The good, the bad and the ugly: ways we have avoided Mary

NOTE: Here are this week's sermon notes for Advent Three 2009. Once again the lectionary gospel takes up John the Baptist's story while I take a left turn to think about Mary. I have been blessed and nourished by both Jaraslav Pelikan's Mary Through the Centuries and Elizabeth Johnson's Truly Our Sister: A Theology of Mary in the Communion of Saints. I have borrowd heavily from Johnson this week and commend her work.

Two special invitaitons - in addition to worship at 10:30 am on Sunday: 1) At 5:00 pm we will host a Taize worship to enter the spirit of peace. 2) At 6:00 pm, the wider ecumencial community in Pittsfield will gather on Park Square (right in front of our church) for a quiet vigil to support the work taking place in Copenhagen re: healing global warming. You are all welcome to join us for any and all.

This morning I thought that our conversation in faith should be called something like: why Protestants have avoided Mary – the good, the bad and the ugly reasons about her invisibility in our tradition. You see, I am of the opinion that no one religious tradition has a monopoly upon the truth – not Roman Catholics, not Protestants, not the Orthodox nor the Anglicans – for how could we be so arrogant as to say that we – and we alone – have the definitive wisdom about God Almighty!

+ By very definition God is beyond our ability to comprehend, yes? That is part of what it means to acknowledge the Lord – we let God be God – trusting and knowing that we are not.

+ All we can say, therefore, is that we have some unique insights – some special treasures – that have proven helpful to people of faith over the generations. Simultaneously we must also say: now we see as through a glass darkly… only later shall we see face to face.

I think St. Paul is on to something when he tells us: Beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Emphasize these things… Then rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything… and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Using Paul’s counsel as a starting point – that is, emphasizing what is good and true and beautiful and just – let’s try to tenderly unpack some of the reasons why our little section of the Christian family has avoided the blessings of Mary. Because, you see, she can be a model for us – a mentor and spiritual friend on our journey towards faith – if we have eyes to see and hearts to recognize her authentic testimony.

Now right out of the gate I need to articulate one of the ugly realities: namely that many of us have never considered Mary carefully because that sounds too Catholic. For much of our history we have defined ourselves as NOT them even though this isn’t what our spiritual heirs in the Reformation intended when it came to Mary or being the church. Did you know that Martin Luther, John Calvin, Ulrich Zwingli and the Wesley Brothers all acknowledged and honored the beauty and importance of Mary as a model of faith? Luther went so far as to call her a “spiritual mother” for people seeking the path of Jesus and later said:

She is the noblest gem in Christianity after Christ… She is wisdom and holiness personified. And we can never honor her enough… although our honor and praise must be given to her in such a way as to injure neither Christ nor the Scriptures… she is, you see, more than Eve or Sarah, blessed above all for the sake of Christ. Mary does not wish that we come to her, but through her to God(www.davidmacd.com/catholic/martin_luther_on_mary.htmdmacd.com/catholic/martin_luther_on_mary.htm)

Our tradition has always considered Mary to be a sacred model for faithful living – she shows us how one ordinary and humble soul can become extraordinary – by her openness to the Holy Spirit. For it is the Holy Spirit, you see, not Mary all by herself who creates new life in a bold way. The Holy Spirit brought about blessing in her much like the Spirit brought order to the chaos of creation in the book of Genesis: In the beginning… the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep until the Spirit of the Lord swept over the waters and brought order to the chaos – separated the light from the darkness – and God called it good.

Theologian and scholar, Elizabeth Johnson, puts it like this in her book, Truly Our Sister, where she writes that the stories of Mary “draw their power from the creation stories in Genesis.”

Just as the Spirit of God moved over the chaotic waters and danced a whole new world into being (in the beginning), the same creative Spirit moved over the dead Jesus after the Cross, the unknown Jesus at the start of his ministry and the womb of Mary to create a new world…(for just) as the Spirit of the Lord hovered over formless matter when the miracle of creation took place, so, too, there is a new creative act of God when Jesus is born… and while this requires the human cooperation of a poor Galilean couple it does not diminish the power of divine initiative that blesses the whole world with a new act of creation by God. (p. 235)

Are you with me? Am I being clear? All Christians – of every tradition and denomination – have celebrated the creative grace and blessings that Mary brings to birth when she embraces the Holy Spirit of God in profound and mystical ways.

