Dear Friends,

I have to write a sermon, a sermon that on the one hand gives voice to a very particular situation and, on the other hand, is understandable for Christians in Germany. What specific situation am I talking about here? I'm sitting in the southernmost Lutheran congregation of the world; more specifically, in Patagonia, the southernmost part of Argentina, a country that is both beautiful and tragic at the same time…
I have read these words again and again. I have even sung them, this song of Mary. And I have even written down in simple fashion what strikes me here:
"…forgotten, excluded, woman, power, doubt,
surrender, fear, hopelessness, tears, hunger, human rights, trampled upon, guilt…., but also restore, exalt, esteem, honor, justice, dignity, joy, laughter, celebration, wiping away tears, regarded by and before God, …in the world, God for us…, God with us…

(Reading of the text)

When the Soul sings…

"…the one who suffers has the deepest experience with God..," an old woman once said to me. That's probably true and that's how I understand Mary's Song, her "Song of Praise," as a response to her experience with God.
Whoever lives in this country, on this continent, which has been exploited for 500 years, and the plunder still continues…, whoever sees the faces of the hard-working women, these faces, ageless, the last smile long forgotten…, women who care for ten children, hold down three jobs at the same time and at night have to contend with their domineering husbands…, whoever lives here reads, sings Mary's song in a completely new way, everything mystical disappears, all theological deliberations become irrelevant, and one begins to "see" in the sense of "understand."
Mary sings, her soul sings, nothing is left other than to sing, this marvelous Psalm…, because God has been mindful of her…! He, the "God of men," shows himself to her in his reality, as he really is…, no, as he always was!
Once somebody asked me: "…if Jesus had chosen a different, a more ordinary way, would the cross have been inevitable for him?" I think he chose this way freely, although he knew that this would lead him directly to the cross. In this decision it becomes clear to all how God really is: He is on the side of life and he gives it dignity because HE is the author of life. Mary sings because HE, the author of all life, conveys to her finally the dignity that belongs to her.
That is the experience with God that people of all times and places are allowed to make again and again…

…if the Forgotten murmur…
then HE hears and sees…; and this murmuring does not go without answer: "I have seen the misery of my people in Egypt and heard their cry over their oppressor, I have recognized their suffering…," says God to Moses in this primordial experience: God wants to free us, to redeem us!
Why do we always want to take merely the tip of this message? Why can't we probe it for something deeper? Why do Christian theologians have to invent a "Liberation Theology...?" Is there any other kind…?
Luther says: "It comes down to this, that God's eyes see not into the heights, but only into the depths…" "For that reason, necessarily, he sees within and all around him, and the more deeply one is a part of him, the better he sees him."
One couldn't formulate it more poignantly!
As I put this sermon on paper, children and old women in this country die of hunger; yes, even in Argentina, a major "food basket" for a hungry Europe. In the coming months, over 500,000 babies will be born whose mothers are weakened with malnourishment and illnesses… What kind of a future do these children have? Or the 5.5 million school-age children who don't get something to eat every day? Have these children or their mothers any guilt in all this? Or does it rather belong to the World Monetary Fund, Americans and Europeans insisting on the repayment of Argentina's huge foreign debt-which in reality has already been paid twice over (a problem of growing interest rates, not actual debt!). Our corrupt politicians and functionaries are the best helpers of the multinational firms with home offices in New York, London, Madrid, or Frankfurt… They assure themselves of astronomical financial gains which are easily taken out of the country.
What does this "local news report" have to do with Mary's Hymn of Praise? A great deal: because he tells us that our grief is over… because…

When God acts….
…then his own people soon join in the hymn of praise. A God who acts, who actually intervenes, I first learned to know right here. As the crisis mounted in indescribable ways, as on Dec. 20 of last year over 40 men, women and children died from police beatings and bullets, people gathered in the squares, in homes and, above all, in the churches. Since that time there are Centers of Hope everywhere in which people gather to think about a new and better future, and not only about that: these people "see" and "hear" and answer, they act… Perhaps at the moment thousands of children, mothers and old men are being saved from starvation because the Centers of Hope provide food and medication, distributing it all justly and un-bureaucratically.
And we here, a little Lutheran congregation with a Home for the Aged and a street ministry for children, are a tiny minority in the vast diaspora.
We are, however, able to act, to fulfill our mission, because there are Christians in Germany who, before they act, don't read the financial reports or the political commentary about corruption in Argentina, but respond to the real human murmuring. This kind of seeing, hearing and acting conveys dignity, elevates, lifts up, restores hope (and thereby also future), and above all: the feeling of not being alone.
The Magnificat does not want to trivialize anyone. Rather, as the song of our own heart, it wants to touch the hearts of the well-endowed in this world, that we may "regard" the suffering and the lowly among us (or in Argentina) just as God does.
This is exactly how Mary sees it: In the depths the "great things" first become visible.
Our spirits will soon sing: My soul glorifies the Lord! He has regarded the low estate of his own people and he has done marvelous things…, he has brought down the corrupt from their thrones and given his own people dignity…, the faces of the women are young again and their smiles fill the streets.

Amen.

A little Table Prayer well known in our church:
Lord, bless our bread, and give bread to the hungry, and hunger for righteousness to those who have bread. Amen.

Reiner Kalmbach
reikal@neunet.com.ar