Mary’s Song – Joy (Christmas Songs #3)

We kicked off this Advent series with a little game about Christmas songs, and I have to say — you were good at it. The game was simple: I gave you a scrambled, overwrought version of a famous carol title and you had to guess which one it was.

But have you ever actually stopped and listened to the lyrics of some of these songs?

Some of them are gorgeous — pure poetry. Others are just harmless fun that the kids love. And some of them are genuinely bizarre.

Have You Listened to “Jingle Bells”?

We all know the first verse. Dashing through the snow in a one-horse open sleigh, laughing all the way. Fine. Fun. A sleigh ride through the hills. Wonderful — though notice it is not actually a Christmas song. There is nothing about Christmas in it.

Then it gets strange. A day or two ago, the singer says, he took a ride and a young woman was seated by his side. Still fine. He is out riding, he meets a girl, invites her along, it is faintly romantic. Until the horse turns out to be scrawny and unlucky, and they run into a drifted snowbank and tip over.

They crash. The whole thing flips. They land in the snow. Now they are wet and freezing. Does that put you in the Christmas spirit?

It keeps going. Verse three: same sleigh ride, he gets up, tries to push the sleigh out, slips, and falls flat on his back in the snow. And then another man drives by in his own sleigh, laughs at him sprawled out there, and drives off without helping.

Nothing says Christmas like falling in the snow and being laughed at.

And in the last verse he has learned nothing — his advice is essentially “grab a sleigh, grab a girl, and go as fast as you possibly can.” This is not a Christmas song. It is bizarre. And we sing it every single December.

It is not the only one. Work all the way through “The Twelve Days of Christmas” and you realize it is really twelve days of torture. By the end you have accumulated twelve drummers, twenty-two pipers, thirty leaping lords, thirty-six dancing ladies, forty milkmaids, forty gold rings, and one hundred eighty-four birds.

Who wants to care for a hundred eighty-four birds? My wife and I once had four. Four was plenty. And beyond the birds — how exactly are you employing all these people? The whole arrangement sounds less like the gifts of true love and more like the gifts of a deeply insecure wealthy man with poor judgment.

I could keep going. There are several other seasonal standards that get genuinely uncomfortable once you actually read the lyrics. And yet every December they play on the radio, leaving anyone who listens closely scratching their head.

Today we are going to look at a Christmas song from the Bible that most people call beautiful and wonderful — and rightly so. But once you hear the backstory, you may find yourself scratching your head too, wondering how in the world this song could ever have been sung.

Here is my hope, though. I do not want you to walk away bewildered. I want you to walk away inspired — so inspired that you go live a life that bewilders other people, because they look at you and wonder how you do it.

The Announcement

To understand Mary’s song, we have to start back in Luke 1:26.

“In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. And the virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, ‘Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!’ But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. And the angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.’

“And Mary said to the angel, ‘How will this be, since I am a virgin?’ And the angel answered her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy — the Son of God. And behold, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.’ And Mary said, ‘Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.’ And the angel departed from her.”

Most of you have heard this story many times. If you grew up in church, you heard it read while the children’s Christmas pageant unfolded — six-year-old Mary on her knees pretending to pray, until eight-year-old Gabriel appears, who also happens to be her brother, and the whole congregation grins from ear to ear and thinks awww.

But look at what is actually happening here. There is not much in this scene that should make you say awww, because what the angel is asking Mary to do is going to put her in an agonizing position.

What “Betrothed” Actually Meant

The text says Mary and Joseph were betrothed. We would say engaged. But in their culture they were already considered married — they simply had not yet reached the wedding night.

Here is how it worked. A young man — maybe eighteen, twenty, twenty-four — is finally getting established and ready to start a family. He looks around the village considering which young women seem kind, which would make a good wife and eventually a good mother. Once he settles on someone, he does not approach her and ask her on a date. He approaches her father.

The girl would likely be about thirteen, fourteen, maybe fifteen. So he walks up to her father and says, “I want to marry your daughter.” Not “I would like to take her out.” I want to marry her.

The father then interviews him. Will you take care of my child? Will you be a good husband? Will you be a good father? If the father decides yes, they enter an agreement — perhaps with a dowry — and from that moment the two are considered married. She cannot run off with someone else. He cannot go see other women just to be sure.

But they do not consummate the marriage. That comes a year later. The year gives the young man time to build — maybe adding a room onto his parents’ home, maybe getting a place of his own. Meanwhile the young woman is learning from her mother how to run a household, how to be a wife, how to be a mother. It is essentially a year-long apprenticeship for marriage.

That is exactly where Mary and Joseph are when Gabriel shows up. In the community’s eyes they are effectively married, but everyone knows there has been no wedding night — no celebration, no moment where Joseph gathers his friends, says it is time, comes for his bride, and brings her back to the house he has built.

