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But her next words move beyond the personal exultation of a poor, pregnant woman. They are a declaration—on the order of Luther pinning his 95 theses to the door—from a voice at the bottom of society. It is a voice crying from the depths that God's Messiah was finally bringing justice for the poor (such as Mary, Simeon, and Anna). It is a voice proclaiming a new order—an order centered on her son, the One who would save his people from their sins (Matt. 1:21).

If we want to enter the world of the real Mary that first Christmas, listen once again to her song in the context of Herod the Great. Herod, we might recall, had assassinated members of his own family for anything that even smelled of treachery. That same Herod had taxed Israel—felt more by the poor than by anyone else—beyond its means. Hear her words in that context. They are words of subversion, words that reveal why unjust rulers might worry over their public recitation, words that tell the first Christmas story:

His mercy extends to those who fear him,
from generation to generation.
He has performed mighty deeds with his arm;
he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.
He has brought down rulers from their thrones
but has lifted up the humble.
He has filled the hungry with good things
but has sent the rich away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel,
remembering to be merciful
to Abraham and his descendants forever,
just as he promised our ancestors (Luke 1:50-55).

When Mary announced that God "has brought down rulers from their thrones," anyone within earshot knew what that meant for Herod the Great, if not also for Rome. And, in noting that God "sent the rich away empty," she pointed her finger at Herod the Great with his insatiable appetite. God "has lifted up the humble" and "has filled the hungry with good things" meant that Mary and the poor of Israel would experience justice.

Had Mary sung this song—and probably she sang it more than once—in Nazareth among the peasants of Israel, they would have hoisted a toast and shouted, "It's about time! Blessed be the Lord (and Mary)!"

I recall sitting in my high school gymnasium in 1970. During an all-school assembly, African American students, wearing black, sang "Black is Beautiful" and "We Shall Overcome." Their steely protest, expressed in song, was more than a concert. It was an announcement, much like the Magnificat, that a new day had dawned and that justice was about to roll down our hallways. Mary's Magnificat, like those songs of change, can be seen as a rally cry, a revival song. It subverted the unjust reign of Herod the Great.

If you were a poor woman in the first century, if you were hungry, if you had experienced the injustices of Herod, and if you stood up in Jerusalem and announced that God would yank down the proud, the rulers, and the rich from their high places, you likely would be tried for subversion. If you were Herod or one of his ten wives or one of his many sons or daughters with (unexpressed, of course) hopes for the throne, you would conclude that Mary was a rebel, a revolutionary, a social protester. And you would be right: The real Mary was a subversive.

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December 2006, Vol. 50, No. 12