Felicity Harley-McGowan and Bruce Gordon discuss the Magnificat and our understanding of Mary through the ages in relation to Luke 1:46b-55. The text is appointed for the Fourth Sunday of Advent (Advent 4), Year C of the Revised Common Lectionary.
Mary’s Vibrant Language (Advent 4)
Voiceover Voice:
She’s telling us that God will cast down the unrighteous, the tyrants. She is speaking almost like one of the prophets of the Hebrew Bible.
Helena Martin:
This is Chapter, Verse, and Season: a lectionary podcast from Yale Bible Study. Welcome back to another conversation about an upcoming text from the Revised Common Lectionary.
Each week here, you listen in on a pair of professors from Yale Divinity School while they talk through what they found interesting about a particular passage. We hope this podcast is helping you think about these familiar Bible texts in new ways.
I’m your host, Helena Martin, Episcopal priest and Yale Divinity School student.
In this episode, we have Felicity Harley-McGowan, Research Associate and Lecturer, and Bruce Gordon, Titus Street Professor of Ecclesiastical History.
They’re discussing Luke 1:46-55, which is appointed for Sunday, December 19, to close us out for the season of Advent.
The text is read for you by student Misty Kiwak-Jacobs.
Misty Kiwak-Jacobs:
Luke 1:46-55.
And Mary said,
“My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has looked with favor 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.
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.
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.
He has helped his servant Israel,
in remembrance of his mercy,
according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
to Abraham and to his descendants forever.”
Bruce Gordon:
This is really one of the most famous passages in the New Testament. It’s sung. It’s prayed. It’s read all the time. The words are very familiar to us. The image of Mary has been represented so many times in art and music.
But Mary is a very interesting character in antiquity, as you know, and in the Middle Ages, and particularly in the High Middle Ages. She was this dominant figure in Western Christianity, but also in the East. But in Western Christianity, she was this the great intercessor, the great protectress. She was the most holy. Marian devotion flourished in art and literature, across Europe and then across the ocean.
But for Protestants, it’s been a very different story. Many of the reformers themselves, the first generation like Martin Luther were deeply devoted to Mary, but yet their theology took them in a very different direction because no longer could she have this role as an intercessor pleading for mercy. She lost that because they said that detracted from Christ as the sole mediator of salvation.
So what are they to make of Mary? Who does Mary become? And I think for many protestants, particularly I think of my own Reform tradition, are not quite sure what to make of Mary. She’s so prominent in the gospels. Yet what are we to make of her?
In the reformation, when they took away her sort of intercessory powers, they made her a model of virtue. She became a kind of image for the holy household: the mother, the father, the patriarchal order. And this obedience and the language of humility or lowliness that is here.
Felicity Harley-McGowan:
It’s interesting because I think even the ways in which we study or have understood the history of Mary’s reception, I guess, within other Christian communities and the growth of what we understand to be a cult of Mary is in many ways informed by some of those Protestant views that want to see a very muted interest in Mary—even to the extent that for some of the earliest Christian representations of her as a Roman mother holding her child. Some scholars literally describe some of these images as Mary functioning just as a kind of chair for the Christ child. And that that’s the focus for early Christians: that Mary has no other function other than just to be a safe pair of hands and vessel. And that’s all very nice. And then, she’s accepting and loving, but her role is quite muted.
And yet, when we look closely at some of the earliest images and the context in which they appear and the obvious interest that early Christian communities really from the fourth and fifth centuries have in her—she is a woman of great strength and sometimes presented in the guise of an Empress, such that she has the trappings of an Imperial court to evoke something of her authority.
I think as well as her role as a guide and a figure for Christians. And we see this develop in many different ways, perhaps one of the most captivating images, which you and I have talked about, is this image of the Madonna of Mercy, where she’s shown as a standing upright woman with a large cloak that encompasses— sometimes it can encompass representations of cities, or of communities, or of particular saints, sometimes of donors, too. And I think when I first encountered this image—traveling, I’m thinking of, my first visit to Venice where—in all kinds of media, above doorframes or on churches, the repetition of this image was like a different language about who Mary could be.
