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December 18, 2005
The Glory of the Virgin Mother
Psalm 16 / Genesis 18: 9-15
Matthew 1: 18-25
December 18th, 2005
This morning I want to speak about a very un-Protestant theme, but a theme quite important in the Bible, and perhaps of greater importance to us personally than you and I have been aware. This theme is the glory of the Virgin Mother of Jesus, Mary.
When I use the word glory with regard to Mary maybe you start to get uneasy. Sounds pretty Catholic to you. You wonder what I’m up to, dabbling with Catholicism maybe under the influence of too many Christmas cards, too much of Carol Goodrich’s marvelous wassail, and a spirit of good-will gotten out of hand. I took the title of my message today directly from my 19th-century namesake, F.W. Robertson, who preached on this, not during Advent, but in January 1853. I will borrow some of his application of the value of looking at Mary.
But there’s more to Mary’s place in the plan of God than looking at her as a model of humility and submission to the will of God. Protestants who scrutinize the Bible for hints of God’s plan for the world have followed the paper trail in Matthew and Luke to see how God foretold the coming of Jesus. We have read Matthew’s quotation of the prophet Micah, that Jesus would be born in Bethlehem. We have read Isaiah’s prophecy that He would be called “Wonderful, counselor, mighty God, everlasting father, Prince of Peace.” We have read Hosea who wrote, “Out of Egypt have I called my son,” and not batted an eye when Matthew says this was the reason why Joseph took Mary and little Jesus to Egypt, so they could come out of Egypt. It’s not obvious the prophet Hosea had in mind a prediction about Jesus. But that’s no problem to us because Matthew’s Gospel says that’s why Joseph took Mary and Jesus to Egypt. Thus Jesus identified with ancient Israel that came out of Egypt into the Promised Land. Thus Jesus led the way for you and me to come out of our bondage into the glorious freedom He supplies.
Many Evangelical scholars have probed and mined the Book of Daniel for its prophecies of the end times. Pastors fascinated with signs of the end have interpreted Daniel’s cryptic visions without a blush to explain with remarkable self-confidence the timetable of God’s plan for this world.
But when it comes to Mary we suddenly are like a racehorse with blinders so we don’t see what’s going on beside us. The antagonism of our forebears in the Reformation to the Roman Catholic Church made them throw the baby out with the bathwater when it came to Mary. Whereas many of the great figures in the Bible have been the subject of sermons—Abraham, the father of the faithful, Joseph, the type of Christ, Samson, the prophet with a tragic flaw, Eli, the high priest who could not guide his own sons to a good life, and David, who stood up to Goliath, and in the New Testament blundering Peter, Mary and Martha as types of devotion and activism, —not only have we missed seeing most of the important women along the way, but we’ve seemingly purposefully avoided a woman the Bible describes in the boldest letters of all, Mary, the mother of Jesus.
Another year I might well lead us to think about the five women mentioned in Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus. What a strange pattern: Tamar, daughter-in-law of Judah, Jacob’s son, who seduced her father-in-law, Rahab, the harlot of Jericho, Ruth, the Moabite girl—a citizen of a land that was Israel’s enemy, Uriah’s wife, Bathshebah, who may have teased King David with her beauty, exposing herself indelicately, but whom God chose to continue the line of His promise leading to the birth of the Messiah, and then Mary, of whom I speak today. What do we make of the fact that each of these women had some cultural quirk that makes her seem not to fit in so holy a purpose as being a link in the chain of God’s purposes to save the world. What’s going on, we wonder?
I’ll not hold you in suspense. Let’s cut to the chase. First, I want to point out something of the Bible’s broad hints of the importance of Mary to the big picture. Second, I hope to make clear that it’s more than a nice idea at Christmas that we should look at Mary as someone who understood what it was to live under the authority of God, devoted to following Jesus her whole life long.
What is Mary’s place in the big picture of God’s purpose for the world? Our attention is first drawn to Mary as we read through the New Testament when she is found pregnant by the Holy Spirit. Matthew tells us nothing of what Luke says, about the angel Gabriel announcing to Mary that she had found favor with God. There is no Magnificat in Matthew.
Instead, the angel appears to Joseph to whom she is engaged. The angel comes to Joseph—who reminded all Jewish people who heard of this of another Joseph in the Book of Genesis, to whom God revealed a plan for saving His people and the Egyptians as well from starvation. Thoughtful Jews then looked at Mary as fulfilling the type of the storehouses that God filled with grain many years before to save His people from death. The salvation of God’s people would come out of Mary, who gave birth to the bread of life, Joseph learns in a dream.
