• Micah 5:2-5a

Like his contemporary, Isaiah, the prophet Micah sees in current events a reckoning day of God’s judgment fast approaching.  The fall of the Northern Kingdom was a dire warning to the South (Judah/Jerusalem).  Given his harsh judgments, the prophet’s promise of God’s renewal is striking.  Imagining a better future, he invokes the memory of the glory days of King David, when Israel was united, peaceful and secure, by referring poetically to David’s origins: “You, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah, who are one of the little clans of Judah, from you shall come forth one of old, from ancient days.”  This one, like David, will “feed his sheep in the strength of the Lord….”  And, like the victorious King David will bring security and peace again.

• “The Song of Mary: Magnificat” (Luke 1:46-55)

Whether originally composed or adapted from other sources, the songs Luke inserts in his birth narratives of John the Baptizer and Jesus rely on the major themes and rich imagination of the Hebrew scriptures and inter-testimental texts.  They are not decorative; they are essential to the text.  These songs serve the narrator’s intention to show that the birth of John and of Jesus fulfilled ancient longings and promises.  He has just told his reader (in today’s appointed gospel) of the joy shared by Elizabeth, long past her childbearing years,  and Mary, a virgin,  caused by their miraculous pregnancies.  The song he inserts as sung by Mary opens with a doxology for the “greatness of the Lord” who has seen fit to honor/”regard” such an impossibly unlikely person for divine purposes.  All future generations will have cause to call her “blessed”/fortunate/favored/privileged.  The song recalls the one, traditional trait by which God’s people have come to know and trust that God is at work– bold, absolute, fair justice, even for the most needy.  This marks the fulfillment of God’s covenant with Abraham and Sarah, (two other impossible, unlikely but willing instruments), “and all generations.”

• OR Psalm 80:1-7

Written in response to an imminent threat to the security of the nation/people, this psalm calls on the Lord as “the shepherd of Israel….”  the psalmist laments the woes that God’s people have endured and pleads, “Restore us, O God of Host’s/show the light of your countenance and we shall be saved.”

• Hebrews 10:5-10

The writer to “the Hebrews” continues his theme of Christ as fulfillment.  In this excerpt, he quotes from Psalm 40:7ff, which devalues hollow, ritual sacrifice and elevates the practice of God’s teachings and God’s justice.  Christ, he writes, “abolishes the first in order to establish the second….”  Which means, “we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.”

• Luke 1:39-45, (46-55)

Luke’s narrative, which intertwines the birth stories of John the Baptizer and Jesus continues.  Mary goes to the home of Elizabeth and Zechariah.  As soon as Elizabeth hears Mary’s voice, “the child leaped in her womb.”  Under the authority of the Holy Spirit, (an always reliable sign in Luke/Acts of God’s direct participation in the event being reported), Elizabeth addresses Mary, “Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb.”  Luke crafts his narrative so that Elizabeth presciently asks why “the maker of my Lord” should visit me?”  And she tells Mary of the movement she felt in her womb when she heard Mary’s voice.  Luke caps the thrilling scene with a song; vv 46-55, (see comments, above).

By Micah’s time the nation was deeply anxious about its future.  External threats were vague but persistent.  A growing loss of confidence in national leaders and institutions exacerbated the spreading sense of uncertainty about where the nation was headed.  Miach cast a gimlet eye on the dire situation and wasted few words in a grim assessment of the future, unless there were certain changes.  Even more startling then is the turn in this narrative we read this Sunday.  Pressed against the wall, the narrator surrenders something new to say about the current situation and to provide hope for the future by remembering certain texts from the past.  He invokes the same spirit conveyed in fragments from Samuel (book II, chapter 7), the Psalms (89), Isaiah (11:3b-9), Jeremiah 23:5-7 and 33:14-16), and even Ezekiel (34:1-16) and remembers what God had done through David and, in the process, discovered hope in the renewed lineage of David through one who will “feed his flock” and return peace and security.

Luke’s narrative discovers songs to sing in another time of crisis.  In his masterful analysis of the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke, The Birth of the Messiah, Raymond Brown carefully disentangles the strands of texts and images that inspired Luke’s rich composition.  In the song in the touching scene when Elizabeth and Mary marvel at their miraculous pregnancies (vv 46-55), Brown cites Psalm 35:9, I Samuel 2:1-2, Habakkuk 3:18, Genesis 29:32, Psalm 103:17a among the memes and direct quotes that Luke uses to find his own voice in the song he ascribes to Mary: “My soul magnifies the Lord….”  “He has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty.”

In a section entitled “Song is Existence,” from Poetry, Language, Thought,  Martin Heidegger elevates the role of the one who finds the right song to sing at just the right occasion:

“Those who are more daring by a breath dare the venture with language.  They are the sayers who more sayingly say.  For this one breath by which they are more daring is not just a saying of any sort; rather, this one breath is another breath, a saying other than  the rest of human saying.”  “The singer’s saying says the sound whole of worldly existence, which invisibly offers its space with the world’s inner space of the heart.”  “…These poets sing the healing whole in the midst of the unholy.”  (p.137)

Out of Micah’s dark foreboding about the actual and possible threats the nation faced because of outside enemies as well as the internal weaknesses of its leaders and institutions comes poetry/song:  “You, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah… from you shall come forth one who is to rule….”  “…When  she who is in labor has brought forth.”  “…And he shall bring peace.”  Luke always situates his narrative in the roiling crises instigated by the heel of the Roman Empire on the neck of Jerusalem, and his response is a story filled with songs!

In his wonderful brief book, Finally Comes the Poet: Daring Speech for Proclamation, Walter Brueggemann summarizes:

“The fundamental hope  of the Bible is that the disproportion will be overcome.  Prophetic hope is about lion and lamb together (Isa 11:6-9), about swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks (Mic 4:3-4), about new covenant in which all will know the Torah and all will be forgiven (Jer 31:31-34), about a new shepherd king who will do justice (Ezek 34:11-16), about planting and building and enjoying the produce (Isa 65:21-22).  Israel’s hope and God’s promise characteristically concern transformation of the world of disproportion.”  (p. 87)

What must someone say in times in which those without hope are vexed, confused and angry?  Returning to Brueggemann:

“The art of preaching is not instructional, rational discourse, or moral suasion,  It is the invitation and permit to practice a life of doxology and obedience….” (p.68)  “Rage is turned to praise, isolation is turned to community, fear becomes trust, hurt permits healing, anxiety becomes adoration.”  “Our lives are given back to us in the oddness of praise.” (p. 77)

“The healing whole in the midst of the unholy,” again in Heidegger’s succinct phrase, is the song to be sung, as Luke teaches us to sing.