So I think it’s very interesting the way in which we receive certain traditions and that, sometimes we have a fairly one-dimensional image of Mary that we quite like. And it’s very beautiful. We love Renaissance representations of the annunciation and these beautiful scenes of tenderness between Gabriel and Mary and conversation. And there’s nothing wrong with that.
But I think this passage, reading it again, demands us to retrieve some of those readings that have been muted by our inheritance, I guess, from some of these Protestant traditions of a one-dimension. And almost airbrushing out some of the feistiness of Mary, and this vibrant language here that’s quite confrontational in many ways. That reference here to the fear of God, which of course in our contemporary context, we relate that word to negative feelings, things that we don’t want to experience or that we associate with weakness, even.
And yet this is something that speaks to a core in Mary that is bold and an apprehension of God’s greatness and goodness that somehow is watered down by some of those other lily, wand-waving Gabriel images.
Bruce Gordon:
The song, I think, as you have us see, is full of complexity. We have this image, as you were saying, of a blessed Mary.
And one of the first things in many of those paintings of the annunciation is this emphasis on her humility. This young girl—and she certainly was young—receiving and opening her heart and with obedience and humility.
But yet the language of the song is not one that resonates so easily for us. Humility is not a word that we use much except possibly saying you should show more humility. You should be more humble, but it’s not something—I doubt there are very many sermons that kind of extort humility as a way of expressing the Christian life. We’re much more encouraged to engagement, action, participation—to enthusiastic expressions of faith, Humility—or lowliness, as the King James says—these are not words that we use.
And as you pointed out: fear. Fear has a long history in Christian theology and devotion as the beginning point—the fear of God as the beginning point. But again, that’s not a term that resonates easily for us, for the very reasons that you said.
But I liked the way you talked about her feistiness, because again—in the King James language—“scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts,” that famous phrase. That she becomes a kind of prophetic, almost political figure at the end of this song. She’s telling us that God will cast down the unrighteous, the tyrants. She is speaking almost like one of the prophets of the Hebrew Bible here that, this is what will happen.
And I think the song challenges us to… do we believe these things? How do we connect with fear? How do we connect with humility? Do we connect the political tumult in our age, where good and evil seem to wrestle all the time, do we see God is active in that? Even as Christians, we may not feel comfortable talking about that. So, I think the song really challenges us to come out of ourselves and engage with language that is challenging.
Helena Martin:
Thanks for listening to Chapter, Verse, and Season! And thank you to everyone who has sent us their feedback so far. We love hearing from you.
If you want to be in touch, visit YaleBibleStudy.org and click the Contact tab. And on that website, you can also find more Bible study resources, read the show notes or transcript from this episode, and also find all of our past episodes. That’s YaleBibleStudy.org.
Remember to rate this podcast if you haven’t already. Give us five stars—it just takes a second, and it helps other new listeners find us. And follow us on Twitter @BibleYale.
Chapter, Verse, and Season is produced by Joel Baden, Kelly Morrissey, and me, Helena Martin. Our theme music is by Calvin Linderman.
Thanks to the Center for Continuing Education at Yale Divinity School, as always. And thank you to Professors Harley-McGowan and Gordon for joining us this week.
We’ll be back with another conversation from Chapter, Verse, and Season.
Book of the Bible:
Luke
Subjects:
Luke
Guests
Text
New Revised Standard Version Bible
Copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Credits
Host and Executive Producer: Helena Martin
Production Manager: Kelly Morrissey
Creator and Managing Editor: Joel Baden
Assistant Producer: Aidan Stoddart
Music: Calvin Linderman
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Chapter, Verse, and Season gives listeners the opportunity to overhear the kinds of conversations that take place in the halls of Yale Divinity School. Each week, professors from different theological disciplines chat about biblical texts from the Revised Common Lectionary. They bring their own interests to the table and hopefully spark new insights into the scripture appointed for each Sunday.