There's Something About Mary - Advent 4

I’ve always said, you can take the girl out of the Catholic Church but there are pieces of the Catholic Church that you cannot take out of the girl. And for this Girl one of those pieces is Mary, the mother of Jesus. Yes my friends, there’s just something about Mary!

Growing up in a Catholic School, we girls were taught to emulate Mary because of her obedience. She was portrayed to us as meek and mild, well behaved and always eager to please. At Christmas pageants and May Day celebrations, it was only the best behaved girls who got to be Mary. Unfortunately, because I had a penchant for talking in class, I was never picked to be Mary. Alas, I was either part of the chorus of angels in the background or a lowly animal in the manger scene. However, I never lost my devotion to Mary. For whatever reason, I was drawn to her. When ever I looked at her I felt peaceful inside. I was drawn into her willingness to serve God, drawn into her gentleness, drawn into her calm appearance.

Fast forward to adulthood. As much as I loved the Catholic Church there were certain things that I could not abide by such as only allowing men to serve God as ordained priests and the supremacy of the Pope in Rome. As much as I loved the liturgy of the Catholic Church I knew that many parts of it were not a good fit for me and so I left the church of my childhood to join the United Church of Christ, whose structure and theology I found more fitting to how I viewed God’s work in the world. And yet, there were certain things about the Catholic Church I could not let go of…one of those being my devotion to Mary.

You see I’ve learned through the years that Mary was much more than the meek and mild Saint of my childhood. On the contrary, Mary was strong willed and independent, she was not afraid to share her opinions when the situation called for it. We remember that it was Mary who suggested to Jesus that he change water into wine at the wedding of Cana. During the time of Jesus’ trial and execution, Mary was willing to be by her son’s side even though it was dangerous for women to be in the streets during those times. As a matter of fact, when most of Jesus’ disciples had run away at his crucifixion, it was Mary his mother, and other women that stood by the cross to be with him as he drew his last breath.

Mary was not afraid to ask questions. At the annunciation, when the angel Gabriel told her that she would conceive, she immediately asked, “How can this be…for I am a virgin?” Now some would believe that conceiving Jesus was something that was forced upon Mary, but really at the annunciation, God was giving Mary a choice. Sure nay sayers think, “How could anyone refuse a direct request from God?” However the scriptures are full of stories of people refusing requests from God. Some did meet a bad end however God still gave them a choice. For Mary her “yes” to God came when she heard the angel Gabriel say that her cousin Elizabeth had conceived a child in her old age and that nothing, absolutely nothing is impossible with God. Why Mary was so overcome she couldn’t help but say yes because her heart turned and she knew that she with God, would bring to humanity the long awaited Messiah. She knelt before the angel and with great faith said, “Behold I am a handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” Her life as we know it had begun.

Mary had everything going against her when she said yes to God. She was young, unmarried and poor. Her being pregnant outside of wedlock would cause her scandal and pain. She was at risk of losing everything she had, her betrothed Joseph, her standing in her community and her place in her family. And yet she had enough faith to say yes to God’s call.

Yes, we know that Jesus is the embodiment of God where God poured Godself into human form so as to know intimately our lot on earth, however, this meant that God had to begin this journey in the form of a baby in order to be one of us. God became a being so utterly dependant upon its parents that if it were left to its own devices it would surely not survive. Mary and Joseph, but most especially Mary was whom Jesus depended on for his daily needs. She fed him from her own breast, she kept him warm in swaddling clothes that she found in the manger and she comforted him in her own arms whenever he cried. She cared for him into his adulthood and even after his death, as we’ve seen portrayed in the Pieta, an artistic rendition of Mary holding Jesus after he is taken down from the cross. It takes a pretty gutsy woman to raise into adulthood the child “destined for the falling and raising of many in Israel.” (Luke 2: 33) knowing that one day a sword would pierce her own soul as she witnessed these things.

Shortly after Mary found out that she was pregnant with Jesus, she very quickly left for her cousin Elizabeth’s home in a Judean town in the hill country. The scripture doesn’t tell us why Mary traveled the 80 or so miles to see Elizabeth, but I imagine that she as overwhelmed and that she needed support from an older woman in order to prepare herself for the daunting responsibility of being Jesus’ mother.

The scene we read from Luke’s gospel is quite dramatic. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s voice, her baby, John the Baptist, stirred in her womb and she exclaimed to this poor, unwed, pregnant girl, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.” Without Mary even telling her, Elizabeth knew that Mary was carrying the son of God. Elizabeth blesses Mary for believing in the word of God, “And blessed is she who believed there would be fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.”

Upon hearing Elizabeth’s blessings Mary was so overcome with joy that she breaks out into song, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my savior for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant” (vv 46-48) She praises God for looking to her even though she had everything going against her because she was young, unmarried and poor. “His mercy is for those who fear him, from generation to generation,” (v. 50) she sings, going on to predict how God was going to turn the world upside down—scattering the proud, brining down the powerful, lifting up the lowly and feeding the hungry (vv. 50-53). Some note that Mary knew that God would be reversing everything: “who’s in, who’s out; who’s up, who’s down. Who the winners are; who the losers are. Mary knows that up until that moment the world has gotten things pretty wrong and that God will set things right. But who would listen to her, an unimportant peasant girl of ill repute. Who would listen to her son who would preach, “Blessed are the poor, blessed are the hungry, blessed are the meek.” And just where did her son get his material. Could it have been from his mom? Did he learn from her that God has no intention of tolerating injustice and greed in this world? Did she teach him that it angers God when people are selfish or violent, when rich people watch poor people go hungry and do nothing, when the powerful push around the weak because they can get away with it.”[i] Mary knew that God’s great desire for the world was for all to live in the spirit of Shalom, where all of God’s creation would have what is needed to be whole, well and prosperous.

Some note that Mary was so sure that God will do what God has promised that as she sang her song, she used the past tense as a way of expressing her confidence and certainty of God’s work in the world.[ii]
“He has shown strength with his arm” (v. 51)
“He has brought down the powerful” (v. 52)
“He has filled the hungry with good things” (v. 53)
“He has helped his servant Israel.” (v. 54)

Yes, my sisters and brothers and Christ, there is something about Mary. There is something about the unique way she saw the good news of God’s love and grace. There is something about the way she proclaimed a new world order centered upon her son our Savior Jesus. There is something about her faithfulness, her courageous, her obedience to fulfilling God’s call, her willingness to say, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”

May it be so. Amen.

[i] John Ortberg, “Living by the Word: Sunday, December 20 Luke 1: 39-45 (46-55)” Christian Century, 15 December 2009, 20.
[ii] Fred B. Craddock Luke. Interpretation, a Bible commentary for teaching and preaching. (Louisville, Ky: John Knox Press, 1990.), 30.