“Let’s Talk about Mary”

(Luke 1:39-55) 

In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth.  When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb.  And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.  And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me?  For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy.  And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.”

And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowly state 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; indeed, 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 imagination 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 come to the aid of his child Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.”

            A number of years ago Betty Reinhart encouraged me to preach about Mary.  She said that Mary was her favorite Biblical figure and she wanted to hear a sermon about her.  Well, it would be hard to find that first sermon when Mary was the center of the stage, but let’s take a moment to talk about Mary again.

            At Christmastime she is front and center for sure, but do we really give her her due?  I think not.  I think we portray her as sweet, meek and mild when, really, she probably had to have been pretty spunky.  She accepted what the angel had announced, that she was to give birth to the Child of God.  As we’re told, once she had some understanding of the enormity of what she was asked to do, she went ahead and accepted the challenge.  She said, “Let it be with me according to God’s Word through this messenger.” 

            It’s like she was a superhero who had been recruited to be an integral part of this major operation.  Her super-power?  Being brave enough to carry this divine child of God in her womb.  Being able to manage her relationship with her husband to be, able to walk on this thin ice so that Joseph would still marry her and help to raise this boy. 

            Now Mary, through the centuries has been portrayed as the perfect, quiet, passive vessel in which God had chosen to place God’s Child.  In what follows, I have been inspired by a sermon given by the Rev. Debra McKnight.  She talked about Mary being portrayed as a virgin. But this is actually a mistranslation of the Isaiah text that is often quoted as a prophecy about the coming Messiah.  Isaiah talked about a “young woman” birthing a leader.  But our translators who brought the Old Testament Hebrew text into the Greek language for our New Testament changed that word that meant “young woman” into virgin.

            Now, everyone gets hung up on the bodily implications and the onset of sexual activity that being a virgin suggest.  This word, virgin, that we hear so often, actually carries a richer understanding of Mary as a Woman Who Belongs to Herself.  This matters because women of that time, women through the centuries and even women today have simply been defined by their relationship with a man.  They belong to their father’s house or their husband’s household.  …Not Mary, though.  She was a virgin.  She was a woman who belonged to herself.  I guess that’s why the Angel asked her for her consent. 

            Even though I jokingly portrayed Mary as a superhero, the truth is she was a peasant woman, an ordinary person.  She is said to have sung “Mary’s Song” that you heard Betty read earlier.  In it she spoke about how God looked with favor upon her, God’s humble servant.  Then she proceeded to talk about how God can bring down the powerful and lift up the lowly, how God fills the hungry with good things and sends the rich away with nothing.  Mary was preaching, friends.

            Let’s not leave her quietly sitting on a shelf looking so angelic.  Mary had shown herself to be fiery even in her raising of Jesus, but, and we need to be honest and clear about this, theologians through the centuries have manhandled our Mary.  They have given her no voice and no choice.  They have made her only saintly, rather than remembering that she was fully human.  Her humanity makes her our role model, not as a perfect specimen, but as a woman with opinions and choices.  When she is real rather than a statue in a garden, she showed up for the hard work of doing as God asked in what must have been terribly hard circumstances. 

We ought not whitewash our Mary, to take away her humanness, her physicality, her ability to push back against the powers in her life, her voice that called out the rich and powerful and raised up the poor, lowly and hungry. 

This she did in words remarkably similar to those that Jesus used in his teachings.  She was leading the pack in these words that previewed Jesus’ commentary on the greatest commandments: Love God, love your neighbor.

            Mary has so much to teach us, not only about being sweet, meek and mild.  She represents womanhood in a way that we have not always allowed.  The patriarchal church has silenced her by getting her and all members of her gender twisted up.  The church has attempted to push women down and fault them (us) for causing the sin of the world.  You know how that story goes: Eve brought Adam down in the Garden by listening to the serpent and eating the forbidden apple.  The church has made lots of hay with that story and has been instrumental in causing women to be treated either as non-entities, as second-class citizens, as invisible, while, at the same time, causing all the sin of the world (not to mention the pain of childbirth!).

            …We’re not havin’ it, folks.  Mary’s zeal in accepting the task God had given her puts her in the blessed category.  Blessed as an ordinary person who did some extraordinary things.  …Still, I like the picture of her as a superhero.  I can’t help it.  She said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord.  Let it be to me, according to your word.”  In other words, I’m ready, God!  Bring it on!  Reply