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December 21, 2003
The Glory of the Virgin Mother
The Glory of the Virgin Mother
Psalm 29 / Isaiah 7: 10-16
Luke 1: 26-38
December 21st, 2003
Each year at this time, for some years, I have thought aloud before you about Mary, the Virgin mother of Jesus. I do this for three reasons.
First, the two Gospels that tell of Jesus’ birth tell us remarkable things about Mary. Were similar things said of the Apostle Paul, we’d sound them loud and clear.
Second, I have reacted against the fear and even hostility to Mary prevalent for so long among Protestants. We have thrown out the baby with the bathwater. How wrong it is that Mary should be a victim to the division in the Western Church, the Reformation!
Third, we desperately need to hold before us worthy models. How often we hear the term “role model.” Few of us shape the contours of our lives according to principle. We copy models that flash before us by the media who are always on the hunt for celebrities. Who are our models, our icons? Who are yours? Mary the mother of Jesus deserves a good, strong look.
Let’s look more closely at these three reasons for thinking of Mary. First, compare what the Gospels tell us about Mary and what Acts tells us about St. Paul.
Luke, the author of the Gospel and the book of Acts, tells us that the angel Gabriel came to a virgin engaged to a man named Joseph from the house of David. This angel was an archangel, a dean among these celestial servants of God. The angel greeted Mary cordially. “Hail” –– our old Bibles read. “Greetings!” our new Bible reads. This is how we remember the angel’s words. When you read the English word, “Hail,” you probably think of “Hail Caesar,” and “Heil Hitler,” as though it was a greeting that treats the person as Divine. But it was only a polite and cheerful greeting. We don’t really say anything quite like it. Maybe, “Be happy!” “Good cheer!” What the angel said was a bit more than “Greetings!” would be like what Gabriel said.
Indeed, maybe we should greet each other this way because we are fortunate and need to remember it. Not, “how are you?” a question to which we don’t seriously expect an answer—and probably would not wait to hear. But “Good cheer!”
When Luke tells us how the Lord greeted Saul of Tarsus, it sounds very different. No “Good cheer to you, my fine fellow!” He was not a fine fellow. Perhaps we should note that it wasn’t Gabriel but the Lord Jesus who surprised Saul as he was on his way to Damascus to persecute followers of Jesus. The Lord said to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”
What a contrast between what the Lord said to Saul and what the angel said to Mary. How different Saul was at the start from the “saint” we remember as the Apostle Paul.
But supposing Saul had been a different kind of man to begin with and Acts had told us that an angel of the Lord appeared to Paul and greeted him as Gabriel greeted Mary. Just suppose Saul was chosen for his important job because he began so well early. I wonder how often this cheerful encounter between earth and heaven would be cited as evidence that we should think not only about the Jesus Christ whom Paul proclaimed, but of Paul’s worthiness to preach the Gospel.
We remember Abraham was called a friend of God, and we honor him for this. But we’ve not thought this way about Mary of whom the angel said, “O favored one”—in heaven.
Then, look what the angel Gabriel said to her. He said, “The Lord is with you.” Not, “The Lord be with you,” as many Christians say in the exchange of greetings when they take the Lord’s Supper. But, “The Lord is with you.”
The Lord is always with us, we might well say. We can’t escape his presence. But how many would you and I greet and say, “The Lord is with you” as an expression of admiration. This is what the angel meant. It’s as though Mary were coming to an interview with an employer, and she heard the owner of the company say, “I know how respected you are.”
A few verses later we read, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.”
In the Bible that Christians read for more than a thousand years, all of this was translated a bit differently. In this familiar translation the angel said, “Hail, full of grace--have gratia plena.” And then, “you have met with favor from God.” What became of the angel’s greeting shows how important that our translations mean as nearly as possible what the original form of the Bible means. No doubt when Jerome translated this passage he was influenced by the growing veneration for Jesus’ mother. The veneration showed in the “translation.” This is a kind of risk all modern translators of the Bible encounter too.
Generations of devout Christians read that the angel said to Mary, “You are full of grace.” And from this they developed ideas about Mary that seemed to follow from what the angel said. If she was full of grace, that means she must have been perfect. Perfect from the start, in fact. No original sin. And it went on from there until in 1950 Pope Pius XII proclaimed that Mary went bodily to heaven without having to wait for the general resurrection of the dead at Jesus’ second coming.