In the Gospel of John we see that Jesus’ beloved disciple saw an even more remarkable connection between Mary and an Old Testament woman of great importance to the world. Though the Gospel of John has no nativity story per se, when John tells of Jesus’ first miracle, notice the place that Mary has in the story. In John 2 we read that “on the third day there was a marriage at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there.” Before this John mentions four days in Jesus’ life.
First there is the day Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, then three times we read, “The next day,” in verses 29, 35, and 43. Then at the beginning of chapter two we read, “on the third day.” And we wonder what that means. This would be the seventh day. The seventh day was the day of rest in the Jewish week. Mary introduces Jesus when the wine has run out. What a sad event, no more wine. But Mary intervenes to introduce the One who could supply what was needed to bring joy back to the wedding. On the seventh day, the day of rest, Jesus brings joy.
Jesus responds to His mother who sent the servants at the wedding feast to Him to help with the wine shortage, “Woman, what have you to do with me?” In calling his mother “Woman,” it seems Jesus is being impolite. I wouldn’t address my mother that way; neither would you.
But far from being impolite, John realizes that Jesus addresses Mary the way Adam addresses Eve in the Book of Genesis. When Adam looks at this glorious being who has been made from his rib, who would be the mother of the human race, he called her “Woman.” In fact, the very word Jesus spoke to Mary was the word Adam spoke to Eve in Genesis. “Woman.” Ishah in Hebrew. Jews who knew their Bible must have blinked to read this story, realizing Jesus called Mary, his mother, Ishah—the Genesis word for the mother of the human race.
The Apostle Paul never refers to Mary but he refers to Jesus as the Second Adam. It is a subtlety that probably hasn’t hit most of us, but it was not lost on the early Jewish Christians that as Jesus was the Second Adam, Mary was the second Ishah—a second Eve, a mother figure for those who would be God’s people.
That John understands Mary in this way comes out when Jesus speaks to Mary and John from the cross. Do you remember that Jesus looks down at these two who looked up at Him as He hung on the cross. John tells us this of Jesus: “When Jesus saw his mother, and the disciple whom he loved standing near, he said to his mother, ‘Woman--Ishah--behold your son!’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Behold, your mother!’ And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home.”
Once again Jesus calls Mary, “Ishah,” the name Adam called Eve, the mother of the human race. And he tells John, who was not Mary’s biological son, “See, your mother.” What does this suggest to you? Our Protestant imaginations start to choke. What was Jesus telling us who read what He said to his mother and to John? “See—your mother.” “Ishah.” The New Eve.
When we look at the Book of Revelation, John’s other great book in the New Testament, Mary seems to be presented to us again in this unnamed woman. Protestant scholars suggest that this woman stands for the Messianic community—with which Mary has a place. In the last verse of the eleventh chapter we read, “Then God’s temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of his covenant was seen within his temple.” In the early Church the Ark of the Covenant was seen as a type of Mary because in the Book of Exodus we read that God came to meet Israel there. The two tablets of the law, God’s word to Israel, were in the Ark. The word made flesh was in Mary’s womb. And God came to us in the womb of Mary. She was a virtual Ark of the Covenant. This is why a title for Mary that developed in the early Church was Theotokos, Bearer of God, or Mother of God. She gave birth to God made flesh. She was not mother of God the Father, but she gave birth to God the Son.
Then, in Revelation 12 a still more vivid description is given of a woman who is evidently Mary. All of this is connected.
“And a great portent appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars; she was with child and she cried out in her pangs of birth, in anguish for delivery. And another portent appeared in heaven; behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems upon his heads. His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven, and cast them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to bear a child, that he might devour her child when she brought it forth; she brought forth a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne, and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, in which to be nourished for one thousand two hundred and sixty days.”
The imagery of the sun, moon and crown of twelve stars baffles me, but for sure it was Mary who gave birth to a male child who would rule the nations, who ascended to the right hand of the Father in heaven.
War erupts in heaven, with Michael and his angels fighting against this dragon, throwing him down—who is called the Devil and Satan. A loud voice in heaven proclaims, “Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God . . . And when the dragon saw that he had been thrown down to the earth, he pursued the woman who had borne the male child. But the woman was given the two wings of the great eagle that she might fly from the serpent into the wilderness to the place where she is to be nourished for a time, and times, and half a time. The serpent poured water like a river out of his mouth after the woman, to sweep her away with the flood. But the earth came to the help of the woman . . . then the dragon was angry with the woman, and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and bear testimony to Jesus.”
I am cautious to draw conclusions from this because it is mysterious and pretty new to me. It seems on the surface that John is just telling us of Mary’s enormous significance in bearing Jesus. We should not be reluctant to accept this. We need not be fearful of the imagery that is mysterious, that glorifies the woman. After all, didn’t the angel Gabriel say to Mary, “Hail highly favored one, the Lord is with you.”
