Traditionally, the 4th Sunday of Advent is Mary Sunday. It is also called Rose Sunday, not only because Mary is associated with roses, but also because the colour of the Advent candle lightens from purple to rose.
On that day Mary’s song is sung. The Magnificat, (Luke 1:46-55) is perhaps the earliest Advent hymn. In it Mary “magnifies” what God has done and will do. Like an aria in an opera, like a soliloquy in a play, the action almost stops and her message alone is centre stage.
The fourth Sunday of Advent is also called “stir-up Sunday”, the day when Anglicans gathered to stir up the Christmas pudding, which had to sit for several weeks. It also reflects the first two words of the collect (prayer): “STIR UP, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people…”
The “stir up” theme is so appealing, because it is so easy to resort to predictable pattern of behaviour and thinking at Advent season that keep us in a comfortable but stunted state of spiritual growth.
Mary stirs things up — she is a stirrer!
The first part of the Magnificat is Mary’s joy and praise of God and God’s action in her life:
“My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord: my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour…”
But it’s not the first part of the Magnificat that has caused it to be banned in several modern countries. It’s the second part:
“He has scattered the proud in their conceit
He has cast down the mighty from their thrones
And has lifted up the lowly.
He has filled the hungry with good things,
And the rich he has sent away empty..."
During the British rule of India, the government prohibited the Magnificat from being publicly recited in churches. In the 1980’s, Guatemala’s government decided that Mary’s words about God’s preferential love for the poor were dangerous and revolutionary, in fact were stirring up the country’s impoverished masses, inspiring them to believe that change was possible.
In 1983, the military junta of Argentina outlawed any pubic display of Mary’s song after the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo placed the Magnificat’s words on posters throughout the city – the same mothers whose children all had disappeared during the blood-soaked days of the Dirty War. In the 1930’s, Mary’s song was banned in Mexico and in Franco’s Spain.
Before being executed by the Nazis in 1933, the German Lutheran Dietrich Bonhoeffer said this: “The song of Mary is at once the most passionate, the wildest, one might even say the most revolutionary Advent hymn ever sung. This is not the gentle, tender, dreamy Mary whom we sometimes see in paintings. This song has none of the sweet, nostalgic or even playful tones of some of our Christmas carols. It is instead a hard, strong, inexorable song about the power of God and the powerlessness of humankind.”
Once stirred up, the picture of Mary is far different than it seems first.
The Advent journey of Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem from Nazareth, was probably part of a caravan for safety, walking 112 kilometres miles through rough and dangerous terrain. Mary with a full-term pregnancy may not have had a donkey for her to ride.
The Smithsonian website says: “Some 20 years before the birth of Jesus, King Herod, the Roman-appointed governor of Judea, built a huge palace for himself near Bethlehem. The ruins still exist. It sits atop a slave-made mountain some seven stories, high. It became known as the Herodium and was the largest palatial complex in the Roman world. It is still accessible from any point in Bethlehem and was about three miles across the flat desert from the supposed site of the birthplace of Jesus.”
Mary and Joseph certainly were aware of this imposing structure as they entered Bethlehem. On a clear night, perhaps they could look up and see the light from the torches atop the hill. They would have seen the wealth and arrogance of the aristocracy looming over the poor peasants in the Bethlehem hamlet.
This addition to the story is very much in line with the prophecies of John the Baptist and Mary who speaks of the perils of power and might and they were there, looming over Bethlehem as they loom over our own world. I wonder, did Mary hum to herself the words she had sung earlier as she looked up at the Herodium, the ones about casting down the mighty from their thrones, scattering the proud in their conceit, and sending the rich away empty?
In 2024, Advent sees great inequality, injustice and pain across the world. The waiting for relief from bad news seems endless; the solutions to complicated problems evasive and elusive or ignored. The gap between powerless and powerful, between rich and poor continues to grow. You have to wonder how many pathways are being made straighter.
Yet there are voices in our wilderness, such as those of another young woman, the youngest ever to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014. In her acceptance speech, a sixteen-year-old Muslim schoolgirl named Malawa, targeted for violence by extremists of her own faith for daring to speak out, said this:
“Dear brothers and sisters, the so-called world of adults may understand it, but we children don’t. Why is it that countries which we call strong are so powerful in creating wars but so weak in bringing peace? Why is it that giving guns is so easy, but giving books is so hard? Why is it that making tanks is so easy but building schools is so difficult?”
Another time, another Magnificat. The same cries, the same questions.
In our own lives, too, we can be challenged by questions this season, especially about the cultural demands placed upon us, the shopping and mandatory gaiety, whether to go simple or traditional, turkey or ham. At the same time, so much of the season is beautiful, even magical.
Yet nostalgia for days past and people lost to us can seep in. There can be more busyness than joy. More obligations than contemplation. It’s complicated, like the extremes in Mary’s Magnificat.
Have we “tamed” Advent and Christmas, the same way the church has tried to tame Mary. Sister Joan Chititser talks about the way we have domesticated Christmas with merry Santas, sweet-faced farm animals, the scent of evergreen and of home-baked cookies baking in the oven, the gleaming gifts under the tree. She says: “We begin now in Advent, whether we realize it or not, to prepare for Easter – because Easter is the reason Christmas is important.”
She says that without Easter, we would not know that the powers of injustice and oppression of which Mary speaks will be overcome and the forces of death defeated. And as the year goes on, the brightness of the Star’s light gets stronger and stronger until its culmination the morning of the Resurrection.
In these days of Advent, when we can be overwhelmed with tasks or with nostalgia, like Mary we can still sing. We sing because we truly know in our deepest hearts more than we can ever say out loud, and we can do more than we ever dreamed. Today with Mary, we proclaim the greatness of God who has looked with favour on us, each and every one. New life is stirring in more ways than we can imagine.
So now we pause our questions, quiet our frantic hearts, and bow before the mystery.
Adapted from: “Stir Up” Sunday by The Rev. Barbara Mraz