All of these strong things that were said about Mary were an attempt to unpack the meaning of what Christians read in their Bible—“Hail! Full of grace.” Even though grace means undeserved favor, to be called “full of undeserved favor” is pretty good. The rest of us need favor but none of us get full of it. We receive the goodness of God as a gift. Not Mary. The goodness of God somehow filled her to the very brim, from her immaculate conception until her bodily assumption into heaven. Devout Bible readers thought “full of grace” meant all of this.
But the original form of the Gospel tells us only that the angel said, “Be happy! Favored one.” And that’s plenty good to have an angel say to you.
When we read about the Apostle Paul’s choice of Timothy to work beside him in spreading the Gospel, we learn that Timothy had a good reputation. This is part of how we think of this young man whom Paul encouraged and gave high responsibility. Why not recognize this in Mary, Jesus’ mother?
Second, it’s too bad that Mary was a victim of the Reformation that started our heritage as Protestants. In an excellent article in Christianity Today about Mary, Timothy George recently reported that priests brought a statue of Mary to John Knox, the ardent Scottish Reformer, grandpa of us Presbyterians, when he was chained as a galley slave. They told him to kiss the statue. He responded, “Trouble me not; such an idol is a curse; and therefore I will not touch it.” Protestants who share this strong antagonism to Mary coined the term “Mariolatry,” which means Mary – idol – worship.
When we see how Mary grew in peoples’ imagination, from the Gospel’s picture of a humble peasant honored by God, to a Mother with a crown on her head sitting just below her Son, and then to a Mother sitting on a throne above her Son, and then as the One who keeps her angry Son from destroying the earth by pleading her maternal rights—redeeming the world from His vengeance, we suspect that the pious thinking got carried away. Mary needed Jesus to die to redeem her from her sin as much as we do.
But I take to heart the caution that all of us need to remember that F.W. Robertson told his congregation many years ago. “It is a principle that no error has ever spread widely that was not the exaggeration or perversion of a truth . . .and the first step toward dislodging error is to understand the truth at which it aims.”
What is this truth? The truth about Mary is that when she discovered that God had chosen her for a very hard task, she accepted it. To be pregnant outside of wedlock in those days was to risk being stoned to death. Walter Wangerin is no doubt right in describing how Joseph must have come to realize his beloved fiancée was pregnant. He knew he was not the father of the child. He saw the changes in her form. He felt a bulge in her abdomen when he hugged her. How could he trust his dream, in which the angel told him the baby was conceived by a special act of God? Maybe it was like a lot of dreams, “or bit of undigested beef.” But he trusted an angel actually talked to him in the dream. Things would be said of her by people that were not true. How could people imagine a virgin giving birth?
When she learned that sorrow would come to her as a result of being mother of this holy Child, Mary accepted it. When the Gospels show us glimpses of Mary, she doesn’t always get things right, but her mistakes are due to honoring her Son. She trusts Jesus to change an embarrassing problem at a wedding reception into cause for rejoicing—his first miracle. She once seemed to presume her Son should come because she was waiting for Him, and must have been troubled when Jesus said, “Whoever does the will of God is my brother, and sister, and mother.” I wonder what Mary thought when Jesus said this. We don’t read that she responded, “Watch your tongue, junior!” This, too, Mary pondered in her heart. Look at how humble and trusting Mary was. Not quickly offended. Who matches her in all the rest of Scripture?
Third, we desperately need to hold before us models worthy to be thought about in shaping our outlook on life. Look at the “celebrities” flashed before. How unglamorous is the private life of most of them. We hear the words, “role model” often. Why? Because, like it or not, the images flashed before us all plant in our minds role models.
How many little boys watch the taunting and gloating that football heroes do on Saturday or Sunday afternoon after scoring touchdowns, or making a tackle that hurt. They learn that it’s cool to gloat and taunt. How pleasing the Colts’ Marvin Harrison is in his humility. How many little girls watch how pop stars dress and copy them! They watch their “relationships” with either boys or other girls and get ideas about how to behave.
