Library
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Feisty Mary and Her Upsetting Song
By Rev. Dr. Harvey C. Martz
Luke 1:26-38; 46-55
26 In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, 27 to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin's name was Mary. 28 And he came to her and said, "Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you." 29 But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. 30 The angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. 31 And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. 32 He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. 33 He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end." 34 Mary said to the angel, "How can this be, since I am a virgin?" 35 The angel said to her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. 36 And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. 37 For nothing will be impossible with God." 38 Then Mary said, "Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word." Then the angel departed from her.
46 And Mary said, "My soul magnifies the Lord, 47 and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, 48 for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; 49 for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name. 50 His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. 51 He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. 52 He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; 53 he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. 54 He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, 55 according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever."****
It would be difficult to measure the influence of the Mother of Jesus on the influence of the Christian movement since these verses were written 1900 years ago. Some of the first churches ever built are named after Mary and you can think of how many churches you know now that are named after Mary. Thousands of paintings and sculptures in the history of Christian art depict Mary—many of them depict this very scene of the angel making his announcement to her.
We saw some of these paintings two weeks ago when we saw the portrayals of the holy family almost always feature Joseph in the background and Mary in the foreground. And probably the most famous of Michelangelo’s sculptures shows Mary holding the crucified Jesus and what is striking to many is that he portrays her as very young—very close to the same age she would have been when she learned she was about to be pregnant.
In some ways Mary has become the feminine face of God for millions who have seen God as remote and inaccessible and even unfriendly. Some have felt Mary has been available for prayer when some have felt distant from God.
Much of the tradition about Mary is not in the Bible. The notion that she was a perpetual virgin is not supported by the statement in the gospels that she and Joseph had other children. The notion she herself was conceived without the involvement of original sin—the doctrine of her immaculate conception—is not in the Bible but is a very late pronouncement in the history of Christian thought.
Most of us would be surprised at how little discussion there is in the Bible about Mary compared to how she has been honored in the tradition of the church. She is prominent in the birth stories—of Luke more than Matthew’s stories. I like what Luke tells us about her after the shepherds have come and gone from the manger—she pondered all this in her heart—she reflected and thought and pondered.
There are other significant references later in the gospels to Mary, one of course, when she is present at Jesus’ crucifixion and burial. One is when she is at a wedding with Jesus and his friends. The host runs out of wine and Mary encourages Jesus to do something about that and he does.
The other gospel reference is puzzling when we think about the Mary of the birth stories and the Mary we heard about last week who took the child to the temple forty days after the birth and was told by old Simeon that this child would be the reason for the destruction and the revival of many in Israel and that he would be opposed and rejected.
Mark’s gospel tells us that when Jesus had begun his itinerant ministry that at one point Jesus was in his headquarters town of Capernaum and was teaching the crowd. His family had heard that he was crazy and they came to take him back to Nazareth. They stood outside the house where he was and where the crowd had gathered. Someone told Jesus that his mother and his brothers and his sisters were outside. What did he say? “Who are my mother and my brothers?” He points to those gathered around him and says, “Here are my mother and my brothers. Whoever does what God asks us to is my brother and sister and mother.”
Those are the significant references to Mary in the Bible and they are fairly few compared to how she has been sainted and revered in the tradition of the Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches.
And there are some unusual occurrences over the years involving appearances that people interpret as Mary—St. Mary appearing on a frying tortilla; an appearance of what people thought was Mary on a plate glass window on an office building in Clearwater, Florida in December of 1996; a water stain sixty feet high which was seen by 400,000 people by the end of the Christmas season that year and eventually destroyed by a disturbed person with a slingshot.
What I get from all of this is that we have lost the humanity of Mary from the gospel stories just as most people have lost the humanity of Joseph and of Jesus himself, and we need to recover that humanity and that humility because there is so much of value for us when we connect, not with the legends but with their humanity.
Mary was probably 14 or 15 years old when she became pregnant out of wedlock with the savior who would later be executed by the government as a traitor. She encountered an angel who gave here the news of her pregnancy. The story does not tell us where she was when the angel came. Perhaps she was at the well in Nazareth—that is still the only well in town—where some of us have been in visiting Israel and where we will go back to in the next trip.
She is surprised of course by the news from the angle Gabriel and she does something very assertive—she engages the angel in debate or dialogue: “What are you talking about? How can this be possible?” She has not been with a man.
The angel explains that this child will be called the Son of God. By the way, if you were not with us a couple of weeks ago for the sermon on Joseph that looked at the two different traditions about Jesus-that his conception was virginal AND that he was a descendant of David by his father Joseph—pick up a copy and look it over.
The next thing in Luke’s story has become a source of inspiration for millions. Paul McCartney wrote a song based on Mary’s words at the end of the story: “Let it be. Let it be with me according to what you have said. I am a servant of the Lord.”
The first thing we can learn from Mary is that after she has raised her questions of the angel, she offers herself as a servant of the Lord and EVEN THOUGH THIS NEWS WILL MEAN A CHANGE IN HER PLANS AND AN INTERRUPTION IN HER LIFE, she says she is up for it and she says yes.
We don’t know how long the time period was between when the angel explained it all to her and the time when she said yes. This young woman was a thinker, a ponderer. She pondered things in her heart. I wonder if Luke left out a line; I wonder if she didn’t say to the angel, “Why don’t you go over and sit down by the well and let me think and pray and reflect about all this?” That is my picture, and if I were drawing a scene of the annunciation, my picture would have Mary thinking and praying and the angel Gabriel cooling his heels for a while over in the corner.
Isn’t that how you deal with interruptions and changes in plans and new directions in your life—things being thrown at you that you did not anticipate. Don’t you need some time to reflect and ponder and pray about them for a little while?? Some of us did that in learning of our own pregnancy. That was our response as a couple to learning we would be first time parents sooner than we planned. We needed some time to think and to process that life changing news!
