…Magnificat anima mea Dominum; Et exultavit spiritus meus in Deo Salutari meo. -Luke 1:46-47
This coming Sunday brings to a close our Advent series for 2015, which we entitled “Kingdom Come.” The series has been an attempt to focus our attention this advent season not only on the first advent of Messiah, but on his second advent as well. As I said in the first message in this series a few weeks ago, we are promised two advents of the Son of God and Son of Man in Scripture. One down, one to go.
We wrap up our series this week with another passage from Luke’s gospel. This particular passage comes down to us with a title attached by the early church Fathers: the Magnificat. The term comes to us from the first word used by Mary in her prayer (in Latin). Her first sentence is quoted for you in the Latin above, translated into English as, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.” Of course, Mary wasn’t praying in Latin; it was almost assuredly a prayer uttered in Aramaic, but Latin was the official language of the Roman Empire, and the early church cut its teeth under the authority of Rome. Hence the title and the existence of over 10,000 biblical manuscripts that have come down to us in Latin.
The goal Sunday will be to learn from Mary about the character of the God she believed in and trusted, who remains the same God that we serve today (Heb. 13:8). Even as a young teenager, Mary knew about the character of God. Like any Jewish child born to godly Jewish parents, she would have been instructed from an early age about the wonders of the God of Israel and his relationship to his people. Her prayer demonstrates this knowledge and has much to teach us concerning God. It may be uncomfortable for some to use Mary’s prayer as a tool for learning. There is much misunderstanding concerning this godly woman from Scripture, and we’ll talk about this some on Sunday. We hear that the Roman Catholics worship Mary, and so, like many things that Protestants have thrown out, we miss much good in our attempt to deny what we see – or have heard – is bad. We will learn from this Scripture Sunday as we learn from any other Scripture, and we will not worship Mary in the process. Incidentally, Roman Catholics do not worship the Virgin Mary either; the technical term for their exaltation of Mary and other saints is “veneration.” Veneration looks a lot like worship to most Protestants, and at times for good reason. I do not agree with the Catholic view of veneration, but that will not be the point of our exploration of this passage on Sunday. I do, however, believe that Mary was a blessed woman, and a woman we should honor, as we honor all the godly men and women who have gone before us in the faith and have given us an example to live by, as the writer of Hebrews clearly encouraged (see Hebrews 11).
God is a great God. Mary knew that, and she exulted in that knowledge when God had confirmed the things he had promised to her during a visit to her relative Elizabeth, who was also pregnant at that time (not via the miracle of immaculate conception, as with Mary, but by the grace of God in her advanced years), carrying in her womb the man we know as John the Baptist. Hopefully Sunday we’ll all walk away with a greater appreciation for the character of our God and will exult in him with Mary.
Grace and peace,
Pastor Jym