A Devotion from David Neff
Misreading the Magnificat
It’s hard to find hymns that embody Scripture’s sharp critique of the rich.
When Mary came to visit, Elizabeth’s child leaped in her womb. Mary’s spirit, too, jumped to
a higher plane. In the inspired exchange between the cousins, the pregnant virgin sang a
prophetic hymn of praise for God’s salvation. In that prophecy, Mary praised God for filling the
hungry with good things and sending the rich away empty. We call her hymn the “Magnificat,”
and we Christians have been singing it as a regular part of worship since about the year 500.
For most of the 1,500 years since, congregations and cloistered monks and nuns chanted
the straight, unadorned biblical text of Mary’s song. In the latter half of the 20th century,
however, musical paraphrases of the Magnificat flourished. One of my favorites is Timothy
Dudley-Smith’s bold four-square hymn, “Tell Out, My Soul.” Others inhabited the folk idiom:
Christopher Idle’s “My Soul Proclaims the Greatness of the Lord,” Rory Cooney’s “Canticle of
the Turning,” and John Michael Talbot’s “Holy Is His Name.”
As a worship musician who tries to fine-tune what we sing with the Scriptures we read, I
have felt frustrated by the way musicians blunt the Magnificat’s protest against the 1 percent
(to borrow Occupy language). Take Dudley-Smith’s otherwise excellent “Tell Out, My Soul” as
an example. Five years younger than his Cambridge friend John Stott, Dudley-Smith was part of
the circle that renewed English evangelical hymnody midcentury. But in “Tell Out, My Soul,” he
focused on the first half of Mary’s poetic parallelism that contrasted the powerful with the
humble and neglected the second half that counterpoised God’s treatment of the hungry with
the rich. Talbot and Cooney commit the same sin of omission. Idle’s text is the refreshing
exception.
It is easy to spiritualize power and turn it into pride. Thus Dudley-Smith’s rendering: “Proud
hearts and stubborn wills are put to flight.”
Now, we know that pride and stubbornness are not the exclusive province of the rich. If the
Holy Spirit had wanted to talk about these vicious habits of the heart, he would have inspired
Mary along those lines only. But he didn’t, fingering the rich along with the powerful. As a
Church of England bishop, Dudley-Smith may have thought wealth too delicate a matter for his
Scripture song.
It is hard to find Christian hymns that embody Scripture’s sharp critique of the rich and the
dangers of wealth. There are positive songs about simplicity (“Simple Gifts”) and exhortations
not to cling to earthly goods (the German Lutheran chorales “A Mighty Fortress” and “Jesus,
Priceless Treasure”), but not much on the actual dangers of wealth.
Scripture’s sharp-edged message about the danger of wealth is not restricted to the
Magnificat. One of my favorite gospel songs adapts Jesus’ story of the rich man and
Lazarus—“Rusty Old Halo” by Hoyt Axton. Unfortunately, Axton of “Joy to the World (Jeremiah
Was a Bullfrog)” fame blunted the parable by reducing the fires of hell to “a rusty old halo,
skinny white cloud, robe that’s so wooly it scratches.”
There’s a refreshingly unusual folk ballad on Keith and Kristyn Getty’s new album, Hymns
for the Christian Life. Think of “Simple Living” as the musical equivalent of Shane Claiborne and
Tony Campolo’s Red Letter Revolution. Unlike Axton’s soft-pedaling, the Getty-Stuart Townend
songwriting team gives Jesus’ dialogue with the rich young ruler a transparent treatment. They
hone the sharp edge of Jesus’ advice: “Sell all you have; give to the poor. / Then heaven’s
treasure shall be yours.” Francis of Assisi couldn’t have said it more pointedly.
The last lines of the song’s first verse are also close to Jesus’ original: “How hard for those
who are rich on earth / To gain the wealth of heaven.” The second verse focuses on the
widow’s mite story. It concludes, “Not what you give but what you keep / Is what the King is
counting.” Keith recently told me that with this album he wanted to join worship to everyday
life. Thus it addresses work, suffering, community, family, doubt—and money. “A more
quotidian approach to theology,” he calls it. Props to the Gettys and Townend for giving us
lyrics that present Jesus’ message unbated.
I don’t want to argue here about what Jesus meant in his criticism of mammon and his
threats toward the rich. That’s a debate for a different space. But however you interpret those
statements, they are harsh and wounding. Keith says that he wants to make us traditionalists
uncomfortable with songs like this.
Those who paraphrase Scripture have a special duty to let it speak with its proper force.
Add a good tune, and you’ve fortified those words to shape our lives.