There is a beautiful story told about George Friedrich Handel. He was at the height of his career. He had been summoned to Italy by the Medici Prince Cosmo the third. While there, he wrote his great Italian operas Rodrigo and Agrippino. With all the success, he was not happy with his music. He thought it lacked the dimension of depth that he strove for and could not attain.
One sleepless night, he heard the most beautiful song coming through his open window. It was a song of a Nightingale. But it was more beautiful than that of any other Nightingale he had ever heard before. For the first time you heard a song that had that certain something that he had been struggling to produce throughout his life. It had totally evaded him. For the first time, he was experiencing the very essence of true music that had evaded him for so long. All of a sudden, the beautiful song stopped. There was a long silence. Handel waited with bated breath for the song to continue, for he felt the song had only just begun. He had experienced ecstasy the likes of which he had never experienced before. Just when he was getting the feel of the song in his heart, the song stopped. His heart became empty and void.
The next morning very early he went into the garden. He tried to position himself at the very place where the Nightingale seemed to be. Suddenly at his feet he saw the lifeless body of a little bird that had touched him so deeply with his song. Suddenly it dawned on him that he had listened to the death song of the nightingale. He picked up the lifeless body and caressed it with his tender hands. This little bird had taught him the deepest lesson. He had learned the essence of true music. One really cannot really feel the song and sing it until one has suffered deeply.
Handel did not know that the song of this beautiful little nightingale was the gift to him that would soon help him produce the kind of music he longed to produce. He did not know that the dimension and depth of feeling would only come when his own life had been deeply crushed, as he walked through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. His fame soon brought him to England, where he became director of the Royal Academy of music under his patron George III. As the years went on, Handel began to burnout. Other musicians pushed him and out of the center of things. In 1737, he found himself bankrupt, with scarcely enough money to keep body and soul together. To make things worse, he suffered a massive stroke.
Friends took him to a Aix-De-Chappelle on the French Riviera. He hoped to die in peace. Instead, his friend nursed him back to health. He returned to England and he received one last commission from the King to compose a religious oratorio for the Coronation of his son George IV. He worked day and night for six weeks and produced his great masterpiece: “The Messiah.” The score of the music was not his best. But for the first time in “The Messiah,” he captured the soul of his music. His music had the dimension of depth and feeling he had sought now attained. The true song came after his life had been poured into the Crucible of suffering.
This morning I want to talk about Mary’s song, which I call the first Christmas Carol. The song has been called the “Magnificat of Mary.” The word Magnificat is a Greek word that has been translated as “magnifies the Lord.” A better translation of the first line of the song is “my soul sings out the greatness of the Lord, in my spirit finds delight in God my savior.”
There’s been a great deal of discussion of the authenticity of this song. Luke puts it in the mouth of the young maiden Mary, who has been singled out by God to be the mother of the Messiah. However, the song is such depth and background of knowledge that it just does not seem to fit the setting. Mary’s experience was limited at that time, for her to produce a song with dimension and depth, but that is in the story.
Scholars have concluded that Luke found this song somewhere and he fit it into the story. But no one has come up with a possible author for this song other than Mary. I do not have any problems with the idea that the writer Luke, who is perhaps the best writer in the New Testament, would put this song into the mouth of Mary the words may have been those of an early Christian poet, and Luke put the words on lips of the Madonna.
But I would like to suggest another possibility. I got this idea a year and a half ago as I stood before Michelangelo’s beautiful pieta that stands in the narthex of Saint Peter’s Cathedral in Rome. This is the most beautiful sculpture in all the world and for all time. How Michelangelo could take a chisel and a hammer to a block of marble and portray the beauty and feelings that come through in this sculpture is beyond comprehension. Most of us know the sculpture. The body of the crucified Christ has been taken down from the cross and has been placed in loving arms of his mother, so she can hold her son for the last time. As you look at the sculpture, you literally experience the deep feelings that seem to be going back and forth between the mother and her son now dead. It seems to you can see a tear trickle down the right cheek of the holy mother.
