Spiritual Hiccups - "Singing Ahead of Time"

In yesterday's gospel, Mary appears as a model disciple who willingly answers God's call.  But today Mary is a prophet, singing ahead of time (to borrow the title of a Barbara Brown Taylor sermon).  Mary is barely even pregnant, but she sings that God "has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts... has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly... has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty."  Not that God will do these things but God has done these things.

As Barbara Brown Taylor notes in her sermon, prophets are forever getting their verb tenses wrong.  Biblical prophets generally do not predict the future in the mode of psychics or crystal ball gazers.  Rather they have a clearer sense of what God is up to, a better feel for the ways the world operates at odds with God's plans, and so a better sense of where that all leads.  And since Mary has already experienced God acting through the baby growing in her womb, she speaks of where this will end up as though it has already happened.

As much as many of us love Christmas, I'm not so sure we like where Mary sees things headed.  We're fine with the lowly and the hungry being helped out, but not so sure about the powerful and the rich being brought down.  We're not as sure about this reign of God that Mary experiences as already present in some way.

I know that I do not like to think that the abundance I enjoy is in any way a factor in others being kept down, in others being poor, powerless, and hungry.  I don't like to contemplate the possibility that I need to be brought down a few notches for the things to be set right.  And so I'd prefer to celebrate the joy of Christmas without seeing where it leads.  I'd rather not sing ahead of time with Mary.  I'd rather sing "Glory to God in the highest" along with the angels, visit the manger with the shepherds, say I'm glad that God is at work in the world, and leave it at that.  Jesus is simply a lot less trouble if all he ever does is get born and the rise from the dead at Easter.

I've said this before but think it bears repeating.  I think the Church lost its bearings when way back in the days of Constantine, it made an alliance with the powerful and the rich that required relocating the reign of God Mary sees to some heavenly bliss after we die.  But Mary doesn't say, "In heaven things will be different."  She does not speak of us going to a better place.  She speaks of God transforming this place by radically reordering things.  She says it is happening even now, but apparently God's Spirit must already be at work in us if we are to see it.

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