So why does she remained so invisible to us? I have to believe that Ronald Reagan’s old speech writer, Peggy Noonan, was right on the money in her autobiography, What I Saw at the Revolution, when she called out our historic Catholic prejudice as the anti-Semitism of American intellectuals. That’s an ugly thing to say and yet too many of our Protestant habits and opinions are based on fear and ignorance rather than truth or insight. Too many of our traditions emerged from trepidation of copying “them,” too.

• And even when there are serious disagreements about doctrine – and there remains a fair amount of legitimate theological sparring that needs to take place between Protestants and Catholics – the popular expression is more often than not slanderous rather than thoughtful and gentle.

• You can hear it in the tone and snarl when some of us say, “That so…. Catholic!”

So let me call to your attention to a few brief biblical stories about Mary that might help us redress this offense and correct our ugly ignorance. Each is a small picture that offers a clue about who Mary might become for us: like pieces of a mosaic, theologian Elizabeth Johnson calls them “tesserae… a sliver that alone is no more than a spot of color or a minute marking… (But) when assembled together display a picture or intelligent design ever more clearly the further back you stand… The goal is a multi-faceted, living, memory-image of Mary within the cloud of witnesses that shares in the “danger” (of her lived experience)” … and the wisdom she awakens in the resistance, birth and hope she offers all human being and the earth as one beloved of God. (p. 216-17)

First of all, let me call your attention to the oldest story about Mary in the Bible – a story from the gospel of Mark found in chapter three – that is rather surprising. (Mark 3: 20-21/31-35) I call this the oldest story because Mark is the first gospel – collected in some written form by about 65 CE – and provides an outline for both Matthew and Luke which come later. Interestingly, none of the earliest sources written by Paul just 30 years after Christ’s death even mentions Mary, but Mark does in a fascinating way that can be helpful in our mosaic. He tells us about a time when Mary grew worried about her oldest son. His preaching and ministry had begun to rattle the status quo:

• He was healing the wounded, feeding the hungry and calling into question both the religious and political authority of his day.

• The spiritual leadership of Jerusalem, in fact, had started to say that he was in league with Satan and the large crowds he called together were becoming troublesome.

Do you recall this story? It goes on to tell us that Mary had begun to fear not only that the life of Jesus was in danger, but also that he might be losing his mind. So, as any loving mother would do, she gathers the family to go after Jesus and try to bring him home for a rest. And when the crowd tells him that momma and her brood are there to bring him home, he says, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” And looking around at the crowd he adds in a way that almost “disowns” his blood kin: “Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of God is brother and sister and mother to me.”

Now most commentary on this first story about Mary emphasize that “blood ties do not guarantee a place in the community of Christ’s disciples, only loving and acting on behalf of the kingdom of God do… without distinction of sex or gender, infertility or maternity, physical kinship or family connections” a new community is offered to those who seek the will of God. (Johnson, p. 217) And this is a strong and vital piece of the puzzle – in first century Palestine this kind of inclusive family was revolutionary – but it is not the whole story.

• For in addition to telling us about a new kind of family, it also tells us that at first Mary didn’t really understand her son’s ministry. Traditional piety likes to emphasize that Mary was always faithful to Jesus, but this story suggests that she didn’t get it in the beginning.

• Which ought to be good news for you and me, right? Sometimes we don’t get it either, but that doesn’t mean God has quit on us. So there is grace even in her confusion.

What’s more this story also speaks of a woman of great courage and conviction, willing to risk offending her child – and go up against the violence of Rome – to save his life. Do you see that?
Very, very important: Mary is a person of courage, compassion and commitment. “No submissive handmaid, her memory moves in solidarity with women everywhere who act critically according to their best lights to seek the well-being of those they love.” (Johnson, p. 221)

What do you think? Does that help flesh out something of who the real Mary might be beyond legend or sentimental piety? Let me suggest two more pieces to this mosaic of Mary, ok?

