1 Samuel 1:1-18 • Luke 1:46b-55 • Hebrews 9:1-14
There is little that renders a person both more powerful and more powerless than giving birth—at least that has been my experience. Today’s Gospel reading is a favorite of mine, the Magnificat, a prayer we get to use in our Daily Office. In this reading, Mary is singing, is embodying that tension of powerless and powerful. A poor, young, Galilean Jewish woman is carrying the Son of God. A pregnant woman in an occupied land, singing prophecy, naming her own lowliness and her own honor. She sings of God, all-powerful, mighty, showing strength with his arm; and the strength of God is moving on behalf of the powerless, the lowly, the hungry. She waits for a baby who will, as our reading from the book of Hebrews tells us, become the eternal High Priest, both the sacrifice and the sacrificed, for the sake of the cosmos. The Christ who will turn the power structure upside down.
In what ways are we participating in the birth of the new power structure? How can we, in our powerlessness, receive this lifting up? How can we re-examine our positions of power to, like Mary, magnify this new reality that we joyfully anticipate, and that has simultaneously already arrived?
Almighty God, help us to magnify You; empower us to reject sinful
power and to give witness to your mighty humility.
Sarah Faehnle Mast
Diocese of Texas
MDiv Class of 2023
Seminary of the Southwest
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