This Christmas, I’ve been reading and re-reading the psalm that Mary, the mother of Jesus, wrote after the angel told her about this miraculous baby. It’s so powerful I want to include it here, because my reflections on it really pale in comparison with the original:
And Mary said,
“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.”
– Luke 1:46–55 (ESV)
This Christmas, Mary reminds me of three beautiful truths:
1. Even if it “doesn’t feel like Christmas,” in Christ, you can be fully blessed.
It didn’t feel like Christmas for Mary, but she had Jesus, and he was enough. This can be your hope too, if you receive it—hope that even in the darkness, you have an all-powerful, holy, and merciful God that is working faithfully for you.
One of my favorite Christmas carols is “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.” It’s not as well known as some of the others, but it was written over 160 years ago on Christmas Day by a 57-year-old widow named Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. It was in the midst of the Civil War, and Longfellow’s wife had just tragically died in a house fire. Longfellow himself had tried—and failed—to save her, and his burns were so bad he couldn’t even attend her funeral. He had also just gotten word that his son Charley, a soldier in the Union Army, had been shot through the back and neck in a recent battle. They weren’t sure if Charley was going to make it, and doctors said that if he did make it, he’d likely be paralyzed.
Longfellow sat by his window that cold Christmas morning, bereaved husband and worried father, his country torn apart by the Civil War, and in the distance he heard church bells ringing out, proclaiming Christmas “peace on earth, good will to men!” But as Longfellow looked out at his broken country, all he saw was violence and loss. And as he looked at his own life, all he felt was sadness and despair. So he wrote,
“And in despair I bowed my head;
‘There is no peace on earth,’ I said;
‘For hate is strong, And mocks the song,
of peace on earth, good will to men.’”
But a strange thing happened as he sat there. He did what believers through the centuries have often done, pressing through the pain into the promises of God. And he finished his poem with these incredible words:
“Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
‘God is not dead, nor doth he sleep;
The wrong shall fail, the Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good will to men.’”
Those aren’t the words of an optimist who ignores all the darkness. Those are the defiant words of a man who chooses to believe in God’s promises in the midst of the darkness.
Mary’s Magnificat has that same defiant, triumphant tone to it. The Romans are still in charge; her personal reputation is in ruins. She’s poor, and it looks like her fiancé has abandoned her. But she has God’s presence and his promises. God is not dead, nor doth he sleep.
2. Many of you need to hear that God is “looking at you in mercy” this Christmas.
Maybe you have a sense that God is angry at you, and maybe you have legitimate reason to think so. You know a holy God sees all the ways you fall short. The good news is that God has chosen to let his mercy overcome his wrath. He looked at you like the best father does with a child and felt tenderness in his heart toward you, a tenderness that overcame his wrath. And he extended salvation to you: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him would not perish but have eternal life.”
You have to choose that for yourself; God won’t force it on you. You don’t have to earn his mercy—you can’t earn it—but you do have to receive it. Mary’s prayer was perhaps the greatest salvation prayer ever uttered: “Be it unto me according to your word” (Luke 1:38).
God is looking at you right now in mercy. Maybe you feel cold and distant toward God, but that’s because you think he feels cold and distant toward you. You assume you’ve got to get better and improve before he’ll be happy with you. Maybe your parents were like that. They only approved of you when you were perfect. The gospel is that God sees you in all of your mess, all of your dysfunction and your sin, and accepts you. He cares about you. He’s let his mercy overcome his wrath, and he receives you, if you will accept his offer of salvation.
Will you say to him, “Be it unto me according to your word”?
3. Don’t reduce Christmas to sentimentality.
So many people reduce Christmas to a time of sentimentality. We think the real meaning of Christmas is nostalgia and niceness, feelings that don’t last through the day after Christmas when the cruelty of life takes back over. No wonder people get so skeptical about Christmas.
Mary’s song was not sentimental. Her life was a mess. Her song was not about family love and lights and delightful smells around the open fire. Her song was about the fact that a God of infinite might, holiness, and mercy had taken up residence in her without any of those things. Listen: Either she was right about this or she wasn’t. Don’t insult Mary by turning her into a quaint religious figure that reminds us of family and warmth and sentimental vibes. Either Mary was correct that the baby growing inside of her was “God of very God,” sent as the Savior of the world to die on a cross and overcome death and right all injustice in the world, or she wasn’t. Because, see, that was her whole hope. Stop this patronizing nonsense about all this being a sentimental religious tale. It’s not that.
Mary’s hope was not sentimentality. It was God with us, having come in salvation. Mary would watch one day as this Son was crucified, and as painful as that was for her to watch, she believed he was doing that for her sin and for the sin of the whole world. This was her hope. He cared about her even more than she cared about him. And in the midst of a cruel, unjust world, this was her hope. Either this hope is true or it isn’t.
The Christmas claim is that God has come to earth for you. He’s declared mercy to you, if you’ll receive it. Have you ever said to him, “Be it unto me according to your word?”