Sunday, December 22nd, 2024: "Mary Did You Trust?"
The First United Presbyterian Church
“Mary Did You Trust?”
Rev. Amy Morgan
December 22, 2024
Micah 5:2-5a
But you, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah,
who are one of the little clans of Judah,
from you shall come forth for me
one who is to rule in Israel,
whose origin is from of old,
from ancient days.
3 Therefore he shall give them up until the time
when she who is in labor has brought forth;
then the rest of his kindred shall return
to the people of Israel.
4 And he shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of the Lord,
in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God.
And they shall live secure, for now he shall be great
to the ends of the earth,
5 and he shall be the one of peace.
Luke 1:39-55
39 In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, 40 where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. 41 When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit 42 and exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. 43 And why has this happened to me, that the mother of the Holy One comes to me? 44 For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy. 45 And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by God.”
46 And Mary said,
“My soul magnifies the Lord,
47 and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
48 for the Holy One has looked with favor on the lowly state of this servant.
Surely from now on all generations will call me blessed,
49 for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
and holy is God’s name;
50 indeed, God’s mercy is for those who fear the Holy One
from generation to generation.
51 God has shown strength with their arm;
And has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
52 God has brought down the powerful from their thrones
and lifted up the lowly;
53 and has filled the hungry with good things
and sent the rich away empty.
54 God has come to the aid of their child Israel,
in remembrance of God’s mercy,
55 according to the promise God made to our ancestors,
to Abraham and to their descendants forever.”
I’m going to start by apologizing. Because I’m about to ruin someone’s favorite Christmas song.
In the early nineties, you couldn’t escape Christmas without hearing the song, “Mary, Did You Know,” a song written by Mark Lowry wondering if Mary knew who her son would be and what he would do. The song’s popularity has been maintained over the decades, reaching an all-time high of No. 26 on the Billboard hot 100 chart in December of 2014. It’s been recorded by a multitude of artists ranging from Kenny Rogers to Amy Grant and Dolly Parton.
It's a lovely song. It names many of the miraculous things Jesus did in his lifetime – walking on water, giving sight to the blind, calming a storm. It lifts up the divine nature of Jesus in humble human form. Really, it’s lovely.
But I also feel like the songwriter missed something kind of important. Like the first chapter of Luke. When Mary makes it clear that, yes, obviously she knew some things. Mary knew, even before her son was born, that he would be named Jesus, that he would be holy and be given the throne of David and rule eternally, and that he would be called the Son of God.
In a Facebook group for Presbyterians, someone posted a question last week asking if “Mary, Did You Know” is theologically sound and if it should be sung in church, or at all. Within two days, the post garnered over 140 responses ranging from “it’s my favorite Christmas song,” to “this should never be sung again.” People debated what Mary knew and when and whether or not it mattered because it’s a song that makes us cry, which is either a great or terrible thing, depending on whether or not you like crying in church.
Several years ago, the song was parodied in a viral video where Mary herself answers the question of Lowery’s composition. She expresses frustration that Lowery’s song is patronizing and attempts to “mansplain” her own pregnancy to her. It’s a pretty hilarious parody.
Someone in the Presbyterian Facebook group wrote another parody entitled, “Joseph, Did You Know,” wondering if he knew some things, like, for instance, that his wife-to-be was a feminist.
In an attempt to correct or maybe just adjust the theological direction of this song, a Canadian woman wrote alternative lyrics that focus on the themes of liberation and justice. She asks if Mary knew how influential she would be to future generations, how she would inspire the healing of the nations and renewal of the creation.
But millennia before Mark Lowery wrote his inquisitive song and the parodies and alternatives it has inspired, Mary wrote a song of her own. And her song makes it clear that the fierce debate about what she did or did not know misses the whole point.
Mary knew an angel had visited her. Mary knew her cousin was pregnant. Mary knew what the scriptures had promised through prophets like Micah and Isaiah.
But everything she knew opened up a chasm of uncertainty. If she was truly pregnant with a divinely conceived child, there were nothing but questions in front of her. Would Joseph marry her or disgrace her? Would she survive childbirth? Would she be a good mother? Good enough for the Son of God?
Mary arrived at her cousin Elizabeth’s home filled with divine knowledge and sacred uncertainty. And Elizabeth called Mary blessed - blessed for believing, blessed for trusting, that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by God.
What Mary knew is far less important than what Mary trusted.
