FINDINGS II
Advent
IV - C - December 20, 2009
Luke 1: 39-55
(Micah 5:
2-5a; Canticle 15; Hebrews 10: 5-10)
 By Harry T. Cook
12/14/09
RUBRIC
The abiding figure of Mary said to have been the mother of
Jesus is writ large in the gospel for Advent IV - C in a narrative that follows
immediately upon what is known as "the annunciation." In it Luke depicts a
divine messenger known as Gabriel making a visit to Mary at her home in
Nazareth to inform her that she is pregnant with a child destined to reclaim
the Davidic throne and make it an eternal one.
It is enough to receive such a visitor, but the message
conveyed is astonishing. She who is (in the Greek text at hand not "virgin"
(parthenos) but literally "one who has not been known by a man") is
nevertheless with child. Luke apparently decided to avoid the semantic problem
of Matthew 1:23 where the Greek "parthenos" (lit., "virgin") may be a bad
translation of the Hebrew "almah" ("young woman of marriageable age"), which
appears at Isaiah 7:14). On the other hand, the Septuagint probably was the
text from which Matthew worked.
Such uncertainty has never prevented the purveyors of dogma
from pronouncing the birth of Jesus a miracle accomplished without the inconvenience
of sexual intercourse, making the deity Jesus' father both in spirit and in
truth.
It is worth noting that, by the time whoever Luke was
compiled the text of this gospel passage, nascent Christianity was in the
process of moving beyond its contest with post-Temple Judaism and into more
aggressive competition with the Graeco-Roman myth religions and, in particular we
must suppose, with the cult of the Caesars.
It remained for Suetonius in his Lives of the Caesars ("The
Deified Augustus" 94:4) to "report" the assignation of the god Apollo with
Atia, the human mother of Octavius (by his own later declaration, "Augustus")
resulting in the latter's miraculous birth thus entitling him to be considered
a god as well. While Suetonius's work appeared some 30 or more years after
Luke, he was undoubtedly pulling together strands of an oral tradition about
the unusual tales of Octavius' birth.
Luke's account, however, came first. The question is why
Suetonius's story of the conception of Augustus is scoffed at as fantastical
and consigned to mythology while millions of Christians do not bat an eye at
Luke's story and take it literally. Of course, this kind of anomaly has
furnished such journeymen scholars as I with work for, lo, these
many years.
WORKSHOP
Luke seemed not to have considered how what might well have
been a 160-mile round trip, no doubt on foot, through rugged terrain, would
have affected a young woman said to be pregnant. He has Mary go from Nazareth
of Galilee to an unnamed village in the Judean countryside. It will be less
than a chapter from now that Luke, slavishly following Matthew, will have Mary
and the cardboard figure known as Joseph travel 90 miles from Nazareth to
Bethlehem in the same fashion.
The burden of this proper's passage, however, is neither the
itinerary nor the mileage, but the transition Luke makes between the
foretelling of Jesus' birth and the actual birth of John the Baptist. Luke
invents a kinship of sorts between Mary and Elizabeth, said here to be John's
mother. Is this Luke's way of trying to tie together what probably were the
eventual opposing traditions of the sons, which may have persisted as their
posthumous followings competed for attention?
The story becomes melodramatic as in 1:41 Luke tells us that
the fetus in Elizabeth's uterus "leaped" at the exact moment Mary announced her
presence to Elizabeth. In the evangelist's imaginative scheme of things, the
fetus evidently by then taking shape in Mary's uterus has no similar reaction
to the presence of Elizabeth and her leaping fetus. Is this Luke's subtle and
coded way of saying that the future Jesus would have nothing to fear about John
eclipsing him, while the pre-natal John already knew the identity of Jesus as
messiah and himself as a lesser figure?
Luke has Elizabeth marvel that the vessel of the messiah's
journey should come to her (1:43), thus underscoring Luke's ranking of Jesus
above John, but here not in opposition since they will be kinsmen even as their
mothers are depicted as kinswomen. However, see Genesis 25:22, the only other
scriptural instance of in-utero leaping -- the twins Esau and Jacob depicted as
"struggling together" in Rebekah's body, set against each other from the
beginning.
Elizabeth continues with her praise (1:45) thus setting the
stage for Mary's peroration known fondly in the Christian tradition as
"Magnificat," as in "My soul magnifies the Lord." Whence the Magnificat: vv.
47-55? Allusions to no fewer than a dozen Hebrew Bible texts are obvious:
Deuteronomy 10: 21, I Samuel 1:11, Job 22:9 (a negative approach), Psalms 25:5,
99:11, 103:17, 107:9, 111:9, 113: 5-6 and Micah 7:20.
The theology of the passage is as follows: The biblical god,
by whatever name, is savior or is found in the saving person of messiah (v.
47). This is so, we are asked to believed, because of the divine intention to honor
someone of the peasant class (vv. 48-49). Divine favor will be conferred on
those who respect the divine bias for the lowly (v. 50). God deals with the
high and mighty: The failing of their fortune is of divine initiative (v.
51-52). God intervenes in the distribution of resources among rich and poor
(vv. 53-54).
HOMILETIC COMMENTARY
Homilists who preach the virgin birth today as a primary
dictum of biblical religion will miss the mark by so much that they will
surpass their level of usual irrelevance.
The RCL invites those in charge of the liturgy to omit the Magnificat
text from the gospel reading, but it is offered as a responsory between
readings one and two. Either way, it is the centerpiece of the day's lections.
(The Micah reading will be helpful; the one from Hebrews not so much.)
The Magnificat is a brief for mythical Israel against the
world, for the poor against the rich. There are not two sides to this story. It
illustrates what Luke (after Matthew at 5: 3-6) will have Jesus say at Luke 6:
20-21 ("Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom (rule) of God. Blessed
are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled . . ."
There can be no mistaking the partisan nature of this
passage and of its author(s) and editor(s). It is the original liberation
theology derivative of the 8th Century B.C.E. public intellectuals Amos ("Let
justice roll down as waters . . .") and Micah ("to do justice, to love mercy").
That is why the enjoining of neighbor-to-neighbor love will be for Luke the
doing of justice in the way his Samaritan outcast will minister tenderly to the
one we must assume was in Luke's imagination one of the privileged Judean elite
-- all depicted in the famous passage at 10:30ff.
With Christmas having already begun infringing on the public
consciousness in mid-October, this will be the last chance before myth and
pageant tune out logic and common sense for the preacher to orient his or her
auditors to the central theme of the Hebrew and Christian bibles. That theme is
justice: social justice, economic justice, political justice. However homilists
can use the drama of the stories surrounding Christmas to put over the point,
more power to them.
| |