Two Things Going Through Her Mind

So when Gabriel announces she will have a son, the first question is obvious and she asks it out loud: how? I am a virgin. I have not been with any man. And Gabriel takes the time to explain.

But I think there was a second question she did not ask aloud: what is this going to do to my life?

Because part of the whole point of that year-long betrothal was to demonstrate that a couple was not marrying to cover up a pregnancy. A full year of waiting told the whole community that this couple was righteous, that they had not slept together, that everything was above board.

So if a girl turns up pregnant before the wedding night, it is a scandal. She is considered a sinner. In a real sense Gabriel is asking Mary to become pregnant before she is with Joseph — knowing everyone will find out and assume the worst.

Mary has a good reputation. She is by every indication a wonderful young woman. And now: what will her parents think? Her friends? How will her community treat her? How will Joseph respond?

Has anyone here ever done something they regret? Every hand should go up — and if yours did not, you probably regret lying just now. We all have. Some of us have done things we regret so deeply we have never told anyone, because if people knew, they would think differently of us. There would be shame. There might be scorn. Our reputation would take a hit. People might not want to be around us. We could lose friendships. We could lose a marriage. So we keep it buried.

And honestly, some of the things we have not done, we avoided not because we are better than anyone else but because we were terrified of what people would think. We wanted to. We did not, because it could wreck everything. We said no to avoid the shame and the scorn.

Mary knows the shame is coming. She knows the scorn is coming. She knows she will be treated as an outcast. And she says yes.

“Let it be to me according to your word.”

How does she do that? The phrase right before it tells you: “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord.” A servant does what the master asks. Always. If her Master says this is what He wants, then she is His servant.

Now — have you ever said yes out loud while your heart was still saying no? Kids do it constantly. “Yes, Mom,” while inside there is a full-blown protest going on. Outwardly compliant, inwardly griping, having to psych yourself up: fine, we will just do this.

I do not think that is Mary here. But maybe it was — the text does not say, so that is pure speculation on my part. What I do know is that if I were in her position, I might say “let it be according to your word” while inside I was thinking, God, what have You just done to my life?

The Trip to Elizabeth

We do not know what Mary is feeling in that moment. But we do know what she is feeling a little later.

Gabriel had mentioned Elizabeth — likely her mother’s cousin, probably close to thirty years older than Mary, but family, so there was some familiarity. And Mary knew Elizabeth had been unable to have children. We looked at that story last week: Zechariah and Elizabeth, probably around forty, married roughly thirty years, childless — until an angel appeared to Zechariah in the temple and told him they would have a son who would prepare the way for the Messiah. Zechariah doubted, and was struck mute.

So Mary hears that her relative, childless for three decades, is six months pregnant. And she had not gotten a text about it or seen it posted online. She had to go see for herself.

So this fourteen-year-old girl makes the trip from Nazareth in Galilee down to a town in Judea. We have no idea how she traveled — whether she walked, whether a family member went along to keep her safe. All we know is she arrives at the house and starts calling out.

Verse 42: “And she exclaimed with a loud cry, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.'”

Realize what just happened. All Elizabeth heard was her own name — just Mary calling out that she had arrived. And the verse before tells us the Holy Spirit filled Elizabeth, and she begins to prophesy, confirming everything Gabriel had said to Mary weeks earlier.

And in that instant Mary knows: God is with her. God is in control.

Which is when she sings.

The Magnificat

Verse 46: “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.”

The church has called this song the Magnificat for centuries. I want to point out four things in it.

1. Her humility

If we were writing this story, we would cast someone important. Mary is a common girl. She is not a princess. She is not wealthy. She is well liked and well respected — and she is fourteen. And God says: I choose you.

That humbles her. Notice she calls herself a lowly servant. She identifies with those of humble estate. She identifies with the hungry. She identifies with the people no one would call great. She does not think too highly of herself.

I used to tell my kids this all the time — I say it less now, because they would just roll their eyes: the quickest path to unhappiness is selfishness. If you are selfish, you want it now, you want it your way, you want it for yourself — and the moment it does not go that way, you are miserable.

Christmas makes this worse. A kid asks for one specific toy, does not get it, and is furious. Or he gets it in the wrong color. Or it is smaller than he pictured. He can be surrounded by presents and feel no gratitude at all, only anger.

Mary is not selfish. She is not singing about herself. She appears in her own song, yes — but everything she sings about herself, she sings with humility, because she understands this story is not about her. God is doing something far bigger, and she is honored to have been brought into it.

2. She is God-focused

A couple of weeks ago my social media feed lit up over a post that read, roughly: “Christmas season is about God choosing a woman to lead a revolution of reorganizing the structures of societal power by her leadership, tenderness, and faith.”

I do not know who wrote it. And with all respect — that is not right.

