The Magnificat is the beautiful song for which Mary is famous—Luke 1:46b-55. She sings it after she visits her relative Elizabeth—Luke 1:39-45. For years “Aunt” Elizabeth bore the shame of being a barren woman. Now, she was expecting a child. The child apparently gave a good solid kick at the moment Mary entered the threshold of Zechariah and Elizabeth’s house. Coincidence? Maybe so. But Archbishop William Temple reminds us that, “Coincidences tend to happen more frequently when God is involved.” Elizabeth certainly viewed it as a God-moment, and it seems that seeing Elizabeth so happy as she prepared to welcome her own “miracle baby” definitely impacted Mary’s attitude toward her own unplanned birth. Maybe, just maybe, what the Angel told her was true: Nothing is impossible with God. Maybe, she, an unwed teenage girl. could really do this thing.
But think about all that happens before she arrives at that moment. Take for example, that first night after Gabriel’s visitation. What was Mary feeling then, as she tossed and turned in her bed?
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| Image credit: America: The Jesuit Review |
What am I going to tell Joseph? In Luke’s version of events, it’s Mary that hears from the angel—not Joseph. Even if we combine Matthew 1:18-25 and Luke 1:26-38 and assume both parties in this drama God was orchestrating were “visited” by Gabriel, Mary doesn’t know at first that Joseph has had his own dream/visitation—and vice versa.
Forget Joseph. What am I going to tell my parents?! Imagine the conversation, “Um, mom, dad, I’m with child..... Oh, but fear not! The Holy Spirit is the father.” This is going to cause a scandal the likes of which this small town hasn’t seen in years. Her family’s reputation would be ruined. Her father would be so ashamed of her.
My favorite song in the movie Frozen 2 was “The Next Right Thing”. Anna sings it at a moment in the movie when all seems lost, when she thinks her beloved sister Elsa is gone, and the whole enterprise of saving their beloved kingdom of Arendelle now rests upon her shoulders. But when I heard them, they sounded like they could be a soundtrack to Mary’s initial response to the Annunciation.
I’ve seen dark before, but not like this.
This is cold, this is empty, this is numb
The life I knew is over, the lights are out
Hello darkness, I’m ready to succumb.
I follow you around, I always have
But you’ve gone to a place I cannot find
The grief has a gravity, it pulls me down
But a tiny voice whispers in my mind
You are lost, hope is gone
But you must go on
And do the next right thing.
Can there be a day beyond this night?
I don’t know any more what is true
I can’t find my direction, I’m all alone
The only star that guided me was you
For Mary, that first night after the angel left her, I imagine it seems like all is dark, cold, empty, numb. I think we may underestimate the grief she feels, the sense that the life she had planned is now ruined. Indeed, there is much for Mary to fear and grieve in this moment. It had to be an eerie feeling. She feels like she doesn’t belong in the scene she is living. I know something about how that feels, I felt it in 2008, when the best doctors in the world essentially told me there was nothing more that medical science could do to save my daughter’s life. Like Mary, it would be up to me (and my wife) to figure out the next right thing to do for her.
Anna begins singing about her sister Elsa, whom she sort of “worshipped”. You can see why. Elsa was the one with all the magical ice manipulation powers. Compared to her sister, Anna didn’t think she was all that important. But, the plot of the Frozen movies shows that she was in fact a vital cog in the story. It was her “true love’s kiss” that thawed Elsa in Frozen; and her courageous acts, when she thought Elsa was dead, that helped save the kingdom in Frozen 2.
Similarly, as a young Jewish female living in a backwater outpost of Caesar’s Rome, Mary would not have viewed herself as important. Mary even comments on the irony of God choosing to work through such a meek and lowly one in the Magnificat—Luke 1:48. Nevertheless, all her life Mary has followed God. She has been taught the stories of her people and has obeyed God to the best of her ability. She could say of her walk with God what Anna said of Elsa: I follow you around, I always have. In other words, I’ve been faithful.
Gabriel’s visit, however, took Mary “off the map “as it were—to a place she cannot find in any of the ancient stories of her faith. Yes, barren women have conceived on occasion (like her “Aunt” Elizabeth), but what about a teenage virgin?! Did she remember the more obscure reference about a "young woman" conceiving from the Prophet Isaiah in that moment—Isaiah 7:14? According to the Angel, Mary is “highly favored” and is to become the “Mother” of God via a “Holy Spirit”. I think it’s safe to say her faith is shaken to the core by this unexpected news. This is not familiar territory for her, and she doesn’t know how to navigate it. For a while, she can’t find her direction. The star that guided her has suddenly been snuffed out. She’s all alone—in the dark. How frightening it is to go one-on-one with God in the dark. (Remember Jacob at Peniel—Genesis 32:22-32.)
