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Let me set the familiar scene: A courtyard in a rural village. Two women in robes. One, an older woman with gray hair. The other, a young teenager. The two embrace. The older tells the younger that she is blessed because she has been given a gift that is going to change the world. The younger is overjoyed and busts into song.
The two women are, of course, Madame Morrible and Elphaba from the movie WICKED.
WICKED is a modern movie twist on the Wizard Oz. It’s a prequel of sorts that tells the story of how a green skinned young girl named Elphaba becomes the infamous Wicked Witch of the West. But you don’t need to know that. What you need to know is that WICKED is a musical. In fact, it’s the movie version of a musical which has been one of the hottest tickets on Broadway for 20 years.
But here’s the problem: because the Broadway show is so popular, and because the songs have been around for two decades, when the movie opened in theaters, legions of fans were showing up ready to sing along. You can imagine this irritated other moviegoers who wanted to enjoy Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande’s performances of The Wizard and I, Popular, and Defying Gravity without pitchy theater kids belting in the back row.
Movie theaters had to put up signs telling people watching WICKED not to sing. AMC even put a public service announcement before the show. Some theaters even had ushers come out and deliver the message in person. One theater had a poster on the door that read:
WARNING: If you are noisy and disruptive, flying monkeys WILL descend and carry you out of the theater!
As you can imagine, this created quite the debate on social media. People predictably divided into two camps: the Let them Sing! group and the Sing at Home! group. Glinda and Elphaba have even put out statements urging their fans to enjoy the movie in a way that is respectful of the people around them. Some fans have protested the rules by posting photos of themselves wearing bright pink and bright green gags at the movie.
It’s ironic isn’t it? The whole musical genre is based on the idea that there are times when its characters are so overwhelmed with emotion that they spontaneously burst into song. And the world around them doesn’t shush them; they join in. And everyone seems to know the choreography!
That is the world I want to live in. One where folks would burst into song randomly about their feelings, their hopes, falling in or out of love. No one asks a pointed question: who sings that song? Me. The answer is me.
At different points in my life and with certain groups of people, someone would say a word or a couple of words and someone else would bust out with a song. The next lines of a song that includes those words this time of year is easy enough, right? Because if someone starts with all “I want” you might sing “for Christmas is you!” Or someone says, “No, I really can’t stay” and only reasonable response is: is “baby it’s cold outside.” Or you have an Anglican friend who talks about fig pudding and the only you know about fig pudding is that you can go to someone’s door and demand it in song. So you sing. Christmas hymns are because nobody randomly just says “all is calm, all is bright,” or something about harking Angels without trying to reference the songs.
Sometimes I make up songs based on other songs. mostly for the dog and I sing, “you with the sad eyes. Don’t be discouraged, dinner’s in an hour.”
I think whether you Are making up a song; walking down the street with your little gang, snap-dancing, preparing for a dance-fight; or you are down on your luck, being abandoned again but claiming your own self-love, or singing about the world beyond the rainbow, when one breaks into song, with very few exceptions, one can hope.
The first two chapters of Luke are a musical. Everyone is bursting into song. Mary, Zachariah, the Angels, an old man named Simeon… all are belting out their numbers and no one around them shushes them. In fact they all seem to know the choreography. The supporting cast of shepherds, villagers, and family members all hit their marks.[1]
They are telling us of the world they want to live in, too.
And to help me understand what this musical would like look, I looked for pictures of Mary–a poor young woman, the almost still a child Mary, was probably not considered important enough to be listened to yet, not, given a place in her world yet, stuck between what the child and the wife. Mary at the announcement when Gabriel went to see her. They give us an image of what they, the artists, the religious leadership thought about Mary. She was often painted as a passive recipient simply, a vessel for the Christ child, but not the woman embodies the womb. There she sits and all her virginal glory, light colored clothes, and almost always alabaster write skin. She sits at a window or kneels, praying, meditating on God, because that is the only thing. She does as if she doesn’t have other tasks or obligations to her family. It’s as if she has been waiting for 30 years for God to come to her before she could get married, because these are images of grown women. Mary sits serenely accepting her fate without any question without or any concern as if she has no choice.
We have pictures of Mary meeting Elizabeth. First, I don’t think medieval men knew anything about children, certainly not wombs. But, these images are also so sweet. Mary has no concern that Elizabeth might treat her as other women would treat an unmarried pregnant woman. As if Elizabeth hasn’t carried years of shame for nothing having a child, as if they both don’t have a moment of confusion in this whole situation.
