Luke 1:46-55
Rev. Dr. Deborah L. Clark
December 19, 2021
Her name was Margaret Patrick. A stately woman, she was friendly, active, and fiercely independent. She loved doing things for other people, and hated to let anyone do things for her. And then she had a stroke, which left her unable to use the right side of her body. She found herself at the Southeast Senior Center for Independent Living in Englewood, New Jersey for rehabilitation. She was angry at being forced to rely on total strangers to do basic things like getting dressed. And she was depressed, hopeless about her prospects for returning to the life she loved. She reached a new low point on the day she arrived at the rehab, when the nurse’s aide wheeled her into the social room. There, right in the center, was a grand piano. The aide felt Margaret react, and asked her what was wrong. “I used to be a pianist,” she said.
What happened to Margaret Patrick, the tall, dignified woman brought low by a stroke, seems at first to have little to do with what happened to Mary, the pregnant girl in our gospel reading who went off to visit her cousin. But their stories have more in common than first meets the eye. Mary was a child—maybe thirteen. She was pregnant, engaged to a man who was much older and was not the father. Whatever she may have understood about this baby, from the perspective of her neighbors she was a girl in trouble, a burden on society, the lowest of the low. She was at the mercy of her fiancé, who could have rejected her and left her with a stigma that would have marked her forever.
Like Margaret Patrick, Mary was vulnerable—forced to rely on the good will of others. The people around her may well have seen her as useless, ruined—and perhaps she struggled with her own feelings of worthlessness.
Something happened, though, when Mary arrived at her cousin Elizabeth’s house. Elizabeth saw past the outward circumstances; she recognized that something sacred was happening in and through Mary. When she saw it, suddenly Mary could see it too. Mary’s response was a song of praise, the Magnificat. In her song, Mary proclaimed the transformation that was taking place in her own life: she was not worthless but blessed, not lowly but exalted. In the same song, she proclaimed the promise of what was to come: through the birth of her child the whole world would be transformed. Those whom society called unimportant would know their ultimate value; those who relied upon riches and status would awaken to the emptiness of their lives. She sang out a song of hope and joy. God’s gift of love was magnified by the music springing forth from her soul, magnified to bring joy to the world.
Just as Mary’s story does not end with her fear, so Margaret Patrick’s story does not end with her grief. The nurse’s aide recognized something Margaret could not. “Wait here,” she said to Margaret, and then she rushed out of the room. When she came back in a few minutes later, she was walking much more slowly, offering a hand to a short, stooped woman struggling with her walker. “Margaret Patrick,” the aide said, “I want to introduce you to Ruth Eisenberg.” The two women looked at each other apprehensively, wondering why this aide had brought them together. “Ruth is a pianist, just like you. And she had a stroke, just like you. Only hers affected her left side.”
“Do you know Chopin’s waltz in D?” Margaret asked. Ruth nodded, and the aide settled them in—Ruth on the right side, perched on the edge of the piano bench, Margaret beside her in her wheelchair. Margaret nodded and they began to play, each with their one good hand—Ruth the melody, Margaret the bass clef.
They played and played. Chopin, Beethoven, Bach—beautiful music made even more beautiful in their coming together, magnified by the uplifting of their souls.
This morning we light the candle of love, recalling and reclaiming the true meaning of Christmas. God does not sit far away in heaven and watch the human drama of struggle and pain play itself out. No. God loves us so much that God chooses to dwell with us—a baby born two thousand years ago, a spirit present with us always. God struggles and suffers with us. God works through angels and cousins and aides and all sorts of unusual people to give birth to hope in our lives. The love that is God’s gift to our world comes into being through us, as it is magnified by our souls, given expression in the music of our hearts.
In this sanctuary today there are many talented people who offer the gift of love magnified through their voices, through their hands or their breath, their fiddle bows and harmonicas and guitar picks. And there are many talented people in this sanctuary today who offer the gift of love through other kinds of music as well. There is the gently melodic murmur of conversation as a friend checks in on her neighbor isolated by the pandemic. There’s the faint scratch of pencil on paper as an artist makes music sketching the night sky. The shout of a coach echoing in a gym, as he urges a collection of individuals to become a team. The chant of an activist, crying out for peace and justice. The music of laugher as a child shows her delight that her uncle is down on the floor playing trucks with her.
The music of love is all around us. The music is within us, waiting to be called forth, waiting to be magnified by our souls as we awaken to the promise of healing. What is the music your soul is longing to express?
Expressing this music is rarely a solo proposition. Often we need an angel sent by God—a cousin, a nurse’s aide, a teacher, a friend, a stranger—to call us to our own value, to awaken the love hibernating inside us. As we awaken, we may find ourselves drawn to unlikely partnerships—an old woman and a young girl with unusual pregnancies, two stroke patients brought together at one piano–our weaknesses transformed into strength in our coming together.
So let us listen for the angel voices calling us to our own worth. Let us join up with unlikely companions—duets, trios, marching bands, choirs of joy—that enable us to make music more beautiful than we could ever make alone. Let us respond to God’s gift of hope, by making the music our souls are meant to make—with fiddles and washboards, laughter and descants, shouts and murmurs—the music of love magnified. Amen.