Matthew 11:2-11
2 Now when John heard in prison about the things the Christ was doing, he sent word by his disciples to Jesus, asking, 3 “Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?”
4 Jesus responded, “Go, report to John what you hear and see. 5 Those who were blind are able to see. Those who were crippled are walking. People with skin diseases are cleansed. Those who were deaf now hear. Those who were dead are raised up. The poor have good news proclaimed to them. 6 Happy are those who don’t stumble and fall because of me.”
7 When John’s disciples had gone, Jesus spoke to the crowds about John: “What did you go out to the wilderness to see? A stalk blowing in the wind? 8 What did you go out to see? A man dressed up in refined clothes? Look, those who wear refined clothes are in royal palaces. 9 What did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. 10 He is the one of whom it is written: Look, I’m sending my messenger before you, who will prepare your way before you.
11 “I assure you that no one who has ever been born is greater than John the Baptist. Yet whoever is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.
Let the words of my mouth
and the meditations of my heart
be pleasing to you,
Lord, my rock and my redeemer.
and the meditations of my heart
be pleasing to you,
Lord, my rock and my redeemer.
John is in prison. Prison is a place in which it’s generally difficult to get news. Somehow he gets wind of this nifty stuff his cousin Jesus is doing, and he gets a word out: Coz, who do you think you are? Are you Messiah?
Because he can’t see for himself. He had that voice-of-God-and-dove moment with Jesus’s baptism, but that seems to have been the end of it. He isn’t witnessing any of the stuff going on around Jesus.
He needs to see more clearly. He needs to connect to the Jesus webcam. X-ray binoculars or something.
He can’t see.
I was running the other day, through the park, and I should’ve known to be more careful, because Ann Vicars told me about a fall she took just the previous week there.
Wet leaves, rain coming down; I rounded a switchback on the trail coming downhill and suddenly I was on my face, rolling across the trail. I couldn’t see how thick the leaves were, and how unstable my footing would be there.
I just couldn’t see.
Nobody saw, though, and I didn’t break anything. So even my pride wasn’t wounded. Well, except now y’all know. Oops.
What do we do when we can’t see? Put on glasses, turn a light on, squint? We have to find a way to bring something into focus, whether that’s by bringing in more light or introducing a light-refracting lens like spectacles or a telescope.
I want to introduce you to a word. A Greek word that Luke uses to translate Mary’s song: μεγαλυνο.
The Latin translation of that word gives us the title by which we know the song today: Magnificat.
Magnify, as in, “My soul magnifies the Lord”.
Those of us who have grown up on Mary’s hymn might not question the word, but it’s a bit of a strange one.
After all, how do you magnify God? Isn’t God infinitely big? How do we make God bigger?
But magnification isn’t about physically making something bigger. It’s about making something look bigger so that it can be more easily seen. A better, but less poetic, translation is, “clarify”.
My soul zooms in on God’s character so I can see better.
Running a nine-minute mile downhill in the rain, it’s a little difficult to zoom in on the ground cover, but you can bet I was more careful about where I placed my feet after that.
My eyes, my mind magnified the trail. I paid more attention to where leaves were loose and where I could see gravel and mud. I even slowed down on the curves, which isn’t something I tend to do.
Think about how you go about your day, what you do. What does your mind magnify? To what do you pay attention? What do you ignore?
What does your body magnify? In what ways does your body zoom in on things, clarify them, make them bigger than they actually are?
What do your emotions magnify? What gets to you? What do you allow to get to you?
What does your soul magnify?
When John asks to see Jesus more clearly, Jesus sends word to him:
Those who were blind are able to see. Those who were crippled are walking. People with skin diseases are cleansed. Those who were deaf now hear. Those who were dead are raised up. The poor have good news proclaimed to them. Happy are those who don’t stumble and fall because of me.
When God is magnified, what do we see? What do we witness?
I suppose it depends on what part of God’s being we observe. We confess that God is Love, but we also confess that God is Sovereign, that God is a Mighty Warrior, that God is Judge.
What gives us the best picture of the Divine? Is there a part of God we can magnify that will give us a clear understanding of the nature of the only truly Sovereign Being in creation?
I doubt that. Would you like your character to be determined by a single aspect of your character or decision you’ve made? What if it were the wrong decision? The one you’ve always regretted over all the others? What if it were that one?
What if God were seen only through the destruction of Jericho? What if God were seen only through the bloodshed of the Crusades? What if God were seen only through the Holocaust of the Jews?
Or what if we see God as Mary sees God?
Remember what her marital status is? Remember the stigma attached to being a woman of experience outside of wedlock? Remember that stoning is a perfectly valid option for her if her neighbors find out, if the Temple hierarchy finds out?
Why should Mary have a generous perspective on God at all?
Why should she not be like any number of people who go through unbearable challenge, inexplicable tragedy, unfathomable fear, and who decide that no just and loving God would ever allow this to happen? Therefore, either God is not just and loving, or God is simply absent.
I’ve had those moments. Have you?
How do we respond?
I’ll tell you what the least effective response would be: God is watching your faith fail and if you stumble, your very salvation is at stake.
That is also not just and loving. That is not a witness to our God. That is a witness to human fear.
Mary, the most unlikely of persons to have any courage at all, shows us exactly how to respond.
‘My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour,
for he has looked with favour on the lowliness of his servant.
Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.
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 powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel,
in remembrance of his mercy,
according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
to Abraham and to his descendants for ever.’
and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour,
for he has looked with favour on the lowliness of his servant.
Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.
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 powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel,
in remembrance of his mercy,
according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
to Abraham and to his descendants for ever.’
God looks at us and sees the potential, the promise, the good in us. God saw Mary, her hopeless state, and lifted up everything that was good about her. To this day, Mary is revered - not worshipped, not idolized, but profoundly respected - because God lifted her so far out of her hopelessness, because God magnified all that was good about her.
And so Mary, in turn, magnified all the good that she was able to see about God.
Is that a fair reading of the exchange? It’s only one perspective.
But that’s all we ever have: our own unique perspectives.
We have to choose what to highlight, what to magnify.
Mary chooses to magnify God’s justice. So does Jesus.
Tell John:
Those who were blind are able to see. Those who were crippled are walking. People with skin diseases are cleansed. Those who were deaf now hear. Those who were dead are raised up. The poor have good news proclaimed to them. Happy are those who don’t stumble and fall because of me.
The promise of Jesus, the promise of Emmanuel, the promise of a God who is so intimately and unfailingly with us is justice. Because that God is our protector who desires that our wrong be made right. Because that God is simultaneously our judge who sees the irreconcilable harm we do to others.
And yet that God is unfailingly forgiving to we who repent, and that God expects us to repent thoroughly and not go back to the wrong we have done.
The witness of a faithful life is moving into that way of being in relationship with others and with God, moving toward Christ-likeness, moving toward Godliness, moving into the place in which every breath we take and every word we exhale is God’s own Spirit.
Go tell what you see. Let your soul glorify, magnify God. Bear witness to the amazingness you see.
And God will also magnify you.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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