God Says Checkmate

God Says Checkmate--December 19, 2018

[Mary said...] 

"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...." [Luke 1:50-53]

Mary's a smart lady. Of course, she knows that somewhere in some imperial palace in Rome, Caesar Augustus is still sitting on his throne, issuing press statements about how his ascension to power is "good news" for "all the world" (see the famous Priene inscription for more on that).  

Mary knows that the angel who surprised her with a message about a baby didn't disappear to go lead an army of the heavenly host to overthrow the Empire's occupation of Jerusalem.

Mary knows that her pregnancy did not, as if by magic, raid the imperial treasuries for some 1st century Robin-Hood-type to go distributing to the slaves and peasants around the Mediterranean.  

She knows, in other words, that the child she carries inside her is not going to fight the way the world expects--with swords and armies and big stacks of cash.  Mary is nobody's fool: when she sings about God having scattered the proud and taking down the powerful, she is under no illusion that some kind of violent revolt would be underway. And yet, she truly is convinced that the universe is a different place because of the baby in her belly.  Mary knows that God has already won a revolutionary victory that even rejects the rules the world has been playing by. The empires of the day have been playing checkers, and Mary knows that God is playing three-dimensional chess.

See, here's the real revolution that the God of Mary's Song has begun: instead of just raising up one more "new" empire to fight with the old empire and then take its place on top, only to be thrown off by another newcomer after a century or so, God's way of ruling the world is through intentional divine weakness and holy subversive vulnerability.  God has unmasked the impotent bluster of Caesar (who really has a thing for getting his name inscribed on buildings, the poor pathetic imperial sad-sack), not by sending an army to kill him, but by asking the permission of a poor, brown-skinned woman from a forgotten backwater town to bear a child.  God has undermined the heft and might of the Empire, not by backing a competing nation's army to win against Rome on the battlefield, but taking on the humanity of a child who will have to flee for his life as a refugee while he is still in diapers because of the dangers in his home country.  God deflates the puffed-up egos of all the high and mighty, not by bullying them around with an even bigger booming voice or lightning bolts from the sky, but in the quiet and confident dignity of a song like Mary's, who will not be made to tremble in front of the Roman Eagle or give her allegiance to its puppet king Herod.

God is not only undermining the powers of the day, but God is even demolishing the ways those powers do business.  God doesn't fight bullies with more pushing and shoving--God comes in the vulnerability of a baby.  God doesn't threaten or cajole in order to make people afraid--God takes the side of an unarmed, unpretentious Jewish girl experiencing morning sickness for the first time in her life.  God doesn't overpower the arrogant and the proud in order to defeat them--God defeats the whole notion of needing to "overpower" anybody in the first place.

And this is precisely why Mary is able to sing about God's actions like they are already accomplished.  This is what makes her song more than naïve idealism and wishful thinking: she isn't dreaming that God will one day send a new empire to replace the old one.  She sees, clearly and without illusion, that God has undermined even the old ways of defining "winners" and "greatness."  God will not be drawn into some kind of petty contest with Caesar Augustus to play a round of "Who is bigger and badder?"  That would give too much legitimacy to Caesar.  So instead, God has just rejected the whole way that Caesar evaluates himself--God has rejected the nonsense of that kind of childish measuring, and instead comes in the amazing power of intentional divine weakness.  That undercuts any of the potency of Rome's bluster and bragging, because it's like God has said, "You have all these armies, and all this wealth, and all this hoopla... so what?"

And instead, God has already won the victory by rejecting Rome's terms and refusing to play by Caesar's rules.  Caesar has said, "King me!" to the world, and God has responded in turn by saying, "Ahem... Checkmate."  The fact that the God of Mary's Song will not stoop to Caesar's level is the very evidence that the game is already up.  Caesar wants a fight on the Empire's terms--the use of armies and coercion, of centurions and shows of force--and God's refusal to engage on those terms takes all the wind out of the Empire's sails.  It's rather like watching two children squabbling, and as one tries to goad and provoke, every so often the other will do the smart thing and refuse to get drawn in.  Well, God is always the smart one... and Mary knows it.  Her song is about a God who has already won the victory by not fighting on Rome's terms, but saving the world in the holy, subversive vulnerability of a child born to a peasant girl on the margins of the Empire.

And in that sense, even though empires still come and go, and even though new Caesars replace the old ones with bluster that is just as loud, just as obnoxious, and just as bad at covering up their insecurities, God is still triumphant over all the empires, all the "powerful" on their thrones, all the puffed up and proud.  And God has still given a victory to all the nobodies, the poor, the lowly, and the hungry, because God has come as one of them--a needy baby boy laid in a food trough on the run from law enforcement.

Mary senses that God's kind of victory is different.  She is, after all, a smart lady.

Lord God, open our eyes to the reality of your victory, even when the world doesn't recognize it.  Let us live in the reality your servant Mary sang about, the reality your Son brought to light.