Let it Be — Mary’s Song
Open our hearts and our souls, O God,
that we may welcome your Son into our lives with joy.
These song lyrics need no introduction:
“When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.
And in my hour of darkness she is standing right in front of me Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.
Let it be, let it be…”
Paul McCartney wrote those lyrics about his own mother, Mary, who died from cancer when he was 14. She came to him in a dream one night when he was in a bad place—depressed, anxious, the Beatles were breaking up. While McCartney has said over the years that his lyrics were not written as an homage to the Virgin Mary, he doesn’t deny the religious interpretation.
Our Mary certainly found herself in times of trouble. The Roman Empire occupied her homeland, while the tyrannical Herod ruled Judea, Samaria and Galilee as a military dictatorship. Some 90% of the Mediterranean population—peasant farmers, fisherman, craftsmen—lived a precarious existence. Exploitative taxation and injustice were built into the system. While the rich prospered, the peasants suffered. Rumblings of revolution and violent uprisings simmered below the surface.
It is amidst these troubles that the angel Gabriel comes to Mary, who is betrothed to Joseph, to deliver the preposterous news that she is going to give birth to the Son of God. “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” she asks. Despite the danger to herself and the distress she feels over Joseph’s possible abandonment, she responds, “Let it be done to me according to your word” (1:38). Mary’s “let it be” (her (fiat) is her consent to God’s mysterious plan for her in these very times of trouble.
What we forget is that God’s messenger is not delivering a decree from a dictatorial patriarch, but an invitation and a promise: “Nothing will be impossible with God,” Gabriel assures her (1:37). Mary has the option to politely decline, to shrink from God’s call on her life. Instead, she claims her own agency. Her “Let it be” is not passive submission but obedience to God’s will. It is Mary saying, “I want what God wants for me.”
For millennia, Christians have understood the Mary in this scene to be docile and sweet, a compliant servant, while most artists have depicted her in this moment as tender, dreamy and pious. I would argue that this Mary is self-possessed. She is a precocious teenager who has a direct encounter with God, who does not hesitate to question, and who does not need the mediation of a man to accomplish God’s purposes. She is a prophet who takes up the mantle of her ancestors Miriam, Judith, Deborah and Hannah!
When I think of this “Mary” I think of the sculpture by David Wynne unveiled in 2000 above the altar in the Lady Chapel of Ely Cathedral. This Mary, as you will see, has not been without controversy.
This is no teen waif. This is an Amazon, a powerfully built woman with her arms raised in the air, ready to receive a celestial burden she knows she is strong enough to handle. Though her arms are raised toward heaven, her gaze is level—focused on earthly matters. This statue of Mary stands on the ledge of a medieval stone window above an altar.
Everything around her is old and broken and weathered, which makes her appearance even more striking because she is presented wearing a full-length royal blue dress. One critic described her as having hair bigger than Dolly Pardon’s, and being in dire need of appropriate undergarments. As if women in the first century wore them!
This likeness, even though it bears no resemblance to a Palestinian Jew, embodies the audacity of a young peasant girl living on the outskirts of an empire, scandalously pregnant, and peddling an angel story no one believes, but that she nevertheless proclaims without shame or apology she is favored by God. She knows it.
Elizabeth knows it, too. Elizabeth—a prophet in her own right, and the only woman in the New Testament called “righteous.” Imagine their reunion. Mary has just traversed 100 miles from Nazareth to Judea. When she arrives, it is Elizabeth she greets—not the man of the house, the mute Zechariah. I can imagine them falling into each other’s arms, holding on tight and not wanting to let go.
Elizabeth taking Mary’s face into her hands—to get a good look at the one who will bear her Lord, the savior of the world. These women have been imbued with the power of the Holy Spirit—overcome by it—so much so that the quickening of the unborn John the Baptist in Elizabeth’s belly causes her to shout: Blessed is the fruit of your womb!
What is poignant about this scene is that both women are in unenviable positions due to their pregnancies. Elizabeth was disgraced by her barrenness well into her old age—that is until six months ago, when Gabriel announced to Zechariah that she would bear him a son, to be named John, who will point the way to the Lamb of God.
They cannot fathom how their pregnancies will lead them from scandal to danger to devastation. How their sons’ divine callings will end in beheading and crucifixion. They know only that their sanctuary of sisterhood and their survival depends on their supporting one another.
This brings us to Mary’s song, the Magnificat—the oldest Advent hymn. Dietrich Bonhoeffer called it “at once the most passionate, the wildest, one might even say the most revolutionary Advent hymn ever sung.” Friends, this is no lullaby sung by a spiritually timid teenager. These are not whispered words of wisdom. Oh no! This is a rallying cry, and Mary is a one-woman drum circle! I would argue that its placement in our liturgy for Evening Prayer in the Book of Common Prayer has dulled the power of her words—they have lost their power to stun and offend. The Magnificat is proof of Mary as God’s messenger; she gives voice to the humiliation her people suffer, whether social, political, or sexual, and affirms that God will deliver them from it.
On this fourth Sunday of Advent, we experience the tension of dwelling between the two Advents. In the first Advent, we await the birth of the baby Jesus in just a few days’ time. In the second Advent, we wait for Christ our Lord to return as judge of the world—to vanquish the world’s thrones and regimes, sovereignties and dominions, presidencies and pretenders. This is why the John the Baptist implores us to bear fruit worthy of repentance, and why Mary’s Magnificat moves from the deeply personal to the explicitly political.
She sings that God has “brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty” (1:48–49, 52–53). I wonder what Herod or Tiberius thought when they heard her words. The dethroning of political power, the humbling of the rich, the redistribution of food supplies—all of this signaled a new paradigm, a new age. The Magnificat voices the dream of a future in which no one is humiliated by economic exploitation or any other form of violent degradation. This is what Jesus meant when we said over and over, “The first shall be last and the last shall be first (Matt: 10:30, 20:16, Mark 10:31, Luke 13:30). And this is what Isiah meant when he prophesied that “Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain (40:4).
When God chose Mary as his messenger, it was not for the sake of a sweet family portrait. It was to give birth to a new earthly order where mercy and justice collide.
I would be remiss if I glossed over Mary’s decision to rejoice in response to God’s claim on her: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.” Before the Magnificat points to anything else, it points to joy. It reminds us that the appropriate response to God’s complicated claim on our lives is joy. Not fear. Not guilt. Not dread. Not shame, obligation or penance. Joy! It is no coincidence that Elizabeth’s unborn baby “leaps for joy” upon hearing Mary’s voice. Joy will come. We may feel pain and hopelessness today, but joy will come; it will come, for nothing is impossible with God.
As we come to the end of this Advent season, may Mary’s song encourage you to receive and share the gifts of joy, blessing, and hope. Find your voice and sing your song. The Messiah is coming! Make haste! Be blessed! Magnify the Lord. Let it be. Amen.
[i] Source: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Collected Sermons of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, ed. by Isabel Best (Fortress Press, 2012)
[ii] https://journeywithjesus.net/essays/2856-mary-s-song–this sentiment is from Debie’s sermon.