Enough With the Person of the Year?

  

                                                                           Artist: Ben Wildflower

And Mary said, "My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,

 for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;

for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name.

His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.

 He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.

He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly;

he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.

He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy,

according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever."         Luke 1: 46-55

Today, the fourth Sunday of Advent young Mary recovers from the bewildering news that she will give birth to Jesus, with a hymn with is filled with praise and a declaration of a new world order. The promised Christ will be born, so look out all those who are arrogant and power-mongering, and wealthy. 

It seems as though we read this passage in Luke with our fingers crossed behind our backs. It sounds great, but do we really mean it?

This Magnificat, as its often called, comes a few days after Time Magazine has made its own declaration that eccentric billiionaire Elon Musk is their Person of the Year. I'll concede that every time I drive past the Tesla electric vehicles at the charging station at the north end of Belleville I'm impressed by his vision. A few years ago many dismissed him as crank and Tesla as a money-pit. Now auto-makers around the planet are scrambling to catch up. His renewable energy initiatives are also impressive.

This said, he has the penchant of lots of other billionaires to crow "look at me, look at me!" His declared interest in inhabiting other planets really seems like a vanity project to lure others into becoming faux astronauts. This comes at huge cost and environmental degradation for the exquisitely beautiful and increasingly fragile planet we know we can live on. 

Yes, Musk, recently offered hundreds of millions of dollars to address world hunger -- sort of -- but it would be much better if he paid reasonable taxes to allow governments and the United Nations to do this important work. And lets not forget that Elon assured us that the COVID pandemic would be over by April, 2020. That prediction was an epic fail. I like that the late night TV hosts dined out on Musk's "honour" with one noting that Adolf Hitler and Donald Trump were also named persons of the year. 

Wouldn't it be great if in 2022 there was a media moratorium on the antics of the wealthy and arrogant? Ignoring them rather than adoring them would be refreshing. While God may not have "scattered the proud in the imaginations of their hearts" (KJV) just yet, we can join Mary in a different vision which lifts up the lowly and feeds the hungry.