I remember experiencing similar emotions after our daughter Hope passed from life support to life eternal two days after she and her identical twin sister Rebecca were born. The first few days after she died were completely surreal—like I was living through a scene where I didn’t belong. (I have a journal of those days or I likely wouldn’t remember much.) There was this sense of standing in the rubble of my faith. All that I used to take for granted about the nature of God was called into question. Before then I think I naïvely assumed such “bad things” happened to “other people”—but faithful me would be spared. I found out the hard way that tragedy is no respecter of faith persuasion. Now, what I assumed would never happen had happened, and I had to make sense of it. The “sacred was torn from my life and yet [I] survived”. Where did that leave me? Where was a good and loving God in this tragedy of my wife and I were living through?
You can see why this line from the song really resonated with me: You are lost, Hope is gone. But you must go on and do the next right thing. By God’s grace, I think my wife and I did.
How to rise from the floor?
But it’s not you I’m rising for
Just do the next right thing
Take a step, step again
It is all that I can to do
The next right thing
I won’t look too far ahead
It’s too much for me to take
But break it down to this next breath
This next step
This next choice is one that I can make
In the weeks and months after our daughter died, my wife and I had to figure out how to rise from the floor. In our case, it helped that an infant and a toddler depended on us to care for them when we got home. Even if we had wanted to (which we did some days) we couldn’t exactly ball up the fetal position. There were others who needed us to “rise”. “Normal” life went on in the world despite our personal tragedy. That was both comforting and disconcerting at the same time. The grief has a gravity that pulls you down. As a meteorologist, I likened the feeling to that of an oppressive summer day, which has a way of sucking the life out of you—only it was every day. Some days, it was all that we could do, but we had to find a way to do the next right thing. We couldn’t look too far ahead, but we could choose life each day, we could break it down to this next breath, this next step. We found that the next choice was one we could make.
I can only imagine that Mary may have felt a little bit like that when she found out she was expecting. Her world was thrown out of whack and it would take time to adjust. Within a few weeks it becomes clear she is in fact pregnant. Suddenly, she has this miraculous conception growing within her. She may not know exactly how it got there, but that almost doesn’t matter. The fact is: it’s there. That child was depending on her to find within herself the courage to rise from the floor and do the next right thing. Somehow, she chose to trust God even if she no longer understood God—Luke 1:38.
So, I’ll walk through this night
Stumbling blindly toward the light
And do the next right thing?
And with the dawn, what comes then?
When it’s clear that everything will never be the same again
Then I’ll make the choice
To hear that voice
And do the next right thing.
And with the dawn what comes then? That was the question for Mary—and for all us when it comes to living a life of faith.
When my daughter died, it rapidly became clear to my wife and I that everything will never be the same again. Eleven years later, we’ve found a new “normal”; we’ve made as much peace as one ever makes with tragedy of losing a child. You don’t “get over it” as many assumed we would—and should. We’ve made Hope’s story part of our own. We visit where her earthly remains lie a few times a year, including a visit each year around Christmas. Our kids know they had a sister; Becca knows keenly that someone is missing from her life.
I can’t help but think that after Gabriel’s visit. Mary also must have felt: Everything will never be the same again. In her case, the life that she thought she would live as Joseph’s wife was over before it began. If she could believe the Angel’s message, God was about to do a new and amazing thing for the world through her. But Mary couldn’t see the new thing yet; she had to trust it was there with her, in the darkness of her womb. I’m guessing it was never an easy choice for her to make—and especially early on, before there was visible evidence that she was pregnant.
But then here’s the kicker, not only did Mary have to trust herself, she had to find the courage to ask others (most notably Joseph, her fiancé) to trust in that unseen newness too—before they could see it. In the male-dominated world of her day Mary knew she had to have Joseph’s support to even have a chance that this birth might actually come to pass. A hard conversation—and a difficult journey—still lied ahead for both of them for the child—and the new world God was inaugurating through his birth—to be born. As she walked to visit her fiancé, what must Mary have felt? Surely, she still had many questions and doubts. First and foremost: Did what I think happened really happen? But, no matter how impossible it seemed, she had to tell him. The little voice inside tells her she can do no other. The outcome was not in her hands; she couldn’t control how Joseph would react—but somehow that was okay. As she had done her whole life, Mary wrestled with God over her decision, and we are all blessed because she made the choice to hear that voice and do the next right thing.
