Redemption Song

From the Everyday Bible Study, Luke, questions by Becky Castle Miller.

A Redemption Song about a Redemption Son

Luke 1:39-56

39 At that time Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea, ⁴⁰ where she entered Zechariah’s home and greeted Elizabeth. ⁴¹ When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. ⁴² In a loud voice she exclaimed: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear! ⁴³ But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? ⁴⁴ As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. ⁴⁵ Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her!”

46 And Mary said:

“My soul glorifies the Lord

⁴⁷ and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,

⁴⁸ for he has been mindful

of the humble state of his servant.

From now on all generations will call me blessed,

⁴⁹ for the Mighty One has done great things for me—

holy is his name.

⁵⁰ His mercy extends to those who fear him,

from generation to generation.

⁵¹ He has performed mighty deeds with his arm;

he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.

⁵² He has brought down rulers from their thrones

but has lifted up the humble.

⁵³ He has filled the hungry with good things

but has sent the rich away empty.

⁵⁴ He has helped his servant Israel,

remembering to be merciful

⁵⁵ to Abraham and his descendants forever,

just as he promised our ancestors.”

56 Mary stayed with Elizabeth for about three months and then returned home.

I like to imagine Mary singing her special song about her special son when she looked into his eyes, nursed him, clothed him, changed him, and taught him to talk, pray, and sing. After all, there are echoes of this song in Jesus’s special prayer, which we call “The Lord’s Prayer.” The song, called the Magnificat because the Latin version begins with that very term (magnificat means “magnifies,” and the NIV has “glorifies”).

The occasion for the song

Upon greeting the family in the muted Zechariah’s home, some two days or more journey south from the Galilee, John the Baptist leaped in Elizabeth’s womb, which was a palpable experience of being “filled with the Holy Spirit” (1:41). So inspired, Elizabeth utters a triple blessing on Mary in words famous now among Roman Catholics: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear! But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her!” (1:45).

Mary is the one blessed here and is called “the mother of my Lord” (1:43). Her focus aside, the narrative begins to shift our attention away from the miracle baby John to the virginally conceived baby Jesus, and shifts our minds from the significance of John to the superior significance of Jesus.

We can speculate about why Mary “hurried” to the hills of Judea but that’s all it is: speculation. Scandal shows no hints here, though eventually some would set rumors loose. Justo González if Mary didn’t hurry to be with Elizbeth out of “solidarity” (González, Luke, 22).

A song for the son of redemption

Mary’s song evokes dozens of lines and terms from Israel’s scriptures, and you might look some up in your study Bible’s cross references. Especially Hannah’s song in 1 Samuel 2:1-10. There are so many echoes of Bible passages we are stunned by the depth and richness of Mary’s grasp of the Bible’s redemption story. In fact, Mary’s song stirs our imaginations in a way that expresses the heart of the gospel and the church. As Barbara Brown Taylor once said, “The church's central task is an imaginative one. By that I do not mean a fanciful or fictional task, but one in which the human capacity to imagine—to form mental pictures of the self, the neighbor, the world, the future, to envision new realities—is both engaged and transformed.” Some pages later she connected such an imagination to faith in these words: “In faith, we imagine ourselves whole, imagine ourselves in love with our neighbors, imagine ourselves bathed and fed by God, imagine the creation at peace, imagine the breath of God coinciding with our own, imagine the heart of God beating at the heart of the world” (Taylor, The Preaching Life, 41, 53).

This woman of faith’s song begins with personal witness, and her witness evokes the emotion of relief through vindication: “My soul” and “my spirit” and “his servant” and “call me blessed” (ignored by most Protestants) and “for me.” A slight shift happens in verse fifty when we read “to those who fear him,” but this too is about Mary’s own experience of awe before her God.

Following her personal testimony of God answering her prayers for the redemption of her people, Mary’s song suddenly turns into metaphors for God’s redemption. Each of the metaphors invites our imaginations to consider the redemption God works in Jesus from different angles. Here they are: “performed mighty deeds” and “scattered those who are proud” and “brought down rulers” and “lifted up the humble [or poor]” and “filled the hungry” and “sent the rich away empty” and “helped his servant Israel” according to the Abrahamic promise.

We must pause to adjust our vision (McKnight, Real Mary, 15-24). We have been enculturated to think of redemption as both (almost exclusively) individual and (almost entirely) spiritual. Not for Mary. Notice how physical and political and national her sense of redemption is. Rulers dethroned, the poor enthroned, the hungry filled with food, and the rich sent packing. This is a “political manifesto” (Levine-Witherington, Luke, 42), a prediction that a great reversal happens in the redemption of Mary’s son. All these bring to fulfillment the promise to Abraham that the people of Israel would someday flourish into abundance. Just open your Bibles to watch these redemptive blessings unfold when John himself preaches (3:7-14), when Jesus preaches (4:16-30) and then explains himself to John (7:18-23), all of which will come to fruition in Luke’s second book, Acts (2:42-47; 4:32-35).

This courageous woman’s song about the son of redemption is a song about holistic redemption. Only a holistic redemption fits the pattern of scripture’s expectations for the messianic kingdom. And here’s the foundation of it all: Mary’s song is about her son, Jesus, the Son of God, the Son of the Most High, the messiah, and the Lord. He is the one who brings this redemption. This redemption cannot be reduced to ethics, morality, or even what we call social justice. Its foundation is a Person and in that Person holistic redemption explodes into living realities.

1. How does the Mary depicted in this section compare to the Mary often depicted in Christian art, especially around Christmas?

2. What are the tangible, political, holistic themes in Mary’s song?

3. Look up Hannah’s song in 1 Samuel 2:1-10. What parallels (or “rhymes”) do you see with Mary’s song?

4. What words in this passage describe God? Compare this to Psalm 136. What similarities do you find?

5. What emotions do you notice in this narrative and particularly in the Magnificat?

Scot McKnight, The Real Mary: Why Protestant Christians Can Embrace the Mother of Jesus (Brewster, Mass.: Paraclete, 2016).

Barbara Brown Taylor, The Preaching Life (Lanham, Maryland: Cowley, 1993).