Mary’s Song click here to see the video
David Ketchum
December 26, 2020
It’s the first Sunday after Christmas, and I’ve been contemplating Mary’s Song:
“My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for [you have] looked with favor on the lowliness of [your] servant.
Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
and holy is [your] name.
[Your] mercy is for those who fear [you]
from generation to generation.
[You have] shown strength with [your] arm;
[you have] scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
[You have] brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
[You have] filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.
[You have] helped [your] servant Israel,
in remembrance of [your] mercy,
according to the promise [you] made to our ancestors,
to Abraham[, Sarah, and Hagar] and to [their] descendants forever.” (Luke 1:46-55, NRSV)
It’s been one of my favorite texts from the Christian tradition for as long as I can remember. The exhilaration of hope, the certainty that “the arc of the moral universe” really does “bend toward justice", continues to inspire my faith and my activism, especially in the face of all the terrible, and terribly unnecessary, suffering that fills our world. In Luke’s gospel, Mary does not just give birth to Jesus; she gives birth to a vision of the world where relationships are made right, where mercy and justice meet and become the closest of friends.
Who Gets to Frame Moral Questions?
Unfortunately, my pleasant, hopeful contemplation was rudely interrupted by a very different proclamation that I also heard this week. Last Tuesday, the outgoing Vice President, Mike Pence addressed a large, indoor crowd, many of whom were not wearing masks, blatantly rejecting our best knowledge and practices of how to guard public health during a pandemic. But public health wasn’t on Pence’s mind, not when he could use the opportunity to prop up multiple oppressive systems. At one point, he said:
“When we cut taxes, roll back regulations, and advance freedom, their agenda is higher taxes, open borders, soicalised medicine, a Green New Deal, and abortion on demand … . They want to make rich people poorer, and poor people more comfortable. We have fought to make every American richer, and that’s exactly what we’ve done.” (https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/mike-pence-mocked-for-saying-liberals-want-to-make-poor-people-more-comfortable/ar-BB1c9zyQ )
There’s enough material in this short quote for a month full of sermons. Trump’s tax cuts, like 40 years of tax cuts before him, devastated the economy for everyone but corporations and the rich (https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/06/trumps-tax-cuts-were-a-disaster-naturally-republicans-want-even-more/ ). Trump’s dangerous deregulatory actions will likely threaten our public health for decades (https://www.yalejreg.com/nc/the-trump-deregulation-scorecard-will-impact-public-health-the-environment-for-generations-by-elizabeth-glass-geltman/ ). And, rather than advancing freedom, Trump’s administration has been complicit in and often accelerated the decline of freedom (https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/03/05/democracy-is-decline-around-world-trump-is-part-problem/ ).
On the other hand, Pence’s list of policies he’d like us to avoid – which I’d reframe as healing economic and social disparities, creating humane and just immigration policies, guaranteeing healthcare access, addressing climate change and environmental injustice issues, and protecting reproductive rights - are actually vital policies for the survival of millions of people and the earth itself. They should not be partisan or controversial at all. In fact, what my conservative friends and family often name as merely political questions are more fundamentally ethical questions. We may debate the nuts and bolts of how, for instance, to make sure we have clean air and drinking water, but nobody should be disagreeing over this basic human right: everybody deserves clean air and safe drinking water. Everyone, without exception.
As another example, we need to have ongoing conversations about our borders and the immigration policies that go with them. Those policies and practices need to be continuously adapted to the unfolding sociopolitical realities in the world. It is important for us to listen and change them as needed, so that immigrants, asylum seekers, and refugees can be treated with dignity and respect while accessing the safety and opportunities that every human being deserves. But what should never be included in the conversation is the possibility of choosing the policies that have created the nightmare that continues along the United States’ southern border (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/22/us/biden-border-asylum.html ).
It’s very striking to me that Pence is not lying about what he stands for; he is very open in promoting failed and unjust polices. Moreover, he has given a basic description of several key commitments of those he would call his enemy. But the policies he supports cannot be called good according to an ethical, humane, and compassionate standard. To claim the moral high ground is a tale of convenience. It is a delusion that relieves the cognitive dissonance of being complicit in injustice. It excuses, and even justifies, injustice. It props up a system that benefits those who are hoarding wealth and power.
This is why we cannot allow people like Mike Pence to frame questions of morality in this way. We need to sing it out, like Mary did. And this is one of the reasons that the tradition of Jesus and the prophets continues to be a vital part of our cultural memory and political ethos. Mary sang about political and economic justice, that God’s mercy meant bringing “down the powerful from their thrones, and lift[ing] up the lowly; [filling] the hungry with good things, and sen[ding] the rich away empty.” And Jesus’ ministry was understood as “good news to the poor” – freeing prisoners, giving “sight for the blind,” and setting “the oppressed free.” (Luke 4:17-21) In contrast to the false gospel of so many Christian churches today, Mary and Jesus did not separate out material concerns from spiritual ones when it came to salvation. They were not content to let people suffer injustice, and they did not offer a spiritual promise of future salvation as a way to better tolerate present oppression.