Suddenly, it dawned on me this may have been the moment of rebirth for Mary, parallel to the moment of rebirth in the life of Handel, when he heard the Nightingale song and experienced the pain in his crushing moment. Mary surely become one of the pillars in the early church. I’m sure she broke down some of her feelings and perhaps later in her life she wrote this beautiful song. Maybe Luke discovered this song during his research, and he decided to include it in the story where it really fits. In fact, it may have been like the Nightingale song for Mary. She had to experience the pangs of death and the pangs of crucifixion, before she really understood what the Christmas story was about.
In her beautiful song Mary shows that she knew the Old Testament story of Hannah. She captured the old Israel story and related it beautifully to the Christmas story. She modeled her song after the beautiful song of Hannah in the Old Testament. Somehow new beginnings for God always begins with the birth of a baby. Hannah’s baby was one of those children. Hannah had felt deep pain when she wrote her song. She had been childless and close to the end time of her childbearing years. Women in her day women were considered under the curse of God if they were childless. They were made to feel they had let down their husbands and not giving him a posterity. The father needed a son to carry on his name. So, she went to the only place she knew that held possible hope, the temple of Yahweh. She prayed to be entrusted to have a son, and God answered her prayer. Therefore, she wrote a beautiful song that told how Yahweh had delivered her from her moment of barrenness, disappointment, and shame. You can find this beautiful song of liberation in the Old Testament in Samuel 2 verses 1-8.
The Mary story has been a source of inspiration for many in the 20th century who have worked with the oppressed. Fifty years ago, Dr. E. Stanley Jones was working with the oppressed in India, as a second Gandhi. Some called him a Christian Gandhi. He brought the Christians of India and the whole Church of India to a social consciousness that the church could not live in an ivory tower. It must be an advocate of the oppressed among its people. He saw Mary annunciate the three great revolutions of mankind in her beautiful song.
1. He was scattered the proud in the imaginations of their hearts, this is for him the great moral revolution. Christianity is the death of pride. When Christ becomes the Lord of all life, he enables the individual to put away false pride and to look with eyes of compassion on the needs of humankind in the world. Self-centeredness gives way to life to love, love that reaches beyond the self to bring our other selves into the secret circle of love. This circle is all inclusive.
2. He cast down the mighty—he exalts the humble. This is the social revolution. Christ puts away the world of false labels and false prestige. Centers the concern of the world on the poor and the oppressed, the humble, the left-out ones. Mary herself was one of the left-out ones until Christ came along and lifted her to the place of honor.
3. He was filled with those who are hungry, those who are rich he sent away hungry. This is the economic revolution. It is the sharing time in the world. Jesus has set the focus of the world on the have nots. So, open the hearts of the haves to not grab after more, but to open their hearts and their hands and give what they have to the poor and the needy.
Some of the great women theologians of our time see Mary’s song as the hymn of liberation for all oppressed and especially for women. The Theologian Letty Russell has perhaps the best interpretation of Mary’s song comes from the gospel writer Matthew. He sees Mary as a lark typical of the Virgin Mary of Israel. She represents the deepest and best of Israel. The true Israel of the prophets, who never gave in to the appeal of the false gods of greed avarice and self-centeredness. This is the real Israel that produced the Christ child/Messiah in the moment of Israel’s deepest pain. She is mother of Israel who sings, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my savior.”
This is also the story of the early church and perhaps of the first Christian Carol. The early Christian oppressed on every hand, with the Romans breathing down their neck. They had been called to be the children of God by the son of God. Harvey Cox in his book Feast of Fools talks about the celebration being the way of the oppressed people to bear their oppression. LIke Handel, life is empty until we find our song. Christmas is the time to find our song. Mary’s song can give us the clue to come to the manager of Bethlehem and empty ourselves and let him in.
Mary’s Song
And Mary said: “My soul glorifies the Lord
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has been mindful
of the humble state of his servant.
From now on all generations will call me blessed,
for the Mighty One has done great things for me—
holy is his name.
His mercy extends to those who fear him
from generation to generation.
He has performed mighty deeds with his arm;
he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.
He has brought down rulers from their thrones
but has lifted up the humble.
He has filled the hungry with good things
but has sent the rich away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel,
remembering to be merciful
to Abraham and his descendants forever,
just as he promised our ancestors.”
(Luke 1: 46-55)
Reverend Arthur Schwabe Blog 