‘My soul magnifies …’ 

Bible study prepared by Andrew
August 2022

Key text: Luke 1:46-55

Themes: Protest, reversal, solidarities …

Readings
1 Samuel 2:1-10

Introduction
“If the Magnificat is a song of protest in a woman’s voice under ancient empire, it should prompt in its readers a listening to contemporary women’s voices in the ongoing imperial, colonial system of invasion, and then allow such listening to speak back to interpretation of the biblical song” (Anne F. Elvey).

Artworks

Image: Julie Dowling, ‘Self portrait: Black bird’, 2002, synthetic polymer paint, red ochre, glitter and metallic paint on canvas, 120 x 100cm. State Art Collection, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Gift of Brigitte Braun, 2017, © Julie Dowling / Copyright Agency.

Image: Ben Wildflower.

Mary’s ‘Magnificat’ in the Bible is revolutionary …

Throughout history … poor and oppressed people had often identified with this song – the longest set of words spoken by a woman in the New Testament (and a poor, young, unmarried pregnant woman at that!).

Oscar Romero, priest and martyr, drew a comparison between Mary and the poor and powerless people in his own community. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor and theologian who was executed by the Nazis, called the Magnificat “the most passionate, the wildest, one might even say the most revolutionary hymn ever sung.”

Revolutionaries, the poor and the oppressed all loved Mary and they emphasized her glorious song. But the Magnificat has been viewed as dangerous by people in power. Some countries – such as India, Guatemala, and Argentina — have outright banned the Magnificat from being recited in liturgy or in public.

And evangelicals – in particular, white evangelicals – have devalued the role of Mary, and her song, to the point that she has almost been forgotten as anything other than a silent figure in a nativity scene.

I asked evangelical Christians on Twitter about the passage, and more than 1,100 responded: 28 per cent said they had never heard the title “Magnificat” (Latin for “magnify”); another 43 per cent said their churches never read or discussed it; 21 per cent said they had encountered it just a few times; and 8 per cent said they read it every year.

Almost all of the popular evangelical songs that incorporate the Magnificat stop after the first few verses. According to Spotify, this version by ZOEgroup is the most popular English-language version of the Magnificat; it leaves out the parts about the rulers being brought down and the rich being sent away.

However, some pastors are trying to bring Mary’s song back into church. Brian Thomas, a former Southern Baptist pastor, said he left his denomination after learning how Protestantism, and evangelicalism in particular, dismissed certain parts of the Bible – including the importance of Mary.

Thomas Irby preached on the Magnificat last year as a response to the #MeToo movement. He spoke of Mary’s physical vulnerability and her courage to share her own story. “Preachers have too often settled for a pliable passage about a devoted woman and the mighty God she serves”, said Irby, an associate pastor at Ashland Place United Methodist Church in Mobile, Ala., which has gained notability as the congregation of former attorney general Jeff Sessions. Irby said he is planning on preaching the Magnificat again this year.

The artist Ben Wildflower grew up evangelical, reading the Bible over and over. Yet he never heard the song of Mary emphasized in church until he started attending an Anglican congregation. There, the Magnificat was a part of the evening prayer in the Book of Common Prayer, and Wildflower found it beautiful and profound. One day he picked up a piece of wood outside of a construction site and crafted an image of Mary that was different from all the sweet pictures of her staring up into heaven. He drew her with her fist raised to the sky, and her foot stepping on a snake. It is now his most popular image.

“She’s a young woman singing a song about toppling rulers from their thrones. She’s a radical who exists within the confines of institutionalized religion,” he said. Some Christians took issue with the political nature of his image, until Wildflower wrote a post explaining the revolutionary text came from the Bible.

Why has this song been forgotten, or trimmed, for so many people who grew up evangelical? It could be a byproduct of the Reformation, which caused Protestants to devalue Mary in reaction to Catholic theology. Or a lack of familiarity with liturgy, and an emphasis on other texts. Or perhaps the song doesn’t sound like good news if you are well fed, or rich, or in a position of power and might — or if you benefit from systems that oppress. How does the Magnificat feel if you aren’t one of the lowly, if you aren’t as vulnerable and humble as Mary?

