forward with complete confidence to God’s fulfilment of the rest of his promises (Return of Jesus to Reign Forever, Final Resurrection and Judgment, New Heavens and New Earth Full of Righteousness).
The God Who Helps, The God Who Remembers
54-55
Mary’s God is the helper of his people who always keeps his promises: we are not alone, left to ourselves and our own resources. God is with us, alongside us, to help us, to aid us just as he promises in his word.
Mary’s God remembers: Of course, God knows all and so never needs to ‘remember’ something he’s ‘forgotten’, but the Bible takes time to speak ‘anthropomorphically’ like this (attributing human actions to God) so that we really relate to God interpersonally and not in some abstract way that we can’t relate to or enter into as human beings. God doesn’t forget us or the promises and plans he has for us and his world.
The God Who Keeps His Promises to Abraham
Mary’s God is the God of Abraham: this connection to Abraham is very important to Luke and keeps recurring. This whole scene of miraculous births of course echoes those of Sarah and Rebecca, the wives of Abraham and Isaac respectively. But here Mary acknowledges that God is the God who called Abraham and promised him that he would bless him and make him great and bless every ethnicity and ‘people group’ on earth through him (Genesis 12).
And he is the God who counted Abraham righteous solely on the basis of Abraham’s trusting faith in God to keep his promises (Genesis 15; Romans 4) – the same faith Mary and Elizabeth and Zechariah and Joseph were being called to exercise in their day and we are being called to exercise today.
That is our only righteousness, to trust God to provide salvation for us in ways we can’t provide it for ourselves. Indeed, this is a poem celebrating just that. Mary’s song is all about and totally centred on a Saving God who is mighty to rescue us from the consequences of sin: ‘the God who acts out of his own self-giving nature to embrace men and women in relationship. God remembers… and acts’ (Green, 105).
Is Our God Big Enough to Worship?
Is your soul magnifying the Lord at this point? Does he look at least a bit larger to you? These are things that have to be repeatedly contemplated. These theological truths do not sink in overnight. They enlarge our worship only as we are Scripturally soaked in them over a lifetime.
Lastly, see 1:65-66 – can this ‘fear’ come upon us as we hear of these things? Can our awe and reverence and honour and delight and submission grow from hearing the word about Jesus? Like these people we have to gossip about it! It’s juicy and newsworthy! And as we gossip we have to take all this we’re hearing and ‘lay it up in our hearts’ and wonder about it and quietly ask ‘what will these boys grow up to be then?’ For the Lord’s hand was with them.
Note that ‘heart’ = reason, imagination, emotions, will – so this is thoughtful, intelligent, rational, aesthetic, dramatic, inspiring, volitional, life-changing contemplation and wonder.
A revealing question we can ask ourselves: if God is real and he is moving in the person of Jesus, would I surrender and participate, repent of my self-sufficiency and believe in Jesus as my Saviour?
Works Cited:
Joel B. Green, The Gospel of Luke
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