When Mary sings, she doesn’t sing about everything she knows. She doesn’t express certainty about what day her child will be born and how smart he’s going to be and all the miracles he’s going to perform and how popular he’ll become.
Instead, she sings about what she trusts. She trusts in the God of Israel. She trusts in the God who destroys our illusions of self-sufficiency and self-righteousness, who inverts our economic systems, reveals the emptiness of accumulation, reverses our ideas of status, and fulfills the promise to make Israel a blessing to all the nations.
Her song is not prophetic, it’s not fortune-telling or knowing the future. It expresses what Mary has trusted in her whole life. Mary trusted in the promises made to God’s people through prophets like Micah, who condemned injustices committed by Israel and expressed hope that God would restore Jerusalem and the temple to their former glory when the people returned to faithfulness in their covenant relationship with God. Her song isn’t about all the things she knows God is going to do. It’s a song about the God in whom she trusts, based on what God has done, and the promises God has made.
The church, and really our whole society, is suffering from a crisis of trust. Trust in institutions like the church, in government and even in each other has plummeted in recent decades. We could blame scandals and abuse, isolationism and fearmongering, media and technology.
But what has been most damaging to trust, I think, is our reliance on knowing. This started long before the scientific method or the industrial revolution or 24-hour news. Early in the evolution of the Christian faith, we started needing to know. We needed to know what to do and believe so we’d be ready when Jesus returned. Then we needed to know what to do and believe so we’d be saved from hell after we died. Then we needed to know what to do and believe so we could be assured we were part of the elect. Dogma and doctrine didn’t develop in a vacuum. They emerged from our insatiable desire to know, to be able to see the future and be ready for it.
And that desire has ramped up into warp speed today. We can know just about anything by asking Alexa or searching Google. Jason often complains that there are no more unanswered questions. We can know everything. And we want to know everything. Because knowledge is power, it gives us a sense of control.
Trust, on the other hand, is vulnerable. Trust accepts that beautiful and terrible things can happen and welcomes life on its own terms. It doesn’t try to bend reality to our whim but surrenders to what is.
And in that surrender, there is celebration. Because in that surrender, we can see what has sustained us all along. Once our illusion of control is dissolved, we can see clearly the love and presence of God and God’s action in the world.
But trust doesn’t typically emerge out of practice or even conscious choice. We don’t give up power that intentionally. More often, trust is something that happens to us when the things we know unravel.
Mary knew that girls get pregnant after they get married. Mary knew that God was eternal and powerful and not like humans. Mary knew she was poor and young and powerless. This is what Mary knew.
And then her experience dismantled everything she knew. She could have insisted on her truth, doubled-down on what she knew. She could have written off the angel as a hallucination and stayed home. Maybe that would have worked out for her.
But instead, she trusted. She trusted that her freefall out of knowledge would land her in the arms of a just and loving God. Trusting became suddenly more essential than knowing. Trusting suddenly became the only real option she had left.
If we are blessed, as Mary was, we experience those times in our lives when what we know falls apart. We know we’re on the right career path, and then the industry dissolves or changes. We know we’re fiscally responsible, and then the housing market crashes. We know we’re raising our kids the right way, and then they do or say things we never could have imagined. We know we’re voting for the right people and policies, and then we realize they aren’t making things better. We know we’re supporting a worthy charity, and then we learn it's a sham. We know we’re friends with loving people, and then they hurt us and disappoint us.
In these moments, these moments we would never desire for ourselves or wish for others, in these moments, trust happens. Maybe it’s a choice we make. But more often, it’s the only real option we have left.
In that moment, when we feel vulnerable and afraid, when life feels much too real, when anything can happen and we don’t know what will happen next, we hear a song. A song that reminds us of God’s strength and justice, God’s compassion and faithfulness. A song that invites us to surrender to what is and to celebrate the God who created us, sustains us, and loves us.
As I was Christmas shopping this week, “Mary Did You Know” started playing in one of the stores. And I smiled, not because of the debates and parodies of the song. But because it reminded me of the more important question: “Mary, did you trust?” And I knew the answer was, “yes.” And I knew that if an impoverished, pregnant, teenage girl in the first century could trust God, then we could, too.
Perhaps we can be blessed to trust in God’s love, God’s justice, God’s promises. And perhaps we can bless others as we celebrate this surrender of what we know to what we trust. Perhaps we can join in Mary’s song.
Amen.
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