Theologian Warren Carter writes that in the time of Jesus, 2 to 3 per cent of the population was rich, while the majority lived a subsistence-level existence. “Mary articulates an end to economic structures that are exploitative and unjust. She speaks of a time when all will enjoy the good things given by God.”

This year, I will be reading the Magnificat as it was meant to be read. As Gustavo Gutierrez, a Dominican priest, once wrote, we will miss the meaning of the text with any “attempts to tone down what Mary’s song tells us about the preferential love of God for the lowly and the abused”.

It might not feel like good news to me, exactly, as someone who is neither hungry nor poor. But Mary and her song are good news for my neighbors, both locally and globally, who continue to be crushed under a world that thrives on exploitation and injustice. And as someone who is trying to take the Bible seriously, I know that loving my neighbor is the No. 1 way I can love God in our world.

Mary, no longer just a silent member of the nativity, or a holy womb for God, or an obedient and compliant girl, has become the focal point for how I, and many other Christians, celebrate Christmas while living in the reality of waiting for true justice to come. She has helped me understand the true magnificence of how much God cares about our political, economic and social realities.

The economic and political worldview of many white evangelicals has led to a silencing of Mary and of God’s dream for the world. But now she is helping me trust that the eventual upending of the systems of the world will be good news for me, and for other evangelicals, as well.

D.L. Mayfield
Washington Post, December 20, 2018

Three aspects of religion (three approaches to reading)

1. Poetics (What qualities of language or expression do we notice? Are there key words, phrases or images? What is the tone or feeling of the text?)
2. Ethics (Whose calls for help, whose calls to justice do we perceive? How will we respond?)
3. Metaphysics (Are we offered insights regarding the world? How might we describe or come to experience this world we live in?)

Read the following comments on Luke 1:46-55 and assign each to one or more of the “aspects”. What further questions are raised for you?

1. “Mary sang here about equality. A society with no social classes. Everyone alike” (Mariita, The Gospel in Solentiname).
2. “‘Divinity’ or even ‘God’ … should not be understood as some metaphysical being or entity, nor as the utterly ineffable, but rather as the process of mediation between nature and culture (between body and word, for example), a process that destroys neither but enables those two principal aspects of our being to relate in a manner that cultivates well-being” (Julie Kelso after Luce Irigaray).
3. “Where Mary’s song speaks of divine promise and overturning of oppressions as if this is finished business – though only on the surface of the text – First Nations artists and writers testify to unfinished business. One aspect of this is Treaty. The call to white settler readers is to listen, to listen, to listen, and to change, not to become innocent of invasion but to respond in solidarities that are appropriate from the perspective of First Nations” (Anne F. Elvey).
4. “If the Magnificat is a song of protest in a woman’s voice under ancient empire, it should prompt in its readers a listening to contemporary women’s voices in the ongoing imperial, colonial system of invasion, and then allow such listening to speak back to interpretation of the biblical song” (Anne F. Elvey).
5. “Mary speaks as one whose experience of God as ‘Saviour’ is paradigmatic for the poor and oppressed of all ages, especially women” (Brendan Byrne SJ).
6. “There is an invitation here to Israel (and subsequently to members of the Church) to join her in her song, to make her experience of salvation their own” (Brendan Byrne SJ).

ABNER: We can all experience the vulnerability and faith of Mary.

PAMELA: I think of the words “humble” and also “ashamed”. Do we sing about overcoming shame … the experience of forgiveness … acceptance … or becoming strong … like Aunty Ruby Hunter becomes strong?

HEATHER: From what state or situation is Mary lifted up? 

ANDREW: There’s a word in Native American studies, the word “survivance” (survival and resistance).

