The Magnificat | Christmas 2021

And Mary said, My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant.

For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed.

For he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name.

And his mercy is for those who fear him, from generation to generation.

He has shown great strength with his arm.

He has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.

He has brought down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted those of humble estates.

And he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham, and to his offspring forever.

And Mary remained with her about three months and returned to her home.

This is the word of the Lord.

You may be seated.

Thanks for joining us this evening.

Thanks for joining us for this tradition.

Merry Christmas.

So today we are going to look at a section of scripture called the Magnificat.

This is Mary's Prayer.

This prayer takes place at a wonderful moment.

Mary was let known that she was going to be pregnant by the angel Gabriel.

And then she meets up with her cousin, Elizabeth.

And Elizabeth has a pregnancy that's a lot like Sarah's.

Sarah in the Old Testament, the wife of Abraham, they're both very old when they get pregnant.

And Elizabeth never thought that she would be able to get pregnant.

And then she's told by an angel, actually, her husband, Zechariah, is told by an angel, you will get pregnant, and you'll have a boy, his name will be John, and Zechariah didn't believe it.

And so for the whole course of Elizabeth's pregnancy, he wasn't able to speak.

So they meet, and these are two women who are told of these miraculous births that will take place.

And this is likely the first person that Mary had met with who just was able to unabashedly, unashamedly, just completely believe Mary.

Believe the story of Mary and the promise that she had been told of an angel of this miraculous birth.

Because they were two women who shared this experience in different ways, but this unique experience of a miraculous pregnancy.

And after that encounter, Mary, out of her joy, bursts into this song that's called The Magnificat.

And so that's what Paulina just read for us today, and we're going to look at it, but first let's pray.

Holy Father, we praise you for this Christmas Eve.

We praise you for gathering together as a church.

And Lord, we pray that you would attend our hearts to you and that you might enhance our worship of you this evening, Lord, as we move into Christmas Day.

We lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So there's a lot of Christmas songs out there, but this is the first.

I think we can say this is the first Christmas song.

And we're looking at it today to see how it is that Mary teaches us how to sing in praise of Jesus.

And we'll see that Mary teaches us how to sing in the praise of Jesus in these three veins.

She teaches us how to sing praise to him and how he changes our own hearts, how to sing praise to him and how he transforms the world, and then how to sing to him for how he transforms our eternities.

So we'll begin by looking at how Jesus transforms our hearts.

This is where her song of praise starts.

In Luke 1, 46 to 48, Mary says, My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant.

For behold, from now on, all generations will call me blessed.

She says, My soul magnifies the Lord.

That's where the name of this prayer comes from, the Magnificat.

Magnificat is magnifies in Latin.

Don't uh uh it don't think like a magnifying glass, think like magnificent.

My soul shows the magnificence of the Lord.

It shows the greatness and the wonder of the Lord.

It's displaying this.

And it might sound like, is this some sort of arrogance on Mary's behalf?

She's saying, I'm the one who is able to show and revel in the greatness of the Lord.

But Mary, of course, wouldn't have that.

She's not pointing to her own greatness at all.

She's saying in her humble estate, the Lord has looked upon her, this servant girl.

It would be better translated, this slave girl.

She calls herself this humble, this slave girl in a humble estate who has been seen by the Lord.

Where does her glory come from?

It comes from her, a person of no position, being seen by the Lord.

Now it's one thing to say that you have seen the Lord.

Having the it's saying the statement, I have seen the Lord, I am the one who sees God and knows God, therefore come to me, listen to me.

That's one thing to say.

But Mary doesn't speak in those terms.

She doesn't say, I am the one who has seen the Lord, therefore listen to me.

She says, I am the one who the Lord has seen.

She is the one who the Lord has seen.

The whole shape of the way that she describes this is as one who is in a humble position, and she shows the glory of the Lord by the Lord Himself seeing her and blessing her and coming to her.

This is the dynamic.

This is where this is the way that the Lord shows his glory to us.

The Lord shows his glory to us by going to the humble, by going to the least seen, by going to the most invisible, and by seeing us in our humble estate, in our lowly place, there the Lord shows his own glory by seeing us there.

So how is it that Mary magnifies the Lord, makes him magnificent, rejoices in him?

How is it that she herself can say that from now on all generations will call me blessed?

It is not because of any wonder in her.

It is because the wonder of our God is He sees us when we are in our lowly states.

If you feel worn down by Christmas, if you feel let down by some season or by the particular season of life or by yourself, then you can know that that is precisely where God loves to show his glory.

This is the great inversion that transforms our hearts.

We are not in a position where we have to draw God's love out by demonstrating our own gloriousness.

We don't make ourselves beautiful, we don't make ourselves presentable, we don't make ourselves excellent before him.

That is not, God does not have a vision towards us that he requires us to draw out of him in any way.

It freely flows from him, from his love.

And that is why he sets his sights on Mary from his love towards her.

And that is this inversion that transforms our lives, where we see that God sees us in our lowly state because of his love alone.

Mary says in Luke 1, 49, for he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name.

The Lord shows his might towards us, shows his holiness towards us in seeing the humble, in being with the lowly.

That is what transforms our hearts.

This is the first reason that we sing on Christmas.

In the incarnation, we can say, along with Mary, the Lord has done wonderful things for me.

