Emphasis Preaching Journal

Mary's famous prayer, The Magnificat, is a profound and moving celebration of God's merciful treatment of ordinary people like us. The Mother of Jesus also gives us a healthy dose of humility. With all our American hang-ups with doing for yourself (Clinton's Secretary of Labor Robert Reich alleged we live in a "meritocracy" in America, where the best and the brightest succeed), we need the wisdom Martin Luther learned from The Magnificat: "For we desecrate God's name when we let ourselves be praised or honored, or when we take pleasure in ourselves and boast of our works or our possessions, as is the way of the world…" (Luther's Works, Vol. 21, p. 329). Benjamin Franklin offers a thoughtful elaboration on how too much focus on yourself and what you do cheapens human life: "A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small bundle."

The Magnificat gives us a way out of the smallness, this emptiness. It reminds us, Martin Luther tells us, that all our skills and possessions are ultimately only gifts of God (Complete Sermons, Vol. 7, p. 348). When we believe that we can bring nothing to God, we can also say with the first Reformer: "Even now and to the end of the world, all his [God's] works are such that out of that which is nothing, worthless, despised, wretched, and dead (out of that which is nothing) He makes that which is something, precious, honorable, and blessed" (Luther's Works, Vol. 21, p. 299).