Advent Voices – the subversive Magnificat

What a strong, evocative, celebratory song is Mary’s Magnificat!
And it is highly political, even seditious. If an agent of either Caesar or Herod the Great had been eavesdropping on Mary as she visited her cousin Elizabeth, neither of these women would have survived to tell the story.

Mary’s song, however, has become a trans-seasonal reminder, not of how “truth speaks to power,”  but of how truth is claimed and celebrated in the face of the kind of tyrannical force that suppresses and smothers abundant shared life. And so the “proud are scattered in the thoughts of their heads” and the “powerful are brought down from their thrones.”  The “lowly are lifted” and “the hungry are filled with good things.”

This is why this week’s prayer meetings in electoral offices by Christian leaders have been quietly respectful, peaceful and poised. There is no need to strive for truth to be spoken, it only needs to be present.

And the powers and principalities of the land can’t stand it!