Advent: The Songs of Christmas

Now, I say again, we need these messages today. The attitude of our generation may be summed up in the title of a song by a postmodern popular singer. Joan Osborne screeched and whined out a question that became a cry of a desperate heart “What if God was one of us?”

The Songs of Christmas in St. Luke 1 and 2 give a stirring response to that cry.

We begin with Luke 1:47-55:

And Mary said,

“My soul magnifies the Lord,

And my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,

For He has looked with favor on the lowliness of His servant.

Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;

For the Mighty One has done great things for me,

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And holy is His name.

His mercy is for those who fear Him

From generation to generation.

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.

He has helped His servant Israel,

In remembrance of His mercy,

According to the promise He made to our ancestors,

To Abraham and to his descendants forever.”

The Song of Mary

Mary’s Magnificat, Latin for the word used by Mary, to magnify, arises with a Holy Spirit inspired force from the soul of a faithful young woman. The Angel Gabriel had announced to a young Nazareth girl betrothed to a carpenter named Joseph that:  

The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Highest will overshadow you; there fore also, that Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God (Luke 1:35-36).

From there Mary, the God-bearer, as the early church fathers labeled her, bore the most wonderful news ever revealed to man and arose and went into the hill country with haste, it says (v. 39) with haste.

Here is a clue to the whole proceedings in those days before Christ’s birth. There was a sense of ethereal excitement that couldn’t be hidden. Mary had to run and tell her cousin Elizabeth who lived a long way off in the hills of Judea. Of course, when she arrived at the home of Zachariah and Elizabeth, who was also with child, the embryonic John the Baptist leapt in the womb at the news of Christ. Elizabeth, we are told, was also filled with the Holy Sprit. In other words, news of the Incarnation brought a real revival to that house!

O dear friends, I want to make haste to bring you this Song of Mary because it has enough truth to bring revival to cold Christians and new life to dead souls. The Incarnation of Christ is the story of God taking on flesh and entering our world. No human religion has conceived this for it is of the true God. The Greeks have gods who are like men but who play tricks on men or imitate sinful man in celestial flings. The Norse pagan deities are like men also, but are oppressive and as brutish as Vikings in dealing with man. The Babylonian gods are ruthless, impersonal things that demand human sacrifice and fleshly indulgences to satisfy their vile and wicked passions.