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December 19, 2004
God is Great
God is Great
Psalm 110 / I Samuel 2: 1-10
Luke 1: 46-56
December 19th, 2004
The New York Metropolitan Museum of Art recently bought this old painting of the Madonna and Child for $45,000,000. An artist from Siena, Duccio de Buoninsegna, painted it in the early fourteenth century. The picture portrays one of the great themes of medieval art. “Madonna” means “my lady.” We know what “child” means. But what a lady, a virgin mother. And what a child, the Incarnate Son of God, seated on the virgin mother’s lap. It is no wonder the theme gripped so many artists. It’s no over-payment that $45,000,000 should be given by a secular art museum.
It is hard to calculate the greatness of the Virgin Mary. $45,000,000 isn’t quite the right category for measuring her worth. That an archangel, one of the two highest angels closest to the heavenly throne should say to her, “Hail, highly favored one!” is very suggestive. I’ll be thrilled just to hear, “Christ died for your sins. Come on in.” Mary heard, “Hail, highly favored one.” Why did the angel say this? Was it because she merited the favor for her extraordinary worth?
We humans are preoccupied with the idea of comparative greatness. It has to do with our desire to be significant that we look around and create a hierarchy of significance. We dub some people more significant than others. We call them “great.” We have halls of fame in lots of categories that people aspire to get into. We give awards that folk get teary eyed to receive—some committee in some organization thinks I’m valuable. They voted me “great.”
The ancient church got fascinated with the idea of great Christians when persecution started to weed out the dabblers from the really serious. The really serious Christians, who were so close to their Lord that they could do miracles like He did, came to be called “saints.” Saints were a cut above ordinary Christians. In fact, the idea got going that they had special powers even after they died. They had tons of merit, far more than they needed to get into heaven. So they could share their merit. It was deposited in a kind of heavenly bank, a “treasury of merit.” Guess who had the most merit to share. The Blessed Virgin Mother of Jesus.
It is wholly appropriate that Mary should receive lasting admiration. But things got out of hand in the Church when it let its imagination fly about her. While she was venerated highly in the early years, being rightly called “the God-bearer,” Theotokos, in more recent times far more specific honors were claimed for her.
On December 8th, 1854, Pope Pius IX pronounced that the Virgin Mary was conceived without sin. That is, her conception was different from every other human being. This view was founded on two mistranslations of Scripture.
The first is the Latin translation of Genesis 3: 15 where the feminine personal pronoun, ipsa is in place of the appropriate neuter pronoun, ipsum, that refers to the seed of the woman. Thus devout Christians for a thousand years heard in church that God said to the serpent, “she (ipsa) shall bruise your head.” The woman rather than the seed of the woman would deliver the knockout blow to the devil, the author of sin. If she would do this, she had to be sinless. Therefore she was born without the sin everyone else inherited merely by being born. The seed of the woman referred to someone who would yet be born. We see this as a prediction of the birth of Jesus, who crushed the devil, conquering sin and death.
The second mistranslation is from our New Testament reading this morning. The angel said to Mary, “Hail, highly favored one.” This is an accurate translation of the Greek words. But the Latin translation of the Greek in which the Gospel was written, was gratia plena, means “full of grace.” There is a difference between being “highly favored” and being “full of grace.” How important it is that the Bible be translated right. Christians for a thousand years read something about Mary that the angel did not say. They believed that Mary was full of grace. If so, then she could have had no sin, ever. Therefore she was immaculately conceived.
Then, on November 1st, 1950, Pope Pius XII sent out an authoritative message with his seal (bullus) that declared as a truth to be accepted by all the faithful. Not only was Mary immaculately conceived, she went directly, bodily to heaven when she died. This idea dates back to legends that got going in the fourth century, but the Bible says nothing like this about her. In fact, Mary fades from the scene after Jesus’ resurrection. We read nothing about her role in the earliest Church in the Book of Acts.
Mary was a great woman. There is no doubt that God thought her great. But when we create a greatness surrounding her that is wrong—by creating tributes to her that go beyond what the Bible teaches, we miss seeing the greatness we should. Mary was great because despite the amazing role she came to play in God’s plan of salvation, she did not become proud. She was not self-conscious in her piety. She saw herself as what she was,” the handmaid of the Lord”—just doing what God gave her to do. She believed that God was great. She was amazed that God found her of use. She was just a lowly peasant girl, after all. She said, “From now on all generations will call me blessed.” Who can be proud for being blessed? Grateful, sure, but not proud. She saw everything in perspective: “He who is mighty has done great things for me.” God did it.
But none of the things Mary mentions in the Magnificat call attention to her personally. Mary kept perspective. The last glimpse we see of Mary with Jesus in His early life is when Jesus is twelve years old. He has given the first big clue that His business is God’s business. After Mary gently chided Jesus for making her worry when she and Joseph couldn’t find Him as they returned home from Jerusalem, He told her, “Didn’t you know I must be in my Father’s house?” “My father’s house?” Wasn’t that in Nazareth just beside the carpenter’s shop? No, not at all.
The last picture of Mary in the Gospels is of her standing quietly at the foot of the cross.
Mary “kept all these things and pondered them in her heart.” It is this picture of Mary that is beneath all the excessive things that have been said about her. She was not just resigned so that she passively played her part in the great drama of redemption. She was hardly a limp instrument in God’s hands. She heard the angel’s announcement and recognized the importance of what was happening. She asked the appropriate question, “How shall this be, since I have no husband.” She was engaged to be married, but she had not shared the intimacy with Joseph that God intends to be reserved for marriage. She had no reason to be pregnant.
