This weekend we’ll sing the prophetic poetry of a revolutionary. The Church has traditionally promoted this poet as an icon of quiet, demure submissiveness, and art commonly depicts her serenely accepting the extraordinary – nay, outrageous – request made of her by God. But this person was far from simple or passive. She was a revolutionary. Just consider her song:

The Almighty has shown the strength of his arm,

he has scattered the proud in their conceit.

He has cast down the mighty from their thrones,

and has lifted up the lowly.

He has filled the hungry with good things,

and the rich he has sent away empty.

He has come to the help of his servant Israel,

for he has remembered his promise of mercy.

These are, of course, the words of Mary of Nazareth as she came to fully understand the nature of what God had asked of her when she became the bearer of God’s Son (Luke 1:46-55).

My wife Melody has been attending Mother Erin’s class on Mary on Sunday mornings, and one night last week as we talked before bed, she contemplated the influence Mary inevitably had on her son. It’s easy to think that Jesus knew just what to say when he began his active ministry – that he had his thoughts and ideas all perfectly formed, and had a well-developed understanding of the Kingdom of God he proclaimed. But Jesus was fully human, in addition to being fully divine, so he had to grow up and learn things just as we all do. He didn’t become a revolutionary, pushing hard against the corruption and hypocrisy of the political and religious elites, at the drop of a hat. Nor did he just “invent” the ideas of the upside-down nature of the Kingdom that he proclaimed throughout his life. They were planted in him somewhere, somehow, and he brought them to their fullness in beautiful, loving reality.

What if the idea for the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:1-11) was planted deep within his soul by his revolutionary mother? What if the Magnificat was not just something she spontaneously sang only once to Elizabeth as the two compared their miraculous pregnancies, but a lullaby she sang to her miraculous baby as she soothed him in the night? What if her song, with its vision of God’s desire to upend injustice and restore the oppressed, was one of the first things he learned, because he had been hearing it since the night of his birth?

God yearns for our world to be transformed with a revolution of love – for the hungry to be fed, the suffering to be comforted, the poor to be raised up, and the oppressed to go free. And we can glimpse this revolutionary vision not only in the life and words of Jesus, but also in the life and words of his grace-filled mother. This Advent, let’s not succumb to despair at the failings of our sin-sick world, but join our voices in hope-filled prayer with that holy and revolutionary Mother of God, Mary of Nazareth.

-Casey+