Inherently Unjust & Unsustainable
We might ask, then, how bad things were in Mary’s and Jesus’ day. What was so terrible that would make them put these concerns so front and center in their songs and ministries? Marcus Bog simplified the economic situation at the time of Jesus like this:
66% of the wealth was controlled by 10% of the population, the ruling elites. These were the only people in society who had an easygoing confidence that they would go to bed at night with a full belly. 90% of the population, the peasants, were left to share just 33% of the resources. (http://www.aportraitofjesus.org/social.shtml ) “Share” is a nice euphemism; in reality, the poor were set in competition with one another, left to eke out an existence on the crumbs from the elites’ tables. There was plenty of resistance to this competition through hospitality, unexpected generosity, and other kindnesses, but the reality was that, because the rich hoarded wealth and power, the peasants were doomed to live in uncertainty.
If you’re like me, your mind immediately asks – so what would this look like today? What would Mary sing about today?
As it turns out, we could write a new verse, but the chorus would be the same. In 2016, the bottom 90% of the population in the USA owned only 21.2% of the nation’s wealth. (https://inequality.org/facts/wealth-inequality/ )
As you might have imagined, it has gotten worse over the last four years. And this awfulness has only intensified this year, as the very rich are capitalizing on the economic and social vulnerabilities accompanying the pandemic to get even wealthier. I know I’ve said this before, but I need to express my grief again: it is beyond heartless and cruel to see all this enormous suffering in the world and think to yourself, “oh! This is a good time to turn my billions into more billions!” But this cruelty is just good business sense in the United States. Based on research from Forbes magazine:
“The total net worth of the nation’s 651 billionaires rose from $2.95 trillion on March 18—the rough start of the pandemic shutdowns—to $4.01 trillion on Dec. 7, a leap of 36% …. .” (https://inequality.org/great-divide/updates-billionaire-pandemic/ )
I don’t know how to be more blunt: there is no compassionate, ethical, or humane way to be rich like this. These kinds of disparities can only exist at the expense of human lives and well-being, and at the expense of the earth itself. Even Time magazine knows this is wrong. Writing last September, Nick Hanauer and David Rolf pointed out that:
“in addressing the causes and consequences of this pandemic—and its cruelly uneven impact—the elephant in the room is extreme income inequality. / How big is this elephant? A staggering $50 trillion. That is how much the upward redistribution of income has cost American workers over the past several decades.” (https://time.com/5888024/50-trillion-income-inequality-america/ )
We can argue about where the line is when it comes to hoarding wealth and power, but I hope we can agree that there is a line. And, by the time you have hoarded a billion dollars, you are well beyond that line. The greed and delusion of the super rich has and will continue to kill millions of people. And it is killing the earth. There is no compassionate, ethical, or humane way to be rich like this. It is wrong. It is wicked. It is sinful.
Why? Because these systems are choking people to death. The wealthy and powerful of this world are starving the masses. And those who survive are condemned to inhumane and intolerable conditions. Pence claims that the Trump administration has made “every American richer,” but this is just a lie. The Time article went on to explain the real life impacts of this pilfering of the common citizens of the USA in “granular demographic detail”:
“For example, are you a typical Black man earning $35,000 a year? You are being paid at least $26,000 a year less than you would have had income distributions held constant. Are you a college-educated, prime-aged, full-time worker earning $72,000? Depending on the inflation index used (PCE or CPI, respectively), rising inequality is costing you between $48,000 and $63,000 a year. But whatever your race, gender, educational attainment, urbanicity, or income, the data show, if you earn below the 90th percentile, the relentlessly upward redistribution of income since 1975 is coming out of your pocket.” (https://time.com/5888024/50-trillion-income-inequality-america/ )
Same Song, New Singers
Thankfully, there are those who, like Mary the mother of Jesus, are still speaking up and speaking out against injustice. Let me give just three examples. First, Representative Omar of Minnesota refused to back down from calling out the failure of our government to meaningfully respond to the pandemic in just, compassionate, and humane ways. In response to the most recent $900 billion relief measure, she pointed out that “We are not embarrassed enough as leaders” -
"It's really quite shameful that we find ourselves negotiating a deal with such a small amount of money when we know just how devastated the American people are across our country … .” (https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/12/17/we-are-not-embarrassed-enough-ilhan-omar-slams-congress-failing-public-covid-relief )
And if we were listening this week, we could also have heard the song of justice in the face of oppression in Detroit. Last August, plaintiffs from the local movement for Black lives sued the city government for police violence, including “bruised and broken ribs, concussions, a collapsed lung, a fractured pelvis.” The activists sought to prohibit police use of “tools of excessive force,” including chemical weapons, sonic cannons, and rubber bullets. Last month, a temporary order restricted the use of force,
and last week, the city filed a countersuit that accused these civil rights advocates of a “civil conspiracy” - “to disturb the peace, engage in disorderly conduct, incite riots, destroy public property,” and commit other “illegal acts”.
