Our Song

I preached this last Summer at the Feast of the Virgin Mary Holy Eucharist at the UGA Episcopal Center. I had a really great time there and enjoyed hanging out with Fr. Dann Brown and the Epsicopal students.


This is the first pilgrimage I have made to your blessed city for Church. Most of my life, I have come here for music- but now I get to come and talk about music of a different sort-the Magnificat, or the Song of Mary.

It’s fitting that I get to preach about a song in Athens. Athens is a city where many songs that have been a part of my life have been created.

Play any REM song off their first 4 or 5 album-
you are listening to the soundtrack for my first two years of college.

Play any song off of “Fables of the Reconstruction,” in particular (and my sentimental favorite of REM albums) and you’ll hear songs with strong musical memories that are tagged with North Georgia, in particular.

There’s an old song they did called “Driver 8” that I think is my song every time I hear it. It seems like Michael Stipe and company wrote that song for me because

Every time I hear that song I think about, well,
driving to Athens. I see the long stretch of road between Gainesville and Athens. When Michael Stipe sings, “The power lines have floaters so the airplanes don’t get snagged..”

I see those giant orange balls on the power lines on the side of the road through Arcade and Pendegrass. Whenever I see those floaters on the power lines, wherever I am, I sing that line from driver 8.
I’ve incorporated the song into my life—it is my song.

There are hundreds of other songs that are incorporated into my life and I am sure yours as well. We could spend all night talking about this- listing them:

Any song by Journey takes me back to any day of my freshman year of high school.

Any song off of Who’s Next or Quadrophenia makes me remember riding around with my High School buddy and tennis partner John Carter in his green 1974 Gran Torino.

Any song by The Police and I think about my best friend from growing up, Scott Adams.

Any hymn in the Baptist Hymnal and I flash the red carpet and humongous chandeliers of First Baptist Gainesville, where I grew up. I remember the boredom of half-hour long sermons and give thanks that I found the Episcopal Church…

The Mozart Alleluia always makes me remember my wedding day because our friend Sharon Blackwood sang it for us.

The folk song “Turn Around” (sing a few lines) guarantees tears from my Mom, wife (or any mother over the age of 30 with children, for that matter.

Our songs remind us of things that are true for us – They help me remember our lives— help us remember where we have been no matter where we happen to be at the moment…

My kids all have songs that are “their songs…” these songs happened to playing in the room while they were, of all things, being born.

Our oldest, Madeline was born to one called “Galileo” by the Indigo Girls.
It’s really weird, But this song is about the difficulties of believing in reincarnation. The singer asks, “How long till my soul gets it right??” I like to think that my daughter feels like her soul has finally gotten it “right” this time around…
Every time I hear it, I think about the moment she was born, which was one of the happiest days of my life. When I hear “Galileo” I often ask the question—how long until our souls get it “right.” What is it that our souls need- what song do we need to get it “right??”

The Gospel Writer gives us what is known as The Magnificat to sum up who he thinks God really us and to help us remember who we really are. He gives us The Magnificat to, maybe, in the words of Amy Ray, help us “get it right.” Luke was pretty sharp in how he took language from the old testament- took a religious Pop song the greek-speaking Jewish people of the day knew and turned it on its head- made it about this new way that Jesus was going to show us.
He gave us a song with notions of God that were entirely different from what people might have thought about God then- from what we think about God now!

Luke hammers home some radically different assumptions about this savior, Jesus.

The Magnificat is kind of ironic, though-a song of hope in spite of the fact that any girl in Mary’s day would, under normal circumstances, be pretty hopeless in her predicament. It’s an anthem of God’s truth and greatness with words we might have heard from a warrior- from a psalmist- from someone of import but yet it is delivered by a nobody. Mary is a kid- some think around 13 years old, an unwed mother to be. She has no immediate prospects for marriage at the moment- she has no reason to believe that Joseph is going to be a good guy and father this child that is not his. She is one of “the lowly”- what they called the anawim in the ancient Hebrew culture Anawim were often looked upon by their community as people who had lost favor with God. Their songs were unheard by the larger community- they were discounted and left for dead by the culture- pariahs. The anawim were the undocumented Mexican laborer of their day, the Federal Prison Inmate, the people I see lining up at the food stamp distribution center downtown- the man who bathes in red mud every morning in my neighborhood, they were those people…

Yet she sings of favor! She rejoices that she is the one to bring Jesus to this world-
This lowly nobody! The mother of Christ!

The Magnificat is no soft, sweet lullaby.

It’s song of revolution and upheaval and change.

Mary’s voice is a voice that we must heed if we are to build God’s kingdom, Luke is telling us. This anawim voice is a voice that tells us who we really are and who we can be.

Our culture today, not unlike the culture Mary was in, is inundated with voices. People have always been oversaturated with white noise from authorities who are all convinced that they know who we are and what we need.

Bob Dylan once sang, “Come gather round people wherever you roam, and admit that the waters around your head grown and accept it that soon you’ll be drenched to the bone.. Oh the times, they are a changing..” Mary’s voice brings us a new song that tells us that times then, indeed, were changing- would keep changing, with the arrival of this Jesus.

A song …that, like all good songs from Dylan and others, calls us to see a world drastically different from the one we know . We are called, with this song, to give this life a different soundtrack. A soundtrack that is radically different from the one that is convinced that some basic, dog eat dog assumptions about the world are true-

It is a song that is as revolutionary as any protest song every penned by Dylan and as full of upheaval. This little girl sings to us that the coming savior will turn the world upside down.
I like what a favorite preacher of mine, Fred Craddock, says- he says Mary’s song has within it not one, but 3 revolutions- that are spiritual, social and economic…
-Spiritual in that God is a God who scatters the proud in the plans of their hearts….
Christianity is the death of pride. With Jesus, we have the freedom to push our needs aside, our wants aside and make room for others through the grace of God. We can look beyond politics NS beyond religion and beyond all the things that we perceive are so important and realize that , in the end, we all need one another and we need God.

Social in that He casts down the mighty and exalts the Humble- a social revolution for us all—Christ, we realize when we really hear this song, died for all humanity.
What Christ did was for everyone so, everyone, in the end, matters. The implications of this are mind-boggling…

Economic, in that “he has filled those who are hungry – those who are rich he has sent away empty..” is, and this is really hard for all us.. economic.. Christ calls us who have to “get so we can give away…” This is a hard one for us, but true.

Making the song of Mary our song is a terrifying leap of faith, isn’t it?
Suddenly, we have a new notion of the messiah that runs counter to everything we are lead to believe about this life from our surrounding culture-Runs counter to our instincts for survival and success.
But, We must seek ways to sing The Magnificat..

Let us challenge assumptions (like the ones we will surely be hammered with in the impending election ) that will galvanize us all into red and blue and (unfortunately) good and evil. Challenge assumptions that make us forget that we are all children of God. Challenge assumptions that make us want more without giving any.

The Magnificat gives us a new soundtrack for our lives that can remind us constantly that we are (and I mean all of us) are and always will be children of God.

The voice that God will give us in the coming days of Advent and Christmas will bring this song to life…

May we remember its sweet melody in the coming year.

And Make the Magnificat our song.