Mary, What You Gonna Name That Baby

When I was growing up, I often curled up on the well-worn chaise lounge in my grandmother’s small bedroom in our house.  To any visitor coming through the front door, the room was hardly noticeable, hiding next to the front hall closet crammed with coats and boots.  It was her bedroom, but it was also my refuge. 

I spent many hours there, mostly as she sewed, altering and patching together the unusable into something beautiful once again.  Our conversations largely followed a recurring litany of question and response.  That's how I learned from her.  She did not always have a way to explain the mysteries of God—the “whys” of this life – but I can remember her telling me so many decades ago, “Well sometimes, darling, you just have to trust God.”

She had eighty years of experience trusting God through deaths, life and struggles as a widow, a single mom, through the Great Depression, two world wars, fifty years of hobbling with rheumatoid arthritis, and the mysteries of the divine she could not comprehend.  But she could pray and she could trust God.    
When Mary was visited by the angel, she also did not fully understand what was going on, nor what was to come.  There was immense grace in that. There always is.  But what she could comprehend was that she had to trust God in this.

Her response was to pray as recorded in Luke 1. 46-55.  It is traditionally called the Magnificat, Mary’s song of praise, now sung in church services of many denominations or as a liturgy in vespers.

Magnificat comes from the first line, “My soul magnifies the Lord.”   Not how most of us would have responded to an angel with such news.  Mary did not reply with “What in the world am I going to do?”  But immediately verbalized who God is, what He is like, and why she can trust Him.  She described how great God is – even before she saw the outcome.  Somehow she surmised this was more than “you’re going to have a baby.” And what you gonna name Him.

Judging by her immediate lyrical response, she had prayed like this before.  Not in lofty eloquent words, but in the every days, the moments significant and insignificant seamlessly attached to each other, learning bit by bit, prayer by prayer, not moved by emotions, but recognizing the reality of knowing and trusting God.

For He who is mighty has done great things for me,
                    And holy is His name.

This young girl pushed back the darkness by praying and praising the God she loved and who loved her.  She described Who God is, not just in adjectives but nouns.  He is strength.  He is mercy.  He is Savior.  That baby already had a name.

How we trust God impacts how we approach the mysteries, the really hard stuff, even the joys.  What if we saw God like that, what if we prayed like that, what if we recognized His Presence in our circumstances like that?  Even in what is before us today.  Even in what is yet to come.

What if we sang out loud His glory like that?

Mary didn’t just spontaneously make up a song to pump up her courage.  She sang this prayer over her situation. 

Mary was not just a special person, as pastor Matt said last Sunday. But she was “a girl who said Yes to God.“  Mary was different because she was faithful, not strong on her own, but held by the One who is.

I can never remember my grandmother singing.  But oh, how she could pray.  She knew she could trust God.  In all those struggles she didn’t understand, she prayed.  Praying even when she couldn’t put adequate words to it.

But Mary did.

My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for He has looked on the humble estate of His servant.
For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed,
for He who is mighty has done great things for me,
and holy is His name.
And His mercy is for those who fear Him
                from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with His arm,
He has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts,
He has brought down the mighty from their thrones.
       and exalted those of humble estate,
He has filled the hungry with good things,
       and the rich He has sent away empty.
He has helped His servant Israel
             in remembrance of His mercy,
as He spoke to our fathers,
to Abraham and to his offspring forever.