And Mary said, "My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour (Luke 1:46-47)

There’s an episode of The Simpson’s where the family are in the car on a journey and the kids are on the back seat chanting over and over again, “Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?” Yesterday I was reminded of travelling from Coventry for Summer holidays in Glenrothes. It was a lengthy journey, but when we crossed the Forth bridges they were a familiar landmark that told us we were nearly there.

Now, as we approach Bethlehem there are familiar intimations that we are nearly there. The adverts on the television, the music in the shops the lights in garden trees are like the Forth Bridge - they tell us we are approaching our destination. Soon we will enter the stable of Bethlehem to greet the infant Christ. Now, though, listen. Listen with your heart and your mind and your soul. Listen with innocence of a child and with imagination. Listen - we can just make it out: the song of Bethlehem.

It’s the song Mary sang when she met her cousin Elizabeth; “My soul magnifies the Lord and my soul rejoices in God my saviour”. Is it a song? Yes. It’s structured like a psalm. It’s no surprise that it has been set to music over and over again and is known as The Magnificat; but I’m going to call it the Song of Bethlehem because it’s about what the event that took place in a stable in Bethlehem two thousand years ago was about.

First of all it’s about fulfilment. It’s about God coming good on his promises to the people of Israel - that he would come to them and live with them; that he would guide them and bring the peoples of the world to faith through them; that he would make the descendants of Abraham more numerous than the stars of the heavens. In Christ he came into this world to live as one of us and to teach us and guide us. Now, two thousand years on, people of nations all around the globe have faith in the God of Israel through the coming of Christ. Now, two thousand years on, the spiritual descendants of Abraham are numbered in their billions. So let us magnify the Lord and let our spirits rejoice in God our saviour. Let us sing the song of Bethlehem.

Secondly it’s about change - not just a rearranging of the deckchairs, but revolutionary change. This great proclamation speaks of scattering the proud, of bringing down the powerful, of sending the rich away. It speaks of lifting the lowly and filling the hungry with good things. It speaks of changing the order of things in the way the world works. It speaks of turning the world upside-down. Above all it speaks of a better world, a better way for us to be as human beings. It speaks of hope. So let us magnify the Lord and let our spirits rejoice in God our saviour. Let us sing the song of Bethlehem.

Are we up for change? Are we up for change on the earth-shaking scale Mary was talking about? Is that what we do as the Church? I have to ask because it’s not always clear that we are. We cleave to traditions that we fondly imagine have been passed down through the centuries, though most were invented by the Victorians. We cleave forms of language that speak to us of the past. A few years ago, just to illustrate a point, I got a congregation to do the modern version of the Lord’s Prayer and I got absolute pelters at the door on the way out. When I started going to church about 1986 they were still using the King James Version at Dryfesdale - a translation that was already using an archaic form of English when it was first published in 1611. Have we moved on?

Are we up for change? I mean radical change - the kind of radical change that means facing up to the folk who have power and wealth and bearing witness for the weak and the poor. I find myself wondering because we’ve not always been very good at that. I’ve read a lot of Kirk Session records from the days when folk were called before the Session for sinful behaviour. There are lots of poor folk summoned for sexual offences, but I’ve yet to read of one mine-owner summoned to account for accidents in his pit or of one local dignitary summoned for beating his servants. Think that isn’t important? My Grandad was a Christian all his days but he stopped going to church some time in the 1950s because the Minister was “only interested in those and such as those”.

Listen. Listen with your heart and your mind and your soul. Listen with innocence of a child and with imagination. Listen - we can just make it out: the song of Bethlehem. It’s a song that changed the world and is still changing the world. It’s radical and revolutionary and it’s beautiful. Let me tell you why. Sometimes I engage with ardent atheists online who say that Jesus never existed and they back that up by saying that there are no contemporary records of him. What are they expecting? A birth certificate? An entry in Who’s Who? His fingerprints taken when the Temple soldiers arrested him? The fact is that at that time the vast majority of people came into this world, lived, worked and died without leaving a single trace in the historical record. Because they weren’t important. Because they didn’t matter

And it’s among those that God came into the world. Not among the rich and the powerful. Not among the aristocrats and the well-to do. Not into the imperial family of Rome or among the potentates of Persia. A child. A baby. Weak, vulnerable, crying out when he was hungry or cold. Born to poor parents driven to Bethlehem by the whims of the powerful and driven to become refugees by the insecurity of the local king. That is the song of Bethlehem.

But more than any king, more than any emperor, more than any businessman or tycoon, the child born at Bethlehem changed the world. In every part of the world where Christianity has taken hold, the idea that powerful people can do what they like with the lives of the weak has been challenged. In every part of the world where Christianity has taken hold, the notion that it’s somehow OK that people die of hunger or homelessness has been challenged. In every part of the world that Christianity has taken hold, the idea that people can own other people has been challenged. That challenge is the song of Bethlehem.

So let us take up that song and let us rejoice in it. The world we live in is an immeasurably better place because God came into this world in Jesus. The poor are fed and the homeless are sheltered - at least sometimes. The slaves are freed and the oppressed are relieved - at least sometimes. Here in Scotland we have the idea that, whatever our race or background, whatever our status or position, whatever our background or failings we are all Jock Tamson’s bairns.

You think that idea came out of nowhere? It came from Scottish folk singing the song of Bethlehem. The song that says this: we are at our best when we love one another, when we care for one another, when we look after the weakest of us as carefully as the most powerful. When we hold that the tiniest child born to the poorest family in the most forgotten part of the world is as important as the son of the most powerful king. That is an idea that can change the world. Let’s go and sing it to the world. Let us sing hope to despair, sing light to darkness, sing justice to oppression, sing peace to violence, sing love to indifference. Let us sing Magnificat. Let us sing the song of Bethlehem

Father, may we sing the song of Bethlehem this Christmas. May we sing of a changed and renewed world - a world where we are all family, where no one goes hungry or forgotten. Where no one is oppressed or sold. Where all humanity lives as one

Preached at Gretna:St. Andrews Parish church