But the movement leaders have refused to be intimidated, adding another verse to the cloud of witnesses who sing out for justice. Tristan Taylor, one of the original plaintiffs, replied:
“These attacks against us are a way of attempting to minimize our ability to go on the offensive and call for transparency and accountability. … This is just a way of saying to people, ‘This is not a place where you can raise your voice.’”
And Nakia Wallace, a Detroit Will Breathe leader, also spoke out:
“They’re trying to send a message to the Black Lives Matter movement, to anybody standing up against state power and trying to hold them accountable … . [This moment is an opportunity] to bring forth meaningful change, and the responsibility to not allow ourselves to be co-opted or silenced or bullied off the streets.” (https://theintercept.com/2020/12/21/detroit-black-lives-matter-lawsuit/ )
In solidarity with these movements, we can also bring our attention to Emily Gorcenski, a data scientist dedicated to “exposing members of the far right and cataloguing white supremacist violence across the US through her site, First Vigil.” She’s been doing so since the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. And though she’s had to relocate to Berlin for her own safety, she continues the work from there. In an interview from last October, she said:
“White supremacy is not purely a racial concept. It’s fundamentally racist, but it’s also fundamentally antisemitic, anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, anti-gay, anti-woman, anti-trans, anti-disability. It’s about purification through whiteness and through maleness and through the consolidation of power.”
“There’s a diversity of strategies we can have on how to build a world that is resilient to fascism. Protest is part of that. So is community involvement. … one of the most effective things that people can do is learn ways they can help their neighbors in the community – in direct ways that do not rely on governments and the state and other systems. … the fundamental principle of anti-fascism is mutual aid. … People ask, ‘How do you fight Nazis?’ I say, learn Spanish so you can translate for immigrants. Learn how to fix a tail light so you can keep somebody from getting pulled over on a bullshit charge. Find ways to lift each other up, to better help others.” (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/01/white-supremacist-protest-activism-emily-gorcenski )
These are the kinds of leaders and activists that we need to be listening to and listening for. It is easy to hear what people like Mike Pence has to say, and we obviously need to pay attention so we can mitigate the harm. But it is even more important to listen to these other voices, the voices insisting on lifting up the lowly and filling the hungry, both because they are less likely to be heard amid the noise of injustice, and because they provide practical, relevant, and radical ways to move forward.
Learning to Sing
As I considered all of this, I found myself asking – so, who was listening to Mary? And in my imagination, I see Mary raising Jesus with these convictions and aspirations, and I hear Mary’s song in Jesus’ ministry. When we listen, we can learn that the Divine is seen most clearly in the way we treat each other, in the way we give up violence and greed, and learn to live in ways so that no one is exploited, no one is hungry, and everyone is blessed.
It’s obvious that we have a long road ahead of us, and it is hard to keep up with the injustices that fill the news, let alone act on them. Sometimes, the most we can do is keep singing, insisting that justice and mercy have a place in this world. And maybe that is the most important lesson of all. Mary’s song has survived millennia of injustices, right up to this present day. So that, even during a week when we must bear witness to a lame duck president who has cruelly and vigorously pursued the federal death penalty (https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/17/politics/federal-death-penalty-2020-trnd/index.html ) while shamelessly pardoning a laundry list of crooked and violent offenders (https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/22/politics/trump-pardons/index.html ), we can keep our bearings.
Right now, it is true, that the powerful still sit on their thrones, secured by violence and oppression against the lowly. Right now, it is true, the rich are filled with good things, ignoring the hungry. Right now, it is true, it is hard to imagine a world where mercy is the norm. But Mary knew, and kept the faith. And Jesus learned from Mary, and Jesus knew and kept the faith. And millions have known, and kept the faith. And we can know it, too. We can learn to sing, and we can remember to sing, the message that keeps us going:
“[Your] mercy is for those who fear [you]
from generation to generation.
[You have] shown strength with [your] arm;
[you have] scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
[You have] brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
[You have] filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.
[You have] helped [your] servant Israel,
in remembrance of [your] mercy,
according to the promise [you] made to our ancestors,
to Abraham[, Sarah, and Hagar] and to [their] descendants forever.”
It may be harder to hear, but it is sweeter to sing. And the more of us who are singing it out, with our words and with our lives, the easier it will be to listen, and change the world, and rejoice.
Merry Christmas!
