Voice Box

end the year well

Here is a message from Tom Davis, author of Red Letters and Fields of the Fatherless and CEO of Children's HopeChest.

Next year starts tomorrow. Are you ready?  

If you've been waiting to make your year-end gifts, you can make a gift in 2008 to Children's HopeChest on our Web site before midnight tonight.

CLICK TO GIVE NOW

Millions of us are tying up the loose ends of 2008 in these last few hours and reflecting on a year full of turmoil and history. But for me, 2009 looks certain.  

I am certain that God will continue using Children's HopeChest to redeem and restore orphans. And, I'm certain that you will join us in that important mission.  

I don't know what shape it will take. I eagerly anticipate the opportunities we'll face because I know you are among the thousands of people who are making God's promises real to children in Russia and Swaziland and Ethiopia and Uganda.  

Join me in praying for those children, and asking our Father to pour His blessing upon their lives as we minister together in His favorite fields.  

Don't forget: There is still time to make a year-end gift to Children's HopeChest.  

CLICK TO GIVE NOW    

Checks bearing today's postmark will be counted toward your 2008 giving record. Or make a gift immediately on our secure donation Web site.   

Thank you for standing with us as ministry partners in 2008, and helping us set the stage for 2009. May God richly bless you and your family in the New Year.

watch this video...

Can help the KidsFirst Foundation raise money for orphaned children?  KidsFirst has granted funding to HopeChest each of the last two years.  They have partnered with us in providing holistic care to orphaned children in Kirov, Russia.  I got this email this morning from Deb Rigney.  She is on the board of KidsFirst.

Our latest video has been posted on the KidsFirst Foundation web site and we have the opportunity to secure a $1,000 donation from an anonymous donor if we can get 1,000 people to simply view the three-minute video by New Years Day. That's a lot of views, so we need everyones' help.
 
Please send an email to your family and friends pointing them to our site and encouraging them to view the video. Then, ask them to enlist their friends to help us as well.

WATCH THE VIDEO.

soundtrack to a revolution

Mary’s song sounds loudly among those of Moses, Miriam, Hannah, Deborah, and David.  Its melody is harmonized by the songs of Zechariah, the angels, and Simeon.  In this text, in its literature, content, and context, we see balance.  Held in tension are celebration and solemnity, the spiritual and the physical, blessing and emptiness, the past, present, and future, might and mercy, the particular and the universal, poverty and plenty, and promise and fulfillment.  Out of this moment of musical suspension and faithful praise, a single note sounds and a resolution is enjoyed.  This resolution is none other than the revolution of the Incarnation.  Mary’s Magnificat offers a prelude to a song that is lodged in our brains like a good tune, the song of salvation.

This is the final post about Mary's Magnificat.  I hope you enjoyed it.   There were some quotes included throughout, so rather than bog the individual posts down with footnotes, endnotes, and a bibliography, here are the sources I used in writing:

The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah by Alfred Edersheim.
Luke: Bible Study Commentary by Virtus E. Gideon.
A Commentary on The Gospel of St. Luke, Vol. I by Frederic Louis Godet.
Gospel Interpretation: Narrative-Critical & Social-Scientific Approaches by Jack Dean Kingsbury, editor.
Commentary on Luke by I. Howard Marshall.
The Gospel According to Luke by G. Campbell Morgan.

promise and fulfillment

The final balance we see in tension in the Magnificat is that between promise and fulfillment.  Mary ends her song by looking back, as any faithful daughter of Israel would, to the promise to Abraham.  She is a citizen in a ‘great nation,’ blessed to be a blessing to ‘all the families of the earth.’   In her song she also looks ahead to ‘all generations.’  What she is experiencing now finds its origin in God’s covenant with Abraham.  ‘God’s remembering is effective and leads to action.  God’s action is in accordance with God’s promises.’   With great composers, songwriters, and arrangers, Mary has offered us a variation on a theme.  This theme is the faithfulness of God, and the current variation is none other than the glorious Incarnation of God’s own son in her own womb.

poverty and plenty

Just as Luke’s Eastern Mediterranean urban community was caught in the conflict between diverse social and economic situations, Mary’s song also stands in this battlefield.  Throughout his gospel, Luke ‘shows special interest in the relationships between rich and poor.’   It must not be forgotten that Joseph and Mary were ‘extremely poor.’   But into this hunger and poverty, new life is lodged.  God fills ‘the hungry with good things,’ even filling the womb of a faithful Jewish teenager with God’s own.  Godet would argue that ‘the poor and hungry’ in Mary’s song are ‘the true Israel,’ the faithful remnant, and that ‘the proud and mighty and rich’ are the elites, ‘Herod and his court, the Pharisees and Sadducees, the foreign oppressors, Caesar and his armies, the powers of heathendom.’   As the stage is set and the players are in place for this confrontation between the rich and the poor, the hungry and full, the third strophe of Mary’s song introduces ‘the great Messianic revolution.’  Songs have always accompanied revolutions, set the tone and tempo for them, given voice to the voiceless.  It is no different in Mary’s song.  The great reversal has a melody.