Then I found pictures of Mary writing or giving or art based around the Magnificat. Again, this serene woman writes, there is peace and joy and happiness. It’s the live, laugh, love of her time. So nice.
If you have been coming to Emmanuel for a bit, you may have noticed that I try to include a diversity of cultures and ethnicities when it comes to our biblical characters so these images don’t come as a shock. But, I think images of Mary and Gabriel should be a little shocking. Maybe even offend us a little bit.
We see Mary as a passive recipient of what God is doing as if God was demanding of her. But she answers yes, she gives consent, she and considered and weighed her options and the consequences and decided that what God was doing in the world was more important than the consequences.
This is a woman not of serene devotion, revolution devotion. Not of waiting for God but God meeting her in her day to day work. Not quietly writing a sweet psalm but an anthem. There are even those who see her not as a passive participant in the world but as a revolutionary, and Satan’s greatest adversary, punching him in the face or crushing him under her heal.
This is a young woman with who with haste traveled 100 miles and treacherous paths filled with bandits, presumably by herself. Although that was a terrible idea to see if what she had been told was true and her family member Elizabeth, who had experienced her own shame of life without a child who had been ignored and forgotten, it seemed by God dismissed by her community and mocked by the neighboring wives.
When Mary arrived at Elizabeth and, every single cultural convention would have had Elizabeth shaming this young girl showing up pregnant but Elizabeth was listening for something more–the voice of the spirit that bid her listen to see beyond the social expectations. The Spirit whispered to Elizabeth that the world had changed–was changing– and it began with that girl walking through her door.
Mary sang that song to maybe with Elizabeth. At first a song of joy and hope, which turned to a song of expectation, of God’s working in the world, of the poor being made whole, the weak being empowered, the mighty and powerful being brought low. It was a turning of the tables and turning of the world upside down. It was a song that their children would live under the same occupation that they were.
Elizabeth called Mary blessed. Gabriel called Mary favored. These are not the words that others at the time would call Mary when she returned home 3 months pregnant. Was she chosen because she was favored, or was she was favored because she said yes.
There is a legend that says Mary was not the first woman Gabriel had gone to that day asking if they would bear Christ into the world–She was just the first one that said yes. Imagine how many said “no” to Gabriel. Imagine their reasonings. They were probably very rational, very reasonable excuses given to Gabriel for their safety, the safety of their children, for their future, and yet, Mary said yes to the incarnation. she said yes to God dwelling within her and for her to bring forth God and God’s love, peace, hope, into the world.
“When we intentionally consider the biblical Mary, our excuses will not work. If God used Mary, then we are not too young; if God used Elizabeth, then we are not too old. Being from a cultural capital or academic center is not a prerequisite in God’s calculus either. If God brought something good out of Nazareth, then God’s word can be born anew in the least likely places still. Have you ever been to Nazareth? God has always chosen the most humble of vessels from the most humble of places to give birth to his word. Mary had no rights; no power, and yet … No, our excuses will not work here.”[2]
Meister Eckhart believed, we are all meant to be mothers of God. “What good is it to me if this eternal birth of the divine son takes place unceasingly but does not take place within me? And what good is it to me if Mary is full of grace, if I am not also full of grace?”
Mary is unique and completely ordinary. She is glorified and absolutely among the the least and the poor and the forgotten. She is every one of us who has brought or loved children into this world. She is us who have hoped for a different world, who have worked to create a world of God’s love and Grace. She is everyone who is singing that song from a place of despair and grief and poverty, who the world has forgotten, who we might see and whose song we might hear if we listen for this Spirit that whispers to us. We might see the world as it has already changed, as it is changing, as it will yet be and be part of incarnating it to the world, bringing Christ into this world, bring the love and hope and justice and peace, to see each person, in each moment this world a little differently.
Mystic and theologian Howard Thurman wrote the work of Christmas.
The Work of Christmas
When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among others,
To make music in the heart.
It’s a little bit grand, a little bit outlandish, a little bit unexpected, a little bit like a musical, and it’s a the world I want to live in.
[1] BEARING LOVE, Sermontelling Luke 1:26-45 [46-56] (NL 316), Danny Nettleton and Bruce Nettleton, https://sermontelling.substack.com/
[2] Feasting on the Gospels–Luke, Volume 1