Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.”

Luke 1:47

‘Tis the Sunday before Christmas, and throughout the world, Christians are celebrating the birth of our Lord.

Well, not quite. We are close to celebrating his birth, but we are not quite there yet. We’re concluding our observance of the Season of Advent, surely the most counter-cultural season of the church year. 

The rest of the world is almost tired of Christmas by now, and we haven’t even started celebrating it yet. But we’re getting close. At our church, we’ve now had our Children’s Christmas Pageant along with a wonderful concert by Paul and Sophia, “Christmas with the Chandleys.” And we are just two days from having our Christmas Eve Candlelight Worship Services. 

So, it seems fitting this Sunday that our gospel reading (Luke 1:39-55) would turn our attention to the one who you might say gave birth to it all: Mary, mother of our Lord. And in this sermon time with you, I thought that I would simply reflect on what Mary can teach us about how to celebrate Christmas. Who better to do this than Mary, after all.  

The Mother of Our Lord

Mary is arguably the most important woman who has ever lived. She was chosen, out of all the women in the world throughout history, to give birth to God’s only Son, Jesus. 

In today’s reading, when Elizabeth, Mary’s elder, greets young Mary, it is with these words: 

“Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me?” 

Elizabeth recognized Mary’s importance right away. She is the mother of our Lord. So, what can the mother of our Lord teach us about to celebrate the birth of her son?

What Does Mary Do?

First, before we even get to Mary’s own words, her actions teach something important. As soon as Mary heard from the angel Gabriel that her relative, Elizabeth, was also pregnant, who conceived in her old age even though she had been barren, Mary set out and “went with haste” to be with Elizabeth. 

Maybe it was because she knew that Elizabeth would actually believe her wild tale of getting a visit from an angel and being told that she would give birth to God’s son. Maybe it was to spend some time processing all of this with Elizabeth and learning what all this means. Maybe it was to get away from Nazareth, where there would surely be lots of uncomfortable talk and gossip. Or maybe it was simply to help Elizabeth in her pregnancy. 

But, whatever the reason, Mary chose to spend this significant time in her life among family, and in particular with her elders, and doesn’t that teach us something about how to celebrate Christmas? With family, with our elders, with people who can teach us, and with people who need us? I certainly think so.

What Does Mary Say?

After Elizabeth greeted Mary with those wonderful words, Mary responded back with a very famous passage known as “The Magnificat.” It is arguably the most well-known and important Christian hymn ever written. “The Magnificat,” so-called because that is the first word of it in Latin. 

Mary’s song echoes another famous song in the Bible – Hannah’s, from 1 Samuel. And this in itself shows us that Mary knew God’s Word very well, and that it formed the way that she responded to her unique calling. Mary teaches us the importance of always seeing our story in light of God’s story, even when our story doesn’t look anything like Mary’s. Mary saw her story through the lens of God’s story, and especially through the lens of Hannah, who also had a miracle baby, the prophet Samuel. 

And like Hannah, Mary responded to this miracle by singing God’s praise. A song we call the Magnificat. And this song of Mary’s has a great deal to teach us about how to celebrate Christmas. And to keep it simple, I’ve selected three things that it can teach us.

Magnify the Lord?

The first is found in the very first line of this great passage, when Mary says: “My soul magnifies the Lord.” 

When we hear the word, magnify, we probably think of a magnifying glass, which makes something appear bigger than it actually is. And this kind of begs the question: How can we make God appear bigger than he already is? We can’t make God any bigger than he already is, right? 

But can we make God a bigger part of our lives? Can we make God a bigger part of our world? Can we magnify the Lord in this way? Yes, I think so. 

We certainly can magnify the Lord’s place in our lives and in our world. We can make sure that magnifying the Lord is at the top of our to-do list. We can make sure that serving God, praising him, hallowing his name, and bringing him glory is first on the list of what we plan to do today and every day. 

This is surely what Mary did. And it is what we are called to do, too.

He Must Increase, We Must Decrease

Next, Mary tells us that she rejoices in God her Savior because he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. What defines Mary, as much as anything else, is her humility. Mary is never magnifying herself. She is always magnifying the Lord. 