The Gospel of Matthew lets us know that Joseph did not just take all this in stride—that Mary, his fiancée should be pregnant before marriage. He planned to divorce her. It was a matter of honor for him. But he would do it as gently as possible.
One of the very early Christian “novels” about the birth of Jesus describes how distressed Joseph was. When he came home and found her very noticeably pregnant, “he smote his face, and cast himself down upon the ground in sackcloth and wept bitterly, saying, ‘With what countenance shall I look unto the Lord my God? And what prayer shall I make concerning this maiden? For I received her out of the temple of the Lord my God a virgin, and have not kept her safe . . . Who has done this evil in my house and has defiled the virgin?’
Then the angel told Joseph what had actually happened. But who would believe this? The story goes on to say that both Joseph and Mary took the test the High Priest gave that would reveal their sin. They drank the ‘water of conviction,’ a vile-tasting kind of poison that invariably wreaked havoc on peoples’ innards. Both of them passed the test. Then the priest said, “If the Lord God has not made your sin manifest, neither do I condemn you.”
We read this story with interest because it suggests details that we could see happening when Mary was expecting a child before she was married to Joseph. But these stories, as entertaining as they are distract us from Mary’s true greatness—the kind you and I can see as an example that we can actually copy.
Mary’s greatness was to recognize the greatness of God, and show it in a way that we too can proclaim the greatness of God.
First, I see that there is much about Mary before these events about which we know nothing. Throughout the course of her young life she prepared herself, though she did not know she was preparing herself for anything. All she could have known she was doing was being faithful with the kind of faithfulness to God appropriate to her young life. She did the things a good young woman would do in the home and in society without ostentation.
Those who would have noticed her would have been the kind of people who notice goodness more than genius. It was a goodness that grew in her in a very ordinary, quiet way. Here is a model for us all who grow through the stages of life. I speak to you who are children, young people. Obey your parents. Follow their teaching. Do your work well. Be kind to other people. Adults, be ordinarily good—faithful, loyal, moral, gracious, forgiving. This is the noticeable stuff of following your Lord. This was Mary’s ordinary way.
Second, I see that Mary knew her Bible. She knew the ways of God taught in the Bible. The 104th Psalm begins, “Bless the Lord, O my soul. O Lord my God, thou art very great.” Did these words flash to mind when Mary said, “He who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is His name.” The 103rd Psalm says, “The steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him.” Mary echoed the psalm, “His mercy is on those who fear him from generation to generation.”
Mary saw what was happening in terms of the sweep of God’s work throughout the generations of her people.
Third, Mary recognized that what was happening in her then was the work of God. She was just “the handmaiden of the Lord,” someone God was using. How important that she keep this in mind. “Let others see the work of God. Let me not get in the way. Let me keep on being useful.” It is a paradox that Mary’s greatness depended on her keeping in mind that she was only the handmaiden of the Lord. Mary wanted no credit for her humble faithfulness. She didn’t get in the way when she realized her usefulness to God.
Here is perhaps the hardest part of Mary’s greatness for us to follow. How we are tempted to become aware of what we do in the church and society! Perhaps you do more than others do, and you start to recognize it is so. You think someone else should notice and credit you with being so fine a person.
People in my trade are tempted to look at outward signs of success. As churches we form strategies for achieving the kind of success that captures our attention. Let us cultivate what God can see.
God quietly and secretly fashions true greatness in hearts that are absolutely unimpressed with themselves. They keep on and on, enduring whatever comes their way of presumption of others on their faithfulness, having only in mind that they be faithful to God. This is greatness.
So often people like this are women. Someone I know well has told me of a father, a humble man, who had a trade few think of as glamorous. His role in his congregation was to be probably the first one there and the last to leave on a Sunday morning. He cared for whatever needing cared for—year after year after year. He served in leadership but his greatest role was behind the scenes. In his home this man’s humble faith bore fruit as his children grew up under its influence. People of all sorts found cheerful welcome in this home. The great doctrines of the Christian faith were given simple and believable dress in the life of this man. His children all share deeply this father’s faith.
His name will go down in no history books. I don’t know if there is a plaque in his honor anywhere in the church building. But anyone who is apt to notice will notice the effects of his life’s offering for usefulness to God. This is greatness. Many people we may call famous. But this is greatness.
The fundamental key to greatness is unselfconscious placing our lives into the hands of God, come what may, for any usefulness He would achieve through us. When you and I are convinced of the greatness of God, who alone does wondrous things, greatness emerges in the common, daily outworking of our lives. The moment we notice this, we risk blowing it.
With eyes fixed on God, focused on Jesus Christ, let me live out my days, aspiring to be useful to Him. With eyes fixed on almighty and merciful God, with the focus on Jesus Christ, let us all choose to live out our days—useful to God. Let us be as Mary was, a handmaiden of the Lord. What spell will God cast on the world if we follow where she has led? Who cares if anyone notices? The moment we care about this, it will be because we’ve lost our focus. Maybe it will be helpful to keep Mary in mind. She didn’t lose focus.
O Lord God, give us grace to forget ourselves, to see only Him who was born for our sakes, and who died for our sakes. Grant to us to be your faithful handmaids and handymen. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Stuart D. Robertson, Pastor Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at December 19, 2004 09:30 AM