There may be no text more loved by the older generations of Anglicans than Mary’s Song, known popularly by its opening word in Latin, Magnificat. As the service of Evening Prayer has become less frequent, fewer people have occasion to hear this great canticle sung. That’s a pity, because it is one of the most important psalm texts in the either Testament, deserving a significant place in our liturgical life.

The Magnificat is the first and greatest statement in Luke’s Gospel of one of the dominant themes of Jesus’ preaching—reversal of fortunes. "The first shall be last, and the last shall be first." This song exults in the God who uses what the world counts as lowly and insignificant in the fulfillment of his great work of salvation.

Mary had everything going against her. She was a poor young woman from a backwater town, engaged to a tradesman—a man without land or status, except for his descent from the House of David.

And yet… Mary was the favored instrument of God’s salvation, the one chosen to bear the saviour of humankind.

When we sing or say with Mary, "He has looked with favour on his lowly servant," we align ourselves with her, and with all the lowly. The original Greek word means "humiliation" or "low estate." It expresses Mary’s own sense of unworthiness in her own eyes and those of others. The song praises God who is turning the world upside down, filling the hungry and sending the rich away empty, lifting up the humble and putting down the mighty from their thrones.

When we sing this song we express our solidarity with all people of "low estate."

Friends, we who are gathered here in this church today are near the top of the global ladder. Mary’s Song challenges us to see where we are, and where others are, and to see how God’s plan of salvation is being worked out in and through those of lower estate.

It should be a hard text for us who live at the top of the pyramid to sing. It is we who have been put down from our seats. Well—look around you. ‘T’ain’t so! Or is it? I can only read this text as prolepsis, a Greek word that means acting in the present as if a future reality had come to be—"already, but not yet."

As some of you know, I have been working with Samaritan House Ministries for several years, and have been its board chair since last June. Samaritan House works with the poor and the disadvantaged of our community, most notably with its food bank, but also teaching basic literacy and employment skills, and helping families in need in various other way. I suspect that for most of Samaritan House’s client families, the Magnificat would be perceived as a bad joke. Nonetheless, the text can say to me, and to the ministry’s staff that God’s will is to raise up the downtrodden, to set their feet on firmer ground, and to give them a place in this society of which they can only dream in the present.

The same is true in the church and in the wider community: God holds before us a vision of what might be, of God’s wishes for his people. We catch a glimpse of that every time we sing the Magnificat. We are invited to strive to live as if the vision we find there is already a reality, and that all of God’s people have reason to rejoice.

I believe we can indeed pray the Magnificat with integrity, if—and it may be a big if!—we are prepared to live into this vision, working to make it a reality in our homes, our church, our community, our nation, and throughout the world.