Mary could have boasted, to be sure. I mean, who would have more reason to boast than the one chosen to give birth to God’s Son, the Savior of the world? 

But Mary is humble before the Lord. She knows that she needs this Savior as much as any of us. And she is grateful for this gift. 

What better way to celebrate Christmas than to recognize, in all humility, our need for Jesus, our need for a Savior? 

It makes me think of something that Elizabeth’s son, John the Baptist, would one day say of Jesus: “He must increase, I must decrease.”

Christ must increase. I must decrease. Magnify the Lord. Micrify ourselves. 

Micrify isn’t a very common word, I know, but it is a word – I looked it up! – and it is the opposite of magnify. And I think it is the perfect word to describe the humility that Mary displays, and John the Baptist, and all followers of Jesus. We magnify the Lord even as we micrify ourselves. 

So, to celebrate Christmas with Mary, we can magnify the Lord, and micrify ourselves. 

What Does God Do?

Mary goes on to magnify the Lord in a very specific way – by celebrating all that God has done for her and for the world. And when you look at Mary’s specific words of praise, they really remind you that part of what it means to celebrate Christmas is to recognize just how revolutionary this birth really is. 

Mary says of God that he “scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones … he sent the rich away empty.” God does this through the miracle of Christmas: 

By choosing lowly Mary to give birth to the king of kings. And by choosing, in due time, to have this son born and laid in a lowly manger. This was God’s choice. And it reveals who God is. 

There is no room in the stable, in other words, for the proud, the arrogant, those who trust in power and riches. Christmas overturns the traditional way of looking at the world. 

The Manger and the Cross

Listen to how Dietrich Bonhoeffer puts it in a sermon on this passage, which he preached in London in 1933: 

“For those who are great and powerful in this world, there are two places where their courage fails them, which terrify them to the very depths of their souls, and which they dearly avoid. These are the manger and the cross of Jesus Christ.” 

The manger and the cross are the two scariest places in the world for those who put their trust in wealth and power. Why? Because trusting these things makes it hard to trust God. And seeing how God chooses to act in the world, especially through the manger and the cross, shows how unimportant wealth and power is to God.

The manger is a scary place for those who trust in wealth and power because it clearly shows that wealth and power don’t matter to God. Mary and Joseph do not have wealth or power. And their firstborn son does not even have a comfortable place to lay his head. His first crib is a feeding trough for animals. 

Wealth and power and material comfort do not matter to God. Faithfulness does. Humility does. Trust does. Obedience does. Love does. Mercy does. And Mary demonstrates all of this in beautiful, memorable ways. 

Shepherds and Magi

This is not to say that wealth and power are in and of themselves bad. Think for a moment of who came to the manger, and who didn’t. The shepherds came to the manger. They are obviously not rich and powerful. 

But the magi also came to the manger. They were rich, enough to make this long, expensive journey and to offer valuable gifts. The magi show us that wealth and power are not bad in themselves. But the magi did not place their trust in their riches. They were looking for the newborn king, to worship him. 

Along the way, they met with Herod. The very picture of wealth and power. Herod is one of those that avoided coming to the manger. He stayed right in Jerusalem. And he ordered every child in Bethlehem under the age of two to be killed in a desperate attempt to subvert God’s will. The manger was a place where Herod dared not go. Because the manger, like the cross, is a place which terrifies those who trust in wealth and power. 

Closing

So, what does all this teach us? That to celebrate Christmas rightly, to celebrate it with Mary, the mother of Lord, we must go to the manger, and we must go to the cross. We must humble ourselves, and open our hearts and souls to Jesus. We must seek to magnify the Lord in everything we do, and micrify ourselves. 

Christmas is all about Jesus. Not us. And when we get that right, then our souls truly can’t help but magnify the Lord. And, when we do that, when we celebrate Christmas with Mary, then we can’t help but join with her in singing God’s praise. We can’t help but bless Mary, as she prophesied in her song of praise. And we even dare to exclaim with Mary that all generations will also call us blessed. 

Why? Because of the child lying in the manger, the one we magnify, today and always. For unto us a child is born, who is Christ the Lord. Let our souls magnify the Lord, and our spirits rejoice in God our Savior. Amen.