Raymond Brown, in his marvelous and massive study of the birth of Jesus, (1) asserts that the infancy stories in the Gospel of Luke have no "major influence" on the rest of Luke's story. While I understand that he is pointing to the lack of explicit reference back to the shepherds, Gabriel, or the other major players in Luke's first scenes, my work with storytellers and actors has taught me to distrust the notion that any part of any story is unrelated to the rest of the story. (2) In this essay I explore the tension created between the song sung by Jesus' mother at the beginning of the story and the death suffered by her son at the end.
