The third Sunday of Advent, brings us to the Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55), Mary’s words in response to the angel’s message to her. Anne-Marie Finsaas, calls this a subversive, revolutionary song, “not Mary in her little blue gown, singing gently”! She shared Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s description of Mary’s Magnificat –

…the most passionate, the wildest, one might even say the most revolutionary Advent hymn ever sung… a hard, strong, inexorable song about collapsing thrones and humbled lords of this world, about the power of God and the powerlessness of humankind.

Mary echoes the Old-Testament prophets’ fierce longings for God’s ways to mend the world, confronting and undoing the evil set loose through our human fallenness.

Teaching Pastor: Anne-Marie Finsaas, Pastor of Formational Life | Advent 2017 | www.thedoor.org