Do not mishear me. I actually appreciate that she is inspired by Mary and holds her in high regard. In my opinion the Catholic tradition holds too high a view of Mary — and many of us Protestants hold far too low a view of her. We do not honor her the way we probably should. So I am glad to see her honored, because Mary was a remarkable young woman. She had to have been, for God to choose her. God placed this extraordinary girl on the earth to bring the Messiah into it.

But look at her song. She does not say any of this is about her. The entire song is about God. Because Christmas is not first and foremost about Mary. Christmas is about Jesus, and God’s plan to send Him into the world for us. And her song reflects exactly that.

So let me ask: in your life song, are you singing about God? Or does your song tend to be mostly about yourself?

I will be honest — my song is not nearly as God-focused as I want it to be. In my daily life, in my thoughts, there is still far too much of me in it. I want to become more like this fourteen-year-old girl, who in the face of everything coming at her — the outcast status, the whispers, the people who will not want to be near her, the assumptions they will make — still keeps her eyes on God.

3. She trusts Him

If I could put it in a formula: humility plus a God-focus equals trust.

If you find yourself saying “I just do not trust God,” it may be because humility has slipped, or because your focus has drifted too far onto yourself. Maybe somewhere in the past you felt God let you down, so you had to step up — and as you elevated yourself, humility shrank and your focus on God went down with it. If you want to experience real trust, that has to be reversed.

4. It leads her to joy

When Joseph learned Mary was pregnant, Matthew 1 tells us he decided to divorce her quietly. The word is “divorce” because, again, they were already considered married even though they had not come together physically.

I think Joseph genuinely cared for Mary. But he was a righteous man, and he knew he could not live a lie — he could not take this child and pretend it was his, because he knew it was not. So he would not absorb that. He would divorce her, making it publicly clear the child was not his.

But he intended to do it quietly. Under the Old Testament law, a woman found pregnant in a situation like this, if formally charged and found guilty, could be stoned. So he would bring no charge. He would let her live. He would let the baby live. Whoever the father was could deal with it.

We know how it turns out. Gabriel appears to Joseph in a dream, explains everything, and Joseph marries her.

But when Mary is standing in front of Elizabeth singing this song, she does not know any of that yet. She does not know how Joseph will respond. She does not know what her parents will think. She does not know how her community will eventually treat her.

And in the face of all that unknown and all that potential anxiety, she sings with joy. Because she is humble — this is not about her. Because her focus is on God and everything He has done and will do. And because she therefore trusts Him, even as her life is about to be upended.

You hear it in the very first line: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.”

Joy in the Middle of the Struggle

This is not the first time Scripture gives us that kind of joy-in-the-hard-place song. Habakkuk 3:17–18: “Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will take joy in the God of my salvation.”

When someone lives with that kind of joy — when they have cancer, or they have just lost someone, or something is going badly with their kids, or they have lost their job, or they are staring down a financial crisis, and they still have joy — it leaves you scratching your head. How do they do that?

This has been a hard year for a lot of us. There has been tension everywhere — an election year, racial unrest, arguments over masks. And then there is the personal weight. Some of you have had surgery or are managing a health condition right now. Some of you have lost someone this year. Some of you lost your job. For some of you this year has been not just hard but cruel.

And even if this year has actually been fine for you — you kept your job, you did not lose anyone, things have been more or less okay — many of us are still feeling something. I was talking with a friend a couple weeks ago who pointed out that his schedule is freer than it has been in years, and yet he feels more stressed than he has in years. He is not in healthcare. He is not in one of the fields that has been slammed. He is just worn down by all of it.

I think that is where a lot of us are. And now here comes Christmas, with all the lights and the music and the warm feelings, and we look at it and think: how?

But remember where this series has taken us. In Isaiah’s song we saw that when life seems to be nothing but despair, we have hope. Last week Zechariah showed us that in the middle of the struggle and the chaos, we can have peace. And this week Mary shows us that even facing the unknown, even when things are not going the way we wanted, even when the dream is not coming together — we can have joy.

But that kind of joy requires humility, a focus on God, and trust in Him.

Where That Leaves Us

Some of you need to confess that there has been far too much of you in your life song, and ask God to give you that God-focus. Some of you realize you have been singing too much about yourself and need to ask for humility. Some of you know that this year you have not been trusting God, and this is the moment to say so.

Father, we are inspired by Mary — by her willingness to do what she did in the face of what it would cost her. I want to live that kind of life. Help me keep my focus daily on You, on the gospel, on what Jesus did. Help me live with trust in each day and each moment. And as I do, fill me with joy.

I pray that for my church family. I pray it for our world. I pray we would find our joy in Jesus. And for the person reading this who does not know You, minister to their heart right now and draw them to Yourself — that they would confess their sin, say they want to follow You, and be born anew spiritually, so that today becomes their spiritual birthday.

Help us come to You no matter where we are and no matter what has been happening, and put our focus fully on You — because You are God, You are good, and You are in control. Amen.

Go in the joy and blessing of the Lord Jesus. Go and be a blessing to others.