Nowadays in the Catholic Church I hear Mary referred to with titles that elevate her beyond the place any mortal can have with God. She is called “co-redemptrix” and “co-mediatrix.” This stretches a role Scripture gives to her in what seems a far more limited way. In the story of Jesus at the wedding feast, the servants come to Mary to get her to approach Jesus to get him to turn the water into wine.
Perhaps it was in response to the temptation to give Mary more credit than she is due that Paul wrote to Timothy, “There is one God and one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus.” Perhaps John guarded against the temptation to make more of Mary than was right in recording that Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but by me.” As you and I can bring people to Jesus, so Mary brought the servants to Jesus. She was a mediatrix only in this limited sense.
But not to see that Mary plays a very special role in the plan of God is to purposely ignore things said about her in the Bible. We think well of Paul for bringing the Gospel to the Gentiles, that is, to us. But Mary brought us the Gospel through her body. Indeed, she plays a mysterious role that seems to go beyond being the mere vehicle by which Jesus was born. Allow yourself to ponder this for the good of your soul.
Our Catholic brethren have drawn inferences about Mary based on a faulty translation of what the angel Gabriel says to Mary. The angel did not say, “Hail, Mary, full of grace.” He said, “Hail Mary, highly favored one, the Lord is with you.” The Latin translation of the angel’s words, ‘Gratia plena,” has been stretched so that the Church taught of the “immaculate conception” of Mary, and then that she was assumed bodily into heaven. This goes beyond anything hinted at in scripture.
But let us not, in response to excesses in the Church of Rome, be blind to the evidence that Mary plays a remarkable role in the plan of God. She is Ishah, a second Eve, who tells us to come to Jesus, who is the mother of John, though she was not his biological mother. In some way Mary is our mother too, as we stand with John at the foot of the cross. As Abraham is the father of those who believe in the Old Testament. Mary plays a special role for us. She led the way in trusting in God’s plan, allowing herself to be the vehicle to give birth to the One who would save us from our sing. A mother can have uncanny influence on her children. Mary can help to guide us to follow Jesus.
Finally, I want to remind us how Mary showed us how to be followers of Jesus, her Son. Next Sunday, Christmas Day, we will read again the Christmas story as Paul told it. He will tell us that when Jesus was born, He emptied Himself.
To us whose principal problem is that we are so full of ourselves comes the message, “Think as Jesus did; He emptied himself.” In a day of much controversy between Christians we become confused about what it is to follow Jesus, imagining that Jesus wants us first to have an assortment of pious ideas about Him. We quarrel about how to speak of Jesus as though God needs us to define Him, to help Him know who and what He is.
Mary did not take up the cudgel in her own defense, arguing forcefully for her virginity though she was pregnant. She didn’t mount a crusade for the work of the Holy Spirit. She submitted herself, exposing herself to the abuse that she anticipated would follow. Mary stands before us as the example of one who did as her son, Jesus did. He emptied himself. And Mary emptied herself. She submitted completely to the very inconvenient will of God. She emptied herself of pride, being willing to be ill thought of in a day when babies born out of wedlock were a shame. She made herself available even to death, as she might have been stoned to death for being pregnant outside of marriage.
How many of the problems we have with one another are the result of forgetting that Paul explained to us the way of following Jesus. It begins, “Think this way about yourselves as Jesus did, He emptied himself.” We’re far too full of ourselves. How many of our problems of self-identity are due to our forgetfulness of something Mary remembered her whole life long. “Be it unto me according to your word.”
In our day of grabbing for significance, of asserting ourselves, of thinking that to be much publicized is to have arrived in life, Mary reminds us of the importance of the shadows, a place where she lingers as the handmaiden to the Lord. Even in the church we estimate significance in terms of human grandeur. But Jesus emptied Himself and became a servant. And His mother, Mary submitted herself, “Be it unto me according to your word.”
You and I, who long for peace and hunger for the inward sense that all is well, would do well to let our eyes travel to Mary, whom God once used in a remarkable way, and perhaps continues to use in ways hard for Protestants to imagine. Mary looms before us as someone whom God chose for a high purpose who made herself available to God to use as He pleased. Things happen in us that cannot happen under the impulse of ambition, when we deliberately see ourselves as handmaidens, as men-in-waiting, whose daily prayer is, “May it be with me according to your word.” “Use me as and when you will.”
Under the control of this willing submission to God, I wonder what good God might yet do with us. I invite you to look again at the glory of the Virgin Mother of Jesus, to see what it is to be a Christian.
Let us pray: O Lord, we would see Jesus. And we thank you for showing to us Mary who knew how to see Him and to love Him, and to serve Him. Amen.
Pastor Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at December 18, 2005 09:30 AM