particular and universal

This mercy and might of God is particular to the experience of Mary and the people of Israel, but it also ‘extends in ever-increasing concentric circles’ from the particular to the universal.   God’s mercy and might is evident to Mary, then Zechariah and Elizabeth, then Joseph, then the villages of Bethlehem and Nazareth, then the people of Israel, then the Roman Empire, then the whole world throughout the whole of history.  This is in line with Luke’s presentation of Jesus as Universal Savior.   The story has a broad beginning in outlook and scope as the geneaology of Jesus is traced, not only to Abraham as in Matthew’s gospel, but all the way to the dawn of human history, to Adam.   Throughout the gospel of Luke, and to be sure in Mary’s song, the ‘universal nature and scope of God’s redemptive purpose is highlighted.   This is a fusion of style and influences in the composition and performance of a whole new song.

might and mercy

In music the moment of rest is as important as the sounding of the note.  The space to breathe is as important as the sound filling the atmosphere.  The suspension is as important as the resolution.  And the adverse is true as well.  In the Magnificat, Mary represents two arms of God’s activity, mercy and might.  Indeed, three names are given for God in this song – the Lord in verse 46, God my Savior in verse 47, and the Mighty One in verse 49.  God’s might is holy, strong, and just, showing preference to the poor and oppressed.  God the Mighty One in verse 49 juxtaposes with ‘the powerful’ in verse 52.  In other translations, ‘powerful’ is translated as ‘mighty’ with an almost dismissive and dissident opinion of these earthly rulers.   But not only is God the Mighty One, but God is also the Merciful One in Mary’s song.  ‘The thought of God’s might is qualified by that of his… compassion and mercy to the unforunate.’   In the NIV, verse 50a says that God’s mercy extends…  This image is helpful in comparing and contrasting God’s might with an ‘arm’ that ‘scattered the proud.’  The ‘arm’ of God extends in might and extends in mercy.  Mary ‘gives thanks to God for the mercy which he has shown to her personally, and which corresponds with his practice of helping and vindicating the poor and needy, while at the same time bringing their proud, rich oppressors to nought.’   Mercy and might are caught in balance, in tension.  They are two notes harmonizing.  They are two melodies in a fugue.  They play together, extending and contracting, pointing to the virtue of the other.

past, present, and future

The Magnificat is timeless, faithful to the lyrical, doctrinal, and historical traditions of the people of Israel, fully embedded in the present moment, and looking forward far far into the future.  The first movement is a survey of the past.  It relates the birth of the Messiah to the Exodus.   ‘The design of the gospels was manifestly not to furnish a biography of Jesus the Messiah, but, in organic connection with the Old Testament, to tell the history of the long-promised establishment of the Kingdom of God upon earth.’   Mary’s focus is actually more upon the past and future than it is upon the present.  Our memory is thrown back thousands of years and our anticipation is looking ahead into time eternal.  She is responding to the present circumstance, but the focus of her praise transcends the present moment.  This perspective fits the incarnation and Mary’s musical response into the overall scope of the story of God.  It is ancient-future.  It is neo-classicism. 

But this song is not timeless in that it ignores the arc of history, the trajectory of God’s divine and decisive work in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ.  It is timeless in that it sings from a perspective above and outside of the present moment.  ‘What God has now begun to do, and Mary regards prophetically as having already come to fruition, is described in terms of what God actually did in Old Testament times, as expressed in Israel’s praise in the Old Testament.’   Mary looks back quoting the great composers and performers of antiquity; yet she also looks forward into new lyrical, creative, and procreative territory.

blessing and emptiness

Mary’s social position is a feature which further separates this royal birth narrative from similar stories in the Ancient Near East (a fact we will explore in greater detail later).  Mary is ‘a daughter of kings reduced to the rank of the poorest of the daughters of Israel.’   But in this low estate, in this emptiness and need, she finds favor.  Her hands and her womb are empty.  But God fills all things.  Both Mary and Elizabeth receive this gracious favor despite their humble position in life.  ‘Two women of simple life and circumstance were strangely blessed by God – one becoming a mother in old age that her son might be the forerunner of the Messiah, the other chosen to be the mother of the Redeemer.’   Favor, the blessing and fullness of God, is the motif that runs throughout the song enjoying and exploring expression in Mary and in the history of humankind. 

In a sonata, the melodic or rhythmic motif receives treatment through an exposition, a development, and a recapitulation.  Here the theme of favor is presented, developed, and revisited.  It is the melodic turn that gets lodged in memory and goes with you through the day after hearing Mary’s song.

spiritual and physical

Mary’s whole self, her soul and body, mind and spirit, is involved in this incarnational event and in the performance of this song of praise.  In verse 46, Mary’s soul magnifies the Lord.  ‘The soul is the actual centre of human life, the principle of individuality, and the seat of those impressions which are of an essentially personal character.’  And Mary’s soul ‘communicates through the two organs with which it is endowed, the spirit and the body, with two worlds, - the one above, the other below it, - with the divine world and the world of nature.’  Mary’s soul sings in her spirit and sings in her body.  ‘When the human spirit is referred to in Scripture, the word indicates the deepest part of our humanity, the point of contact between man and God.’   Mary invests her whole self in this message.  Her soul is given God bigger and bigger space in her life.  Her mind is praising, remembering, hoping, waiting.  Her spirit is humble and submissive.  And her body is nourshing an unborn child.

Motherhood, an act and way of life requiring a healthy and whole self, requiring soul, body, mind, and spirit, is glorified in God’s good will.  It is an instrument in the angelic celebration and anticipation of the arrival of Jesus the Christ.  Motherhood is the resonating chamber that brings the sound of grace and salvation into the room.