Just in time for the third Sunday in Advent, we received our December Lutheran Witness in New York. The title article is "Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary" penned by "our own" Will Weedon. I found it stimulating and balanced, helpful in very many ways not only to Missouri Synod readers, but to wider Protestant audiences. Both semper virgo and the assumption of Mary are dealt with through the course of history and belief in what I found to be an evangelical way. I'd give a link but don't find the article link-able.
Somewhere (maybe First Things?) there's a recent article on the theological reasons for the doctrine of the Assumption and its other connective tissue that gave evidence through the history of the Church catholic beyond the usual Protestant bromide that in the 19th century a Roman Catholic hierarchy on the defensive buttressed its doctrines to fend off any possible change. It, too, was helpful to me. Maybe others have input on where that theology is articulated.
Anyway, my only critique was that when I saw the title I was thinking the article would be an exposition about the revolutionary poem of Mary, the Magnificat. "The rich he has sent empty away," all a Marian riff on the Song of Hannah in I Samuel. That these highly provocative poems were spoken by women and ascribed to women is to me an evidence of the high regard found in Scripture for a fierce and creative (yes, prophetic) voice that belongs to women. There's a song modeled on the Magnificat called "The Canticle of the Turning," and when I can find a girl/young woman with rapping skills we put that song to rap rhythms (it's really set to an Irish melody and beat):
My soul cries out with a joyful shout
that the God of my heart is great,
And my spirit sings of the wondrous things
that you bring to the one who waits.
You fixed your sight on the servant's plight,
and my weakness you did not spurn,
So from east to west shall my name be blest.
Could the world be about to turn?
Refrain:
My heart shall sing of the day you bring.
Let the fires of your justice burn.
Wipe away all tears,
For the dawn draws near,
And the world is about to turn.
Though I am small, my God, my all,
you work great things in me.
And your mercy will last from the depths of the past
to the end of the age to be.
Your very name puts the proud to shame,
and those who would for you yearn,
You will show your might, put the strong to flight,
for the world is about to turn.
Refrain
From the halls of power to the fortress tower,
not a stone will be left on stone.
Let the king beware for your justice tears
every tyrant from his throne.
The hungry poor shall weep no more,
for the food they can never earn;
These are tables spread, ev'ry mouth be fed,
for the world is about to turn.
Refrain
Though the nations rage from age to age,
we remember who holds us fast:
God's mercy must deliver us
from the conqueror's crushing grasp.
This saving word that our forbears heard
is the promise that holds us bound,
'Til the spear and rod be crushed by God,
who is turning the world around.
Refrain
Thanks, Will, for the article and the Synod's overt desire to find a special place among Lutheran for the Mother of God.
Dave Benke