• Have you ever read the genealogy of Jesus shared at the opening of the gospel according to St. Matthew? Most of the time people skip right over this unless they are in a Bible study and even then their eyes glaze over.

• But here’s the point: in the long list of who begat whom are the names of four wild women – none of whom are the traditional matriarchs of Israel – Sarah, Hagar, Rebecca, Leah and Rachel – but rather they are: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and the wife of Uriah whom we know as Bathsheba.

Without going into great detail, these four women were scandalous in using their sexuality to advance the cause of Israel. Tamar plays a prostitute in order to get pregnant and keep the family line alive. Rahab was a Canaanite prostitute who acted as a spy for Israel and betrayed her blood family for the greater good of God’s chosen. Ruth was also an outsider who seduced her way into the house of Israel. And what do you recall about Bathsheba?

King David seduced her – killing her husband in the bargain – only to give birth to Solomon whom Bathsheba insisted become king over the rights of David’s other children. Do you see a pattern here? These women – like Mary – were open to God’s will in totally outrageous ways. They used their sexuality to advance God’s cause even when it placed them in great danger for they were all partners with the Holy Spirit.

Theologians like the late Raymond Brown have noted that these women – along with Mary – show us how God “moves in and through the obstacles of human scandal to bring about the coming of the Messiah.” God’s will advances in history through some of the wildest ways – and these women – all heirs of our sister Mary – prove it. As much of the rest of the gospel of Matthew makes clear:

A stream of characters, from the hemorrhaging woman and crowds of other sick and disabled people to the Canaanite woman agitating for her little daughter’s health, the demoniac of the hills to the tax collector Matthew and his socially repugnant friends will all amply the message first embodied in the genealogy of these foremothers and the mother of the Messiah. Insignificant, illegitimate, defenseless, tabooed people are beloved of God and may become agents of divine action in history. Jesus himself is the most radical example of this divine compassion. (p. 226)

There are perhaps eight more stories about Mary that could be helpful to us – from the scandal of her marriage and pregnancy, her flight with Joseph into Egypt as illegal immigrants, the visitation of the Magi and their gifts, the wisdom of the Magnificat (which we’ll look at next week) to Mary’s calling for new wine at the wedding in Cana and her tender suffering at the foot of the Cross and beyond – but let me wrap this up with another often neglected story: losing and finding Jesus again at the Temple.

• You know this, right? Can we say parts of it out loud…?

• As a family, Mary and Joseph take the 12 year old Jesus into the city of Jerusalem to participate in the Passover celebrations marking Israel’s liberation from slavery in Egypt. And on the way home… they discover Jesus is missing, right?

Have you ever lost one of your children in a store or had them go missing? It is one of the worst feeling ever – terror and uncertainty mixed with grief and almost total confusion – and the gospel of Luke tells us that this is exactly what Mary and Joseph felt: overwhelming and paralyzing anxiety. Grief, too, don’t you think?

• And when they find him back in the Temple – three days later (can you imagine?!?) – he is speaking and teaching with the elders.

• So they explode at him – I’ve been there, haven’t you – when your relief comes pouring out and sounds like anger? And once again, as only an adolescent can say, Jesus tells them, “Oh stop… I have just been in my father’s house.”

I have to believe that Mary wanted to deck him right then and there: what a little smartass! Now the scripture tells us that Mary and Joseph “did not understand” the reproach of Jesus. He was maturing and starting to go into his own unique ministry and… they didn’t understand him.

• Very human, don’t you think?

• Something that happens all the time between parents and their children – confusion and misunderstanding?

This tells me two closing truths about Mary that are often invisible but valuable to us as we reclaim her:

• First, she and Joseph shared a love – a human and intimate love – a love that knew joy and heartbreak, anxiety and anger and reconciliation. Mary was real – and invites us to be fully human in our loving, too.

• And second, the love she and Joseph shared helped model the love that Jesus expressed. The old saying: the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree comes to mind.

There are some good, bad and ugly reasons why we haven’t learned from Mary – and there is a whole lot more to say about this, too – but the fact remains: she can be for us a model of grace and hope in her humanity. She can also show us something of that spirituality of imperfection that learns and matures by getting it wrong, too. And that has to be good news for you and me. So, let those who have ears to hear, hear.