Read Luke 1:39-55.
No Love Without Justice
Feminist bell hooks writes, “There can be no love without justice — abuse and neglect negate love.”* Her work was focused on justice for the other. In Mary’s Magnificat, these sentiments are echoed beautifully. Her cousin Elizabeth and Elizabeth’s expected child John greeted a young Mary in exuberance. Mary could have responded to the greeting by focusing her hymn on the miraculous event God is doing in her life. Yet she sees God working in the broader world. Her hymn proclaims how she glorifies the Lord because they have brought down rulers from their thrones, lifted the humble, sent away the rich, and filled the hungry. God even encourages Israel to remember the generations coming ahead. In this season where we are indeed focused on love, let it be an agape love that propels our actions to transcend the boundaries of the conventional act of collection of goods and services, and to be inspired and moved by the spirit. Help us to consider what love rooted in just acts looks like, in the continual season of Advent — an advent that reminds us and encourages us to lead our lives in preparation for the fruition of a kin-dom that is yet to come on earth.
Pray
Expansive God, as Mary’s prayer is modeled after Hannah’s song of Praise, help us remember the goodness of our ancestors and how love grounded them in acts of justice. Let our past inform a prosperous and just future for all of creation. Amen.
Rev. Tamika Nelson
Executive Director, United Campus Ministry of Greater Houston
* bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions (New York: HarperCollins, 2001).
Words for Waiting 