Where did all of us get the idea that it is only natural to want to have as much money as possible and to live as luxuriously as possible? We copy what we see. We see without realizing who we’re looking at. Mary is worth looking at deliberately. Don’t be misled by the passive, pathetic portraits of many Renaissance painters.
We refer to Mary as “the Virgin Mary,” because Jesus was conceived in a special way. This is not because there is anything wrong with the way every other woman become a mother. In fact, Matthew tells us that Joseph “knew her not until she had born a son.” This suggests that after Jesus was born, Joseph and Mary shared the kind of joy God intends husbands and wives to have, and probably had other children.
But it is not beside the point for us to notice in our day when sex has become simply a means of pleasure or like a handshake or a hug, that sexual intimacy needs to be saved for its rightful place in life. We are painfully aware of how sexual intimacy outside of marriage has caused disastrous harm in the spread of STDs, and in the process, planting suspicion in peoples’ minds about the diseases that might lurk in the one they will marry. Many babies are born who do not deserve the stigma of being born out of wedlock, or worse, are unwanted. Things have simply gotten out of hand. Something very wonderful God has given to us is being desecrated, and it’s spreading incalculable harm in many ways. That Mary was a virgin when she gave birth to Jesus reminds us that God’s plan for us was that marriage is the right place for sexual intimacy. Restraint may be the finest way to display affection, when the laws of God come up against our strong feelings. Mary and Joseph loved each other, but they loved to obey God first.
But there’s more than this about Mary. She was not merely resigned to being a Mother of a child who would bring her sorrow at how He would be treated. She was actively a participant in Jesus’ life. We see her not only caring for Jesus tenderly as a baby, we see her at the foot of the cross. We see her at the beginning, then at Cana of Galilee, and at another time in between, and finally at the cross. All of this suggests how closely she followed Jesus. Yet we don’t usually think of her as a follower of Jesus, a disciple –– as was Mary Magdalene, or Mary of Bethany.
Her special relationship to Jesus never in the Gospels becomes a reason for being treated in any special way. Mary is genuinely humble, and not in the least touchy. What a blessing it would be to the Church to have us all study Mary’s reserve, her participation in Jesus’ life, her humility, and her untouchiness.
It has been said, “Christianity is not a spectator sport,” but for how many is Christianity essentially that. It’s a badge to wear, a name to claim. What role might you be playing in the outworking of Jesus’ way in this world? When you think of your gifts, your talents, your personality, what good might happen if you offered yourself to God and said, “Use me.”
Mary’s humility stands out as the most noticeable feature of her character. She reflected the humility of her Son. Of Him Paul wrote, “He emptied Himself. He humbled Himself. He became obedient even unto death.” What boundaries have you drawn around yourself and said, “Thus far and no farther.” “Don’t step on me.”
Mary’s humility was not weak and spineless. Her humility was part of her awareness of her place in life. Her dignity as the God-bearer, as the One to bear in her body, and then to give birth from her body the Savior of the world gave her a purpose she accepted. What value does Mary have for you as you think of her acceptance of her role in life and your accepting your role as reflected in your gifts?
Then, last, I want to emphasize that Mary did not so value herself because of her role that she expected to be treated with special deference. She ponders in her heart what once Jesus said to her that suggests disrespect. “My brothers, sisters, and mother are those who do the will of God.” The Gospel story would read quite differently if Mary promoted her special place in Jesus’ life as a reason she should be treated in a special way. Would that we might see removed from church life, from family life, and from society the inclination to be easily offended? Perhaps we should think that Mary “forgave” Jesus and others when they forgot who she was. Or maybe Mary didn’t have any ideas to begin with of “who she was.” She was just the handmaiden of the Lord. But in this she found plenty of purpose and a good self-image.
So I put before you Mary, the mother of Jesus, whom the Gospels lift up before us as a person worthy to be noticed. Don’t look down on her because overly enthusiastic Christians, reading a Latin translation over many hundreds of years, made more of her than is right. We desperately need to look at some worthwhile models for living. What little we know of Mary is as good as we can find. Let us honor and observe Mary, who was a follower of her Son, even before He was born.
Let us pray: O God, you gave us your Son, born of the Virgin Mary. We thank you for Jesus. We bless you for letting us know of His mother too. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, Indiana
Posted by faithpres at December 21, 2003 09:30 AM