Last year, when our worship moved online and the church’s song was dispersed from our sanctuary into our homes, we sorely missed being able to sing together. It can make us laugh, cry, lament, or call us to action. Music expresses emotions and experiences that simple speech is incapable of.
We know that music is a powerful means of communication. It’s also important to remember that Mary sings. Mary’s song subverts expectations and shows us God’s mighty power to save and bring about the world-as-it-can-be. Mary sings of a God who flips the world on its head – defying the status quo and subverting our expectations of how the world-as-it-is operates. She sings of a God who shows mercy to those who fear God and who scatters the proud, who brings down the powerful and lifts up the lowly, who fills the hungry with good things and sends away empty those who amass and hoard their wealth. Mary’s song reminds us of God’s mighty power to save, that it is God who acts through us to turn the world upside down and make whole what is broken.Īt the center of her song, Mary describes the works of God. It is for this reason that all generations will call Mary “blessed” – not for anything she has done, but for God’s grace shown to her. It is on this single act of God that Mary’s song of praise is founded.Īs Luther writes: “When experienced what great things God was working in her despite her insignificance, lowliness, poverty, and inferiority, the Holy Spirit taught her this deep insight and wisdom, that God is the kind of Lord who does nothing but exalt those of low degree and put down the mighty from their thrones, in short, break what is whole and make whole what is broken.” (LW 21.299) Above all, Luther emphasizes how God’s grace “regarded” Mary’s low estate and “looked with favor” on her lowliness. Luther himself wrote of Mary as “the most blessed Mother of God, the most blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of Christ” and “the Queen of Heaven.” In his essay on the Magnificat – our gospel reading this morning – Luther marvels at Mary’s faith and lifts up her unique place as the God-bearer. But there’s also something more profound going on. On the one hand, without Mary, the Mother of Our Lord, there’s no Jesus.
Devotion to Mary is seen as “too Catholic.” But we miss out on the richness of the prayers and practices that have guided the devotional life of faithful Christians throughout the history of the church. What’s a Lutheran to do with Mary? It’s unfortunate that too many Protestants, to avoid any semblance of “idolatry,” have thrown the proverbial baby out with the bathwater. Everything I had been taught in confirmation classes seemed to suggest there was something “wrong” with praying the rosary – and at odds with my Lutheran faith – as though it was somehow praying to Mary and elevating her to a divine status. Soon I won’t be able to pray this anymore, I thought. Then, in eighth grade, as I was about to be confirmed in the Lutheran Church, I can vividly remember sitting on the edge of my bed, holding the rosary my grandmother had given me. I loved that ritual – the feel of the beads in my hands, the repetition of the prayers, the connection to centuries of faithful Christians.
#LUTHERANS HAIL MARY HYMN HOW TO#
It was my very devout Italian Catholic grandmother, who went to mass everyday and faithfully spent her mornings reading her bible and praying her prayers, who taught me how to pray the rosary. The Lutheran Church was home, though I went to Catholic mass regularly with my father’s side of the family. You could say I grew up bi-denominational – with one foot in the Lutheran Church and the other in the Roman Catholic Church. And blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
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