How do you and I deal with the interruptions and the changes that are not part of your plans—a sudden move, a transfer or dislocation, even a difficult diagnosis?
Let me clarify—the interruptions in our lives may or not come from God. I am not suggesting that illness or suffering or death or disasters are sent from God. That is not our belief system as Methodists though it is a common belief all around us—that anything that happens must be God’s will. That is NOT our belief not was it the belief of Jesus who saw a place for random events and for accidents.
What I do believe is that, as the hymn says, in any change “God faithful will remain” and that God can bring something good out of any change in life. That is VERY different from saying that God sends or causes all those changes or interruptions.
Judy and I experienced an unforeseen pregnancy and then, afterward, we dealt with what it means to be parents of a person with special needs.
Judy was talking with a young person from our congregation this week about this young woman’s teaching career (I have Judy’s permission to tell you this) and Judy said that she felt called to be a teacher for the first fifteen years of her professional life and Judy was a very good teacher of High School literature. Then Judy said, she felt her calling change and she responded to a call to be a leader in the disability community in our country and really internationally as well—to offer more possibilities and more choices for persons with disabilities.
She has done that well also and she has seen it as a calling.
What do you feel is your calling? The story of Mary is about a calling, a vocation (from the Latin word for “calling”). What do you feel called to? Where do you have the opportunity to say to God, as Mary did, “I will be a servant of yours. Let it be with me just as you have said.”
Let me put it a bit differently: I had a wonderful conversation this week with an active church member and leader who was talking about his journey as a follower of Christ and the changes he has seen in himself. He said he used to be concerned more about himself. He said now he starts his day with this prayer—“Lord, how can I use the talents and gifts you have blessed me with to make a difference—to be a servant?”
Mary says, I am a servant of the Lord. Let it be just as you have said. In January we will be sending prayer cards to each household in our church to ask for prayers as we look to expand our building over the next couple of years. The prayer card will be very simple with a prayer we have used often in our life together:
Lord what do you want to do through me?
It is a great prayer. It is one I commend to you from my own prayer life. It is a servant leader prayer. It is a paraphrase of the prayer of Mary. It is the attitude of Mary, the mother of Jesus. She could have said, Well, that doesn’t exactly fit into the plans that Joseph and I were making.
What she did say was—if this is what God wants to do through me, then I am a servant. I will fulfill my calling as a servant.
I think that is what God hopes we will say when there are significant opportunities for us.
The last thing to look at is this incredible song Mary sings. We have called it the Magnificat from the first line-my soul magnifies or praises the Lord. It is a scandalous song. It is a revolutionary song. She is saying that in the birth of this child she will carry in her body that the whole world will be turned upside down.
She is right because the teaching and the life style that Jesus asks us for is radically different from the “ME FIRST” life style of our world, the life of ego and power and prestige and status and greed.
What did you hear from her song?
God is saving us in the birth of Jesus. God is saving us from ourselves and from the worst in ourselves. God is in the words of Lincoln, helping empower “the better angels of our nature” God is saving us from climbing the “ladder of success” and discovering too late we have leaned our ladder against the wrong wall.
God is our savior, Mary says. And then she says something troubling to the powers that be. She says in Christ, God has begun to turn everything upside down.
Harry Emerson Fosdick, NYC preacher at Riverside Church in the early twentieth century, was shopping in downtown Manhattan at Christmas time and as he was entering a store, he collided with a woman rushing out of the store with armloads of packages. He helped her up and help gather her packages as she said, “I don’t like Christmas—it just turns everything upside down.” Fosdick said, “That madam is just what it is supposed to do.”
That is what Mary tells us in her song. Her song turns things upside down. Her song is good news for the forgotten and the vulnerable. Her song is a threat to the smug and arrogant who have governed without a thought for the poor. Her song is good news for the hungry and bad news for the selfish and greedy. Her song is bad news for the complacent and good news for the seekers and learners. Her song is upsetting if we come to church and just want to be proud and self absorbed. Her song is about a revolution that is coming, a revolution of the heart.
I love the rephrasing of Mary’s song that is on the front of your bulletin, the poem by Thomas John Carlisle:
#### NOEL
No quiet child
Whose cradle gently sways
promising peaceful dreams
for all who love him.
He rocks the stable with magnificats.
He scatters the proud
He helps the lowly rise
His sword cuts through
The adamants of deceit
His cry unsettles
the victimizers
and the crucifiers
and all the extortionate
predators of his kin.
And Herod will not be
the only one to try
and stop his mouth.
–Thomas John Carlisle
Mary’s song makes her one of my heroes just as her faith and her humanity makes her one of my heroes.
I hope we can see her humanity and the humanity of Joseph and the humanity of Jesus because it is in that humanity that we can also see God at work. We ask each other in meetings in our congregation: where do you see God? Where have you felt close to God? The answers are reliable. People say that have seen God and felt close to God at times of death. We know that at the end of life we are on holy ground.
And people say they have felt close to God and seen the mystery of God in birth of children and grandchildren. People say they see God and feel close to God in the mountains or on the ski slopes. Others say they have felt close to God in church in the music or in the time of silence.
And millions over the centuries have read these birth stories from Luke and Matthew about a young couple, a vulnerable couple, working class who are on an involuntary journey and have to give birth to their first born son and have as a bed for him only a feeding trough.
And in the quietness of that story of that young and vulnerable couple, we have said, we can see God. We see the incarnation—God in the flesh, God in this world—not far off in some remote and distant heaven but God incarnate, God with us.
How silently, how silently the wondrous gift is given
So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of his heaven
No ear may hear his coming but in this world of sin
Where humble souls receive him still, the dear Christ enters in.