I grew up as the bully’s target.
I got searing put downs for my glasses, for my grades, for my lack of interest in sports. One bully went as far as to make fun of the fact that my mom died when I was two. It was incessant and hurtful.
One of the times when the torment turned physical, I was held fact down in the snow, only to be turned over and have my pants stuffed with snow. My only recourse was to do what my grandparents and teachers taught me to do: I laughed. See, laughter was supposed to take away the power and desire of the bully because they were “just looking for a reaction,” and if I never gave them the reaction they wanted, they would stop.
Let me tell you, it didn’t.
I was late getting back to class that recess. I had to get the snow out of my pants before I was allowed inside. When I finally got back to class, I was red faced and my pants were a bit more than damp. It was humiliating.
Humiliation was part of my regular school routine until my sophomore year of high school. I was an easy target. I was sensitive, so I would cry out of anger and frustration. I was too eager to have friends, so I was annoying. I didn’t have cool t-shirts or the right jeans. I wasn’t into sports and preferred to hang out with girls. All of this added up to the bully homing system, locking onto me with laserlike precision.
Humiliation is never a good feeling. We don’t want to be exposed as vulnerable and weak. We don’t want to be subjected to someone else’s oppressive use of strength greater than ours. We don’t want to be put to shame.
Shame is this thing that takes away our identity and replaces it with embarrassment about who we are. It can lead to hiding ourselves away to the point that we grow into self-hatred. Shame takes what we are proud of and sullies it with mockery and ridicule.
As bad as shame is, it’s not rare. We have all experienced shame; we’ve all been put under the knife of shame. Shame has done its dirty work in all of us, no matter how resilient we are. We need an antidote to shame, a rescue from shame, a way out of humiliation and shame.
The Magnificat, Mary’s song of victory and praise, stands as a witness against humiliation and that demon shame it produces. It is a trauma informed prayer sung from lips that knew shame, a heart that knew uncertainty and despair. The Magnificat is our ladder out of shame, leading us instead into the wide liberation of God’s good actions and the extravagant equity of the table.
The song is sung in response to a greeting of blessing given to Mary by Elizabeth. Elizabeth had just experienced her own lifting of shame. She had been childless all her life, and in 1st century Jewish culture, to be childless—whether it was because of the father or the mother—was seen as having the blessing of God withheld from you. Six months before Mary’s visit in Luke 1.39, Elizabeth had conceived a son with her husband Zachariah, even though both were well past child birthing years. This had been announced to Zachariah by an angel, proclaiming that the child would be the herald to the Messiah.
The angel Gabriel told Mary that Elizabeth was six months pregnant as part of the annunciation, the proclamation that God asked Mary to be the mother of the Lord. So, Mary went to Elizabeth, both to visit and to seek refuge. See, even though Mary had said yes to God, she still would have been seen as an unwed mother in her culture, which would have been a source of humiliation and shame.
Here she was, at the mercy—according to human terms—of her fiancé Joseph, about to be subjected to ridicule and shame due to her saying yes to God’s plan. So, Mary went away to someone she hoped would understand what the miracle meant, someone who had just been lifted from a lowly place and given a way out of shame.
When Mary greeted Elizabeth, Elizabeth felt her child move. This could have very well been the first time she felt that flitter, but it was more than just a movement. It was a leap. Accompanying such a jarring in utero jumping for joy, Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost and pronounced a blessing over Mary, a blessing rooted in a pronouncement of goodness over Mary and her child. Supernaturally, Elizabeth was aware of the miraculous incarnation that was happening in Mary’s womb. She not only accepted Mary without shame, she pronounced good tidings, good words, and the favor of God on Mary precisely because Mary had believed that God would fulfill what God had told her.
Here in an oppressed country, an unwed, teenaged girl said yes to the impossible things of God, and an old woman who just received a miracle child pronounced her favored of God because Mary said yes.
Now Mary sings.
It’s a song of liberation from oppression. It’s an anti-imperialistic song of freedom. It’s a song of satisfaction. It’s a song that takes everything Mary felt, her anxieties, worries, humiliations, anger, lament, and frustrations and turns everything on its head.
“All generations will call me blessed.” Mary begins with an assertion that she is aware of the favor that has rested on her. God has called her by name to be filled with goodness and satisfied fully. The prayers of the heart of Mary, prayers for the poor, the little, the lowly, prayers for liberation from oppression and shame, prayers for God to act, all these prayers are satisfied, “because of what the Lord has done.”
Mary asserts that God has already accomplished liberation. God has shown strength with God’s arm and scattered the proud. God has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly. God has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty. God has enacted liberation from oppression and from shame.
The truth that God has lifted up the lowly is directly in front of Mary: Elizabeth who had been culturally humiliated by her lack of a child had been lifted up form shame not only by being given a child, but by being given an anointed Child, one who was destined to make ready a people prepared for the Lord, the Messiah. Elizabeth had been given a special gift, a special child, a special blessing.
So, mary knew that God lifted the lowly… and she herself had experienced that lifting. When the angel came to her, they proclaimed her “favored one”. Mary, who was from a small town in a small section of a small country, that was oppressed by a large empire, she was favored. She who had been low had been lifted up, not by Rome or the high priest, or even her family, but by God. No matter what people whispered about her behind her back, no matter the humiliation and shame people tried to heap on her, Mary was favored by God, and because of what God had done by choosing a low, middle eastern, peasant girl who had nothing of greatness to offer other than her “yes” to be the mother of God and the vessel of incarnation. God had lifted the lowly. God has scattered the thoughts of the proud because God didn’t choose the powerful things this world system puts its trust in to be the means of salvation.
God turned everything on its head. God lifted the lowly up and brought the powerful down. God filled those who hunger and thirst for righteousness with good things and the rich who try to buy their way into the favor of God are sent away empty.
This is the way of God. Those that hold worldly power and authority, those who oppress and subjugate others, those who rely on status, money, authority, and violence to get ahead, to find “favor”, these are the ones that will be brought down and scattered because God is a god of equity.
The Eucharistic table, the place we come to celebrate and receive the incarnation into our very selves, is no respecter of persons. Everyone is welcome, and everyone has a seat. There is no seat of honor because we are all receiving the bread of heaven and the cup of salvation. You can’t bring anything to the table because it has already been laid out for you. All any of us can do is receive, and in that reception be satisfied.
The Magnificat tells us this. It tells us that a lowly Jewish girl has been called blessed—fully satisfied—throughout all generations because of the good things God has done. Mary is satisfied in the works of God. Are we?
Are we satisfied to receive the incarnation? Are we satisfied to say yes when we are offered Christ? Are we satisfied when we are brought low, stripped of everything we thought would protect us from humiliation, and instead given the blessing of the presence of Jesus?
As we go into Christmastide—the twelve days of Christmas, between December 25th and January 6th—we need to ask ourselves these questions. We need to be ready when Jesus reveals himself to the whole world. We need to be ready to act as a manger and receive the infant light of the world into our lives.
O Come, O Come Emmanuel, God with us.
Are you ready, humble, and open to say yes to God with us, for in God we find we are fully satisfied.
Blessed are you.
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