You can say that.

No matter the position that you come in, you can say, The Lord has done wonderful things for me.

That's the good news of Christ.

And then she continues on and she she expands her vision from celebrating what the Lord has done for her personally, and she shows how she can also sing about what the Lord means for the world.

What does it mean that Christ's coming, what does Christ's coming mean for the transformation of the world?

She says this in verses 52 to 53.

He has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate.

He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty.

Mary's voice shifts to this prophetic voice.

She's no longer just celebrating the good news that she's already received of who Jesus is.

She's moving into a position of prophecy.

She's prophesying what will Jesus' life mean.

And it's such a certain prophecy that she puts it in the past tense as though it's already been accomplished.

In the past tense, she says that he has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate.

This is how certain what Jesus will accomplish is.

He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty.

Don't you see the way that she is describing Jesus' impact in the world?

He turns the world upside down.

Jesus transforms the world.

He comes in and he removes those in their high estate, he brings them to a low estate by his presence.

And those that are in a low estate, he lifts them up to their glory.

Now Mary knows this because she is one in a lowly estate.

And she, by the arrival of Jesus, has been lifted up into a glory where we're talking about and celebrating her life today.

Blessed is she among generations from her lowly estate.

Jesus turns the world upside down.

But what is she talking about?

I mean, do you remember the scene where Jesus comes in and he's about to be taken in by Pontius Pilate?

And instead he raises up his army and overthrows Pilate, and they move on from Pilate in this small corner of Jerusalem, and they take all of Rome and they sack the Roman Empire.

Do you remember that part of the story?

When are the kings thrown down?

What is she speaking of here?

When are the thrones emptied out?

Don't you see?

Everything in Jesus' life takes this pattern of turning the world on its head.

Because this is not just another boy coming into the world.

This is God coming in and himself going to the lowest place.

And in going to the lowest place, when God goes there, he exalts it.

And so when does God, when does Jesus conquer kingdoms?

It is at the very point where the strongest kingdom on earth takes him into its beastly like character and murders him on a cross.

And dead on a cross, he conquers all the kings that would ever come.

Why?

Because three days later, death could not contain him and he rises again.

What do you do to threaten or coerce someone when they can conquer death?

There is no king who can threaten him anymore.

There is no king who can coerce him anymore.

But you must be thinking, I've seen superhero movies.

I know why they wear masks.

Why do they wear masks?

Because you might not be able to coerce them, right?

But they but Clark Kent puts on glasses to disguise himself.

Spider-Man wears a mask to disguise himself because he has to protect the ones he loves.

To protect the ones you love.

You hide your identity if you are not able to be coerced by power.

Well, what if when Jesus died and rose from the dead, it is not only he who conquered death, but he conquered death for all who would be in his family.

And he brought with him all who would call him our Lord, our God.

And by faith alone we might receive, even in our humble and lowly state, we might receive the glory that he accomplished on our behalf.

When is it that Jesus conquered in his death?

Do you see how he turned the world upside down?

All of the ordinary authority and power structures that we expect to live in and move in, they've been transformed by Christ.

Undone.

They find a whole new meaning in his life.

And we see how this continues on and this expands out into our eternity.

Mary goes on in 54 and 55.

She says, He has helped his servant Israel in remembrance of his mercy as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham, and to his offspring forever.

Mary ties this storyline together.

And she says, What we are seeing in Christ is the narrative thread that has moved through all of history since the Lord first set out and made a promise to his people that through the offspring of Abraham all the families of the world would be blessed.

And she pieces these together and says, This blessing that we'll receive through Christ that was promised through Abraham will extend out forever.

She says, to Abraham and to his offspring forever.

And so we see that in Christ our eternities are secured.

Our eternities are transformed by what Christ will accomplish.

And so how are we taught to sing about Jesus?

We are taught to sing because he has transformed our very hearts.

Out of our sinful rebellion, he rescues us, taking our own punishment on the cross so that we might be secure in him before the Lord.

So our hearts are changed.

No longer are we put in a position where we must try and draw out the gaze of the Lord.

We are certain of his love towards us because it was testified to on the cross.

We sing because he has transformed our world.

All of the power structures which are built and are manipulated and cause this brutal suffering throughout the whole world that we see take place have been repositioned so that Christ is king.

He is at the top of the hierarchy now, and the kingdom will come.

And so we have a hope for the world.

And so we sing out of a hope for the world.

Where did he accomplish that?

On the cross.

And we sing because it stretches beyond the kingdoms of the world, out into eternity, because we know that we will be secure with him forever, because he is the one who conquered death.

So I ask you, how do you sing about a man like that?

How do you sing about a man like that?

You sing like Mary sang, where she says, My soul magnifies the Lord.

This Christmas Eve, for the rest of our time gathered here together, let our souls magnify the Lord.

How do we sing about a man like that?

Let's try it.

Let's pray.

Holy Father, we pray that you would fill our hearts with a song like Mary's, that we might sing after the pattern that you have given us in her.

Lord, how do we sing of God becoming a man that we might be brought to God?

Lord, give us the words.

Give us the words.

Give us the spirit that sings that way.

We praise you, Lord.

You are worthy of praise.

We lift this up in Jesus' glorious name.

Amen.