In 2008 I gave an Advent sermon series on Mary, the mother of Jesus. I think they're worth posting here, as they re-imagine Mary in some non-traditional ways. Here's Part 1. Parts 2 and 3 appear immediately below in this blog.
Ave Maria, Part 1
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
November 30, 2008
November 30, 2008
Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.
One of the things that strikes many of us who are life-long Protestants as odd and, frankly, unattractive about both the Roman Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox versions of Christianity is their devotion to the Virgin Mary. They call it “Mariology.” They say they “venerate” Mary, they don’t worship her; but to many of us it sure looks a lot like Mariolatry, that is, it looks like they worship her as God when they should be worshipping Jesus Christ and the God we know in and through Jesus Christ. Now, I certainly don’t want to turn us into a bunch of Mary worshippers. Far from it. I do think, however, that we Protestants are in some ways spiritually impoverished by our total rejection of Mary as a figure of the faith. I think that it is appropriate for us to ask: Are there important things that we can learn from the Biblical accounts of Mary? I believe that it is appropriate in this Advent season that begins today for us to ask in particular whether there are important things that we can take from the stories about Mary in the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ birth. There aren’t very many of those stories. Only Matthew and Luke have any stories about Jesus’ birth at all, and those Gospel accounts contain only a few passages that deal with Mary. Yet Christianity is so spiritually impoverished by its one-sided maleness that I think it will do us good during Advent this year to take a look at those few passages, to look to see what the woman Mary of Nazareth has to say to us. So in my three Advent sermons this year—three not four because one of the Sundays will be devoted to our children’s Christmas play—I will consider Mary. Today we begin with the two Gospel accounts of what the Christian tradition calls “the Annunciation,” the announcement by an angel from God that Mary will bear a child who is to be the Son of God.
We heard those two passages in our Scripture readings this morning. In the first of them, the one from Matthew, Mary is mentioned briefly, and only once. The striking thing about this passage is that although it mentions Mary, it really isn’t about Mary at all. It is about Joseph. The only thing Matthew says about Mary is that “she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit.” Matthew then switches his attention immediately from Mary to Joseph and the problem his miraculously pregnant fiancée created for him. Matthew says he was going to send her away, presumably because at first he thought she had gotten pregnant through an act of infidelity with another man, but then comes what amounts to the Annunciation in Matthew’s account. Here, however, the Annunciation, the heavenly announcement that Mary would bear a divine child, comes not to Mary but to Joseph. Here it is not Mary but Joseph who does as the Lord asks when he decides to marry Mary after all. In Matthew’s version of the story, Mary is very nearly absent. She has no voice. She is not consulted. She is given no choice. Matthew’s Mary has nothing to teach us because she is invisible. Matthew’s version of the Annunciation is a pure reflection of the sexism, the patriarchy and the male-centeredness, of both the Jewish culture and the Greek culture of the first century CE.
Compare that sexist non-image of Mary to the Mary we see in Luke’s story of the Annunciation. In Matthew Mary is invisible. In Luke she is the chief character in the story. Here the archangel Gabriel comes not to Joseph but to Mary, and he comes before Jesus’ miraculous conception, not after it as in Matthew. As Luke tells the story, Gabriel’s words to Mary sound like a declaration, “And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son.” Yet when we read the whole story it becomes clear that Gabriel is making a request to Mary, or perhaps better, an offer to Mary, not issuing a command to her. We know that because Luke ends his Annunciation story with Mary giving her consent: “Then Mary said, ‘Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.’” Mary’s consent wouldn’t be required if Gabriel’s’ words were a command rather than a request.
What a contrast to Matthew’s silent, invisible Mary! Right from the beginning we see that Mary is not a passive object as in Matthew but an active character in the story. When Gabriel greets her she has a very human reaction. She was “much perplexed and pondered what sort of greeting this might be.” She doesn’t run to ask Joseph about it. This Mary does her own thinking and her own discerning. This Mary has moral autonomy in her own right. She makes her own decisions. She has the autonomy, the freedom, to say no even to God. She asks questions: “How can this be?” And in the end she says yes, let it be with me as you say. This Mary is woman as fully equal, fully autonomous human being. Thanks be to God!
And that yes of Mary’s is very interesting. The Christian tradition has always used it to portray Mary as meek and mild, faithful and obedient, submissive even to the will of God—and the Christian tradition has, until very recently, seen God almost exclusively as male. So Mary becomes a symbol of the submission of women to men. To me, however, Mary’s yes to Gabriel’s proposal is at least ambiguous. The traditional understanding of it as indicating a meek and obedient spirit is certainly one way to read it. Interpreted this way Mary becomes a model of faithful obedience and compliance. But isn’t there another way to look at Mary’s yes? Consider this: Gabriel has just laid on her a whole lot of information about who this child she is being asked to bear would be. He will be great, the Son of the Most High, the ruler over Israel forever. He will be holy, and he will be called the Son of God. As far as I know the Christian tradition has never seen Mary this way, but isn’t it possible that Mary thought: Wow! If this child is going to be all that, what an opportunity for me! I would really be somebody if I was the mother of someone like that! Sure, I’ll face some ridicule and scorn as an unwed mother, but what a trade off! I’m all over this! Let’s do it!
Now, that view of Mary is so different from how we’ve been taught to see her that it may be a bit hard to take. Fair enough, but the point remains. Even without that radical interpretation, in Luke’s story of the Annunciation we have a picture of a woman that was absolutely revolutionary for the time and place in and for which it was written. In his Mary Luke gives us a picture of liberated womanhood. In Luke’s Mary we see woman in her full, equal, God-given personhood. She stands in sharp contrast to Matthew’s invisible Mary, to whom something profound has happened but in which she has no voice. Luke’s Mary throws down the gauntlet to the sexism of Luke’s day, and of ours, and says I am a person, a fully equal person capable of thought and insight, fully able to do my own discernment and make my own decisions.
And so it is especially ironic and unfortunate that the Christian tradition has turned her into gentle Mary meek and mild, into the model of woman subordinate to man whose only role is to consent. In its Catholic version Christianity has further deprived her of her full humanity by making her “ever virgin,” saying that she remained a virgin throughout her life, thereby denying the God-given goodness of female sexuality. Our tradition has made her a model of what many dominant men want women to be—compliant, obedient, and non-threatening.
Today I ask you to see her differently. I ask you to see her as woman liberated, self-confident, self-assertive, and self-sufficient. Capable of her own moral decision making. That is woman as God created women to be. That Mary, the Mary of Luke’s Annunciation story freed from its patriarchal interpretation, is a Mary worthy of her son, worthy of her traditional title of Mother of God, and worthy of the God who created her. That is a Mary we can all admire and learn from. Amen.
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