Unwrapping Christmas in a Different Paradigm: Mary's Song of Joy (2 of 5)
Mary’s Song of Joy! It’s Not Heard in Mall Christmas Music
For this year’s season of Advent-Christmas, Lee Van Ham is presenting other ways to look at this special season, his comments rooted in the cosmological nature of the birth narratives told in the Gospels of Luke and Matthew.
It’s widely known how Mary saw the Angel Gabriel and through him learned that she would conceive through the Holy Spirit, bear a son whom she was to name Jesus; that he would be “called the Son of the Most High,” given the throne of David, and that there would be no end to his kingdom. Wow! Imagine sitting still for that one!
BUT nearly unknown is the song Mary sang about the child she was nurturing in her womb—how he would change the structures of economic class that separated wealth from poverty. She sang in joy as she imagined her child advocating for a different distribution of God’s abundance, a distribution through which all would have enough. This song is not heard in the malls at Christmas. Redistribution of wealth in any direction other than upward violates the commitment and economic model of the corporations running the mall. But even in congregations, the Mary of Christmas is not presented singing about overcoming class inequalities, even though her song is the most direct economic message in the entire Christmas story.
Just listen to it!
God my Savior … has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. (Luke 1:51-53)
Mary’s lyrics are so wonderfully, painfully disruptive to many of the warmer sentiments we have for Mary. We love her for her frightening, thrilling, courageous consent to become pregnant with Jesus. But, Mary, an economist? And, one who disagrees with an economic model that distributes resources unevenly? Whoa, reindeer!
Mary’s economics are disturbing enough to encourage the possibility that she didn’t really sing it at all, but that Luke, writing over 70 years after her pregnancy, put this poem in Mary’s mouth. He, in turn, could have picked it up from his faith community who recognized that Jesus, throughout his life, presented an economy that would reduce the class divisions rampant throughout the empire—indeed, today’s empires as well.
But think again. Connecting a more just distribution of wealth with Mary is not a stretch. Mothers everywhere, whether operating with a degree in economics or with people-smarts, understand economic class. Some will teach their children to “marry well” while others, like Mary, taught her children how to navigate the economy from the underside. How could she not have imagined that her first child would improve the world by raising up the lowly, filling them with good things, and by not adding unnecessarily to the assets of the wealthy?
Happy as we can be for countless versions of beautiful music entitled The Magnificat, taken from the phrase which begins Mary’s song, “my soul magnifies the Lord,” we cannot but apologize to her for ignoring what comes later in the poem. We have ignored what gave her the greatest reason for her exult. But, if we will embrace Mary’s radical hope, a deep conversion of mind and heart will be underway in us, moving us away from empire-think. In empire-think, wealth and poverty are accepted as an inevitable arrangement, even by those who despise it. Extreme maldistribution is so institutionalized in today’s economic structures that any hope for change is repeatedly aborted before it is born—even among the most aspiring or imaginative lower income peoples. Yet, in the womb of Mary, the hope for change did get carried to term and resulted in a birth noticed by the cosmos, if missed by the empire.
Mary’s economic wisdom is central in unwrapping the Christmas story in a new paradigm—one not focused in giving, but in committing to an economic model that assures all species sharing in God’s abundance. Her economic vision saw caring and sharing as shapers of a more just economy. Her son, Jesus, would teach and live such an economy as a contemporary expression of his scripture’s economy, the sabbath and jubilee economy of the Old Testament.
Today, caring and sharing are shown to be excellent shapers of a healthy economy. Riane Eisler’s work, The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economy, shows how re-inventing economies to include caring and sharing makes good economic sense as well as being right morally. Study after study confirms that such an economy is healthier for people, planet, and profits than an economy focused in competitive advantage and growth. Earlier this fall, the Swiss banking giant, Credit Suisse, came out with a first-ever Global Wealth Report which concludes that the world has more than enough wealth to provide economic security for every person on Earth. Mary got it right. Her economics release in us the deepest capacities we have as humans to live our best spiritual beliefs and inherent sense of justice.
Sunday, November 28, 2010 at 12:01AM Lee Van Ham in Biblical Perspective, Capitalism, Current Events, Economic Trends, Simple Living, Spirituality, Unwrapping Christmas christmas, consumer culture, cosmology, lee van ham, spiritual economics
Reader Comments (3)
"Whoah, reindeer!" Love that phrase, Lee! To think of Mary offering an economic analysis in her song is just so far from our normal thinking and practice at Christmas, in or out of the church. Thanks for your well-thought-out reminder. You've inspired me to go this route in our Christmas Eve service this year. I'm sure we'll have a "Mary time," a serious look at the paradigm shift, and--who knows--maybe even end in hope.
Just unwrapped gift #1. Do Mary and Suze (Orman) have anything in common? I am currently living among some of that 2% wealthiest families in the country. Interestingly, i received fewer gifts than at previous schools this holiday season. i have no idea what that truly means. Maybe the transition from the former teacher is taking much longer. At any rate, I do like this interpretation, and it is feeding a part of me that longs for clarity, justice and a vision for true world peace. Another part of me wants to dismiss anything connected to a book that some people in my life have used to put hexes on me. As a child of the universe, light and love, I can heal myself and rewrite the hexes of darkness into words of fire and sear the truth on my heart.
Addendum: Your ideas contain wisdom and light which have ignited the spark in my soul.