Saint Margaret’s
Anglican Church
Budapest, Hungary
Micah 5:2-5a; Hebrews 10:5-10; Luke 1:39-45,
(46-55); Canticle 15
Mary…hurried to a town in Judea’s hill country.
If asked to name a subversive figure of the ancient world, one might be tempted to
mention Socrates, who was famously put to death by his political opponents for
corrupting the minds of the youth of Athens by teaching them to think for themselves,
a dangerous thing to do in any age. Still, Socrates in my opinion, has nothing on the
Evangelist Luke when it comes to subversive thought and literature. And while we do
not know much more about the life of Luke than we do about the life of Socrates,
Luke’s writings have at least survived, while those of Socrates have not.
The writings of Luke, whoever he was exactly, make up a whopping twenty-eight
percent of the New Testament, making his corpus larger than that of any other New
Testament author, including Paul. Which is saying something. Luke is responsible by
the way not only for his eponymous Gospel but also for the Acts of the Apostles. His
two works span the history of early Christianity from our Lord’s birth to Paul’s
Conversion and his evangelistic journeys among the Gentiles.
Luke is responsible for some of the New Testament’s most famous parables, such as
those of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son; for all their beauty, about as
subversive of the established order as anything Socrates may have ever said or done
as recorded in Plato’s Dialogues. Imagine it: Helping the downtrodden and forgiving
unconditionally. Talk about seditious. And we have quite possibly the most
revolutionary and dangerous of Luke’s writings, arguably of the entire New
Testament, before us this morning in the story of Mary and Elizabeth.
Indeed, I suppose one could say with some justification that the Visit of Mary to her
elderly relative Elizabeth, and Mary’s proclamation of the Magnificat, are in
themselves summaries of the entire Gospel and its message of Good News for all
people, not just the rich and famous, not just the well-connected and privileged.
Consider…
Mary, already pregnant with our Lord, makes her way determinedly from her home in
Nazareth to the Judean hill country to visit Elizabeth, who is also pregnant. Quite ajourney, for Nazareth and Judea are separated by a good two hundred or so
kilometers; a journey reminding us as well of our Lord’s later journeys from Galilee to
Jerusalem and of Paul’s travels from Damascus to, well, practically everywhere.
Mary’ response to Elizabeth’s greeting in a sense becomes the first proclamation of
the Gospel, the first proclamation of Christ’s coming into our world and into our lives.
It is not for nothing, I believe, that Luke puts this first pronouncement of what Christ’s
Gospel is really about in the mouth of a poor, pregnant, peasant women in an
unnamed village of no account in the hill country of Judea. A no-place, if there ever
was one.
And so, here is Mary declaring, almost blurting out, some of the most dangerous and
seditious words ever spoken. As our contemporary translation this morning has it,
Mary proclaims that God “has scattered those who are proud… He has brought down
rulers from their thrones. He has lifted up people who are not considered important.
He has filled with good things those who are hungry. And he has sent away empty
those who are rich.” Tell that to the entitled political and financial elites of any age. I
suppose it was a good thing for Mary that only Elizabeth was there to hear her
rebellious and revolutionary words.
If we had nothing left of the Gospels but these words of Mary, some sages tells us, we
would still understand the essence of the Christ’s Gospel message, that God has
indeed blessed and visited his people and given them a saviour; that he has turned
aside the high and mighty and favoured the lowly; that he has fed the poor and
remembered his promises of old. In other words, all the things that Jesus himself
would go on to proclaim and teach during his lifetime are found here in Mary’s words
to Elizabeth.
It has been said that during the period of Empire in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, the prelates of the imperial powers would discourage their missionaries
from teaching the native peoples the Magnificat. I hope it was not so, but it does have
the ring of truth. For, the Magnificat, like the Gospel itself, has the power to stir
emotion, just as Mary’s greeting to Elizabeth stirred emotion in the yet-unborn John.
Better not to give the native peoples of the young and growing European Empires, it
must have been thought, any unpleasant ideas about power and might. About change
and revolution.
So, who would have thought that humble Mary was such a radical. A radical feminist
even. But there it is in Scripture. She proclaims what might be called a great reversal,
not perhaps of the world economy as we know it, but of God’s upside-down economy
and of human understanding and wisdom. The last shall indeed be first. Not even
Socrates thought of that. So, be very careful the next time you pray the Magnificat.
It might be prudent to close the doors and close the drapes and not let anyone hearyou. After all, the Magnificat, like the Incarnation it proclaims, has changed
everything.
It does not get much more subversive than that.
The Rev. Dr. Frank Hegedűs
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