The dominant narrative of the demise of traditional Native American culture in the face of colonization, conversion to Christianity, confinement to reservations and economic collapse is, however, not the only story that can be told. The accounts of the lives of Native Americans during the 19th century that are told by Native peoples themselves are strikingly different to those recounted in history books, movies, and all too frequently in museums. Rather than narratives solely recounting destruction and demise, Native stories about Native history tend to focus on what White Earth Ojibwe scholar Gerald Vizenor has called survivance – a narrative incorporating themes of survival and resistance that insist on the inclusion of the Native presence.

Songs

“Better in Blak”
(Thelma Plum, 2019)

Do you know what it feels like
To get calls in the middle of the night
Saying, “You are not worth it
You deserve it
Go on, have another drink”?

Do you know what it feels like
To get stuck in the middle of a fight
Screaming, “You are not worth it
You deserve it
Go on, have another drink”?

But if I just keep quiet
I’ll be the one who’s lying too
Why should I keep hiding
Always crying
Tell me, what did I do?

You took the colour from me
Darling, I’ll get it back
You took the colour from me
But I look better in black

If I knew what I know now
Maybe I would take it back
But fuck that
I look better in black

Do you know what it feels like
To be told that you are never right?
If I had lighter skin, maybe I would win
Does it make you wanna think?

Do you know what it feels like
’Cause I know what it feels like
If I had lighter skin, maybe I would win
Does it make you wanna think?

But if I just keep quiet
I’ll be the one who’s lying too
Why should I keep hiding
Always crying
Tell me, what did I do?

You took the colour from me
Darling, I’ll get it back
You took the colour from me
But I look better in black

If I knew what I know now
Maybe I would take it back
But fuck that
I look better in black

Hey
I look better in black
Hey
I look better in black

If I knew what I know now
Maybe I would take it back
But fuck that (Fuck that!)
I look better in black

Thelma Plum is a Gamilaraay woman from Delungra, NSW.

“Proud, Proud Woman”
(Ruby Hunter, 1994)

Proud, proud, proud, woman
Hold your head up high
We hope, still livin’
Struggling to survive

Many, many, many years ago
Upon this sacred land
Our ancestors would go, hunter packs
Surviving and living off this land

Proud, proud, proud woman
Hold your head up high
We hope, still livin’
Struggling to survive

Woman, in those days, no shame
All young girls the same
How to keep firelight
For the hunters there tonight

Proud, proud, proud woman
Hold your head up high
We hope, still livin’
Struggling to survive

Woman of this land, you cry
Tears of silence to shed for those who died
But in our heart, it is kept
The sacrifice we all respect

Proud, proud, proud woman
Hold your head up high
We hope, still livin’
Struggling to survive

Wе hope, still livin’
Struggling to survive

Aunty Ruby Hunter, a Ngarrindjeri/Kukatha/Pitjantjatjara woman, sings of the strength and survival of Aboriginal women in the first song she ever wrote.

“Kurongk Boy, Kurongk Girl”
(Ruby Hunter, 1994)

Kurongk boy, kurongk girl
Livin’ in a brand new world
Going down the sand we did
Way before, when we were kids

Light a candle, stormy night
Open fires, family nights
Oh, I go back, yeah, I go back
Oh, I go back, yeah, I go back

In time, in time
Ooh
Ooh

Uncles, aunties, cousins too
Grandfather, grandmother singin’ sweet tune
Piano accordions, guitars in tune
Sound of someone playing spoons

Oh, I go back, yeah, I go back
Oh, I go back, yeah, I go back
In time, in time
Ooh

Uncles, aunties, cousins too
Grandfather, grandmother singing sweet tune
Piano accordions, guitars in tune
Sound of someone playin’ spoons

Oh, I go back, yeah, I go back
Oh, I go back, yeah, I go back
In time, in time
In time, in time
Ooh
Ooh

Timе, in time, in time, in time (Ooh)
Timе, time, in time, in time (Ooh)
Time, in time, in time (Ooh)
Time, yeah, in time (Ooh)

Time, yeah (Ooh)

A gentle looped ballad that speaks of the family and country where Hunter was born: Coorong, South Australia. It paints a picture of timeless love and life, connected through the unbreakable bond of music and culture.