Mary
Laura Rademaker
Advent 2023 • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Transcript
It’s that time of year again. Tis the season when Mary pops into our lives again. She’s the most coveted role in the nativity play (or at least a close tie with the Angel Gabriel). She’s on Christmas cards, in Christmas songs – Mary did you know, Mary’s boy child. She’s on display at Belconnen Westfield. In Protestant circles we don’t tend to think much about Mary until suddenly in advent, she’s everywhere.
And we pack her away on boxing day, until she pops up again next year.
But in our reading today, Mary receives an honour and says some things that should make us stop and give her some attention. Mary is called ‘blessed among women.’ – That should give us pause. You see Mary’s more than a nice sentimental character to pop in your nativity scene and then pack up. She’s got something to teach us. She knows some things. And if we want to be blessed like her, it’s worth giving her a little more thought.
So why is Mary so blessed?
Now there are lots of ideas about this.
And I’ll say straight up it’s not that was she’s somehow the perfect mother while also being the perfect virgin. If that’s what it takes to be blessed among women, well it’s asking the impossible. It’s nothing to do with sex – and I’ll talk about the virginity thing.
It’s not that she gave birth to the Messiah, as special as that was – and we’ll get to that later.
Some might suggest that Mary is blessed because she’s so peaceful. That she’s kind of like a Christian zen icon. The Beatles sing a song about Mary that actually quotes today’s passage. You know the one:
‘When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom… let it be.’ Mary’s wisdom is to accept whatever comes your way.
She may as well be singing another song ‘Que sera sera, whatever will be will be.’
Well both are great songs, but I’m sorry Paul McCartney, that’s not the whole quote. When you look at Luke chapter 1, Mary didn’t just say ‘Let it be’. She said
‘let it be with me according to your word’.
You see Mary loved God’s word. She wasn’t a stoic or a zen philosopher. She was a Bible nerd.
Look closely at how Mary is portrayed in Luke’s gospel and you’ll see constant references to the Word of God.
When she first learns the news of her pregnancy Mary says ‘Let it be with me according to your word’
Elizabeth tells her ‘blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her by the Lord’
Later in Luke’s Gospel, a woman in the crowd calls out to Jesus suggesting that Mary is blessed because she gave birth to him. It’s in Luke chapter 11.
While he was saying this, a woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, “Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursed you!”
And what did Jesus say in response?
But he said, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it!”
Mary’s not blessed because of who she gave birth to. She’s not just a comfortable womb and a good breastfeeder. She’s blessed because she hears God’s word and does it.
Now whenever my students at ANU have to submit an assessment they have to send it through plagiarism detection software called Turnitin. Turnitin scans through their work and highlights passages for me, the marker, that are either copied directly from other things, or so similar that it likely to be plagiarised. Then it spits out a percentage deemed to be original work.
So in the reading, after Mary meets with Elizabeth she sings her song. All I can say is lucky this Turnitin software wasn’t available in Mary’s day, because almost all of her song is quoting or referencing the Old Testament.
And of course it’s not a bad thing. This is a song of someone who has meditated deeply on God’s word. Mary’s song echoes Hannah’s song in 1 Samuel – you know Hannah who prayed that she would have a child and God answered her prayer. But she’s also quoting the psalms extensively. She also uses the words of Leah, Jacob’s wife when she sings that generations will call her blessed. She alludes to Deborah when she sings of God scattering the enemies. She echoes the apocryphal Judith when she sings of God lifting up the lowly.
This is the song of someone obsessed with God’s Word. Mary is a total Bible nerd.
That’s why in Christian artworks Mary is often depicted reading. Of course she wouldn’t have had books then, she would have had to go and listen to the scrolls of the Old Testament being read, but she is someone who meditates deeply on God’s Word and uses it to interpret her world.
‘let it be with me according to your word’.
So if we want to be blessed like Mary, the obvious first step is to read the Bible! Read it every day! Let it shape how you see the world.
Now’s time for a confession. I used to be really, really good at reading the Bible every day. I’d read Old Testament, New Testament and a Psalm each morning before coming out for breakfast.
But now I’ve got three small children, and it ain’t happening for me right now! I used to be in a ‘read a bit every day’ pattern, now I’m in a pattern of ‘wolf down a big chunk of scripture when I get the chance and keep chewing it over and have it rattling around in my head.’ That’s partly why I jump at the opportunity to preach, because I get to spend a good month pondering the meaning of a passage of scripture.
What is right for my life stage is podcasts about the Bible. I can listen while I go for a run, while I drive to work, while I do housework. I mean look at Mary – she really does have her hands full. I feel like if she were around today, she’d be right into the podcasts too.
So I’ll take the liberty of recommending two:
- The Bible Project explains the Bible in detail. There’s a Hebrew Bible nerd talking with a writer, explaining the Bible in an intellectually rich, but easy to follow way that brings the Bible to life, always focusing on showing us how the whole Bible points us to Jesus.
- Cradle of Prayer – this is just a podcast with Anglican morning and evening prayer services, including the readings. When life feels frantic or unstable, this one is steadying.
Mary is blessed because she loves God’s word
And because she loves God’s word, she’s blessed because knows God’s plan. She knows what God’s up to.
Let’s zoom into her song.
He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel,
in remembrance of his mercy,
according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
to Abraham and to his descendants forever.”
Mary is not singing, que sera, sera, the future is not ours to see. She’s singing let God’s plan be.
She’s so drenched in God’s word, she knows how to interpret the events around her. They might seem unexpected, but they’re exactly what you would expect if you’d been paying attention to the God of the Old Testament.
This is a God who loves to choose the unexpected and lowly people to bring down the proud.
This is a God who not only loves the poor – he’s on their side, fighting for them.
This is the God who promised that one of Abraham’s descendants would one day bring blessing to the whole world.
God loves to flip our expectations, to choose the poor, the weak, the ignored. So he chose David, the smallest brother, Moses with his speech impediment, Ruth the Moabite widow.
Of course when his messiah came, of course he would be born to a poor, unmarried mother. That’s exactly the kind of thing God does!
When I was listening to the Bible Project podcast they talked about it’s like God turning the world upside down, but they point out that in truth, it’s not that God turns the world upside down, the world is upside down but we’re just so used to this unjust, unequal way of operating where powerful people get honour and weak people get shamed and crushed that we feel like this is ‘normal’. But this is not how things should be! God is turning the world the right way up in Jesus!
Now about the virginity thing. Some people have thought that Mary needed to be a virgin because sex is bad or dirty or that it somehow passes sin to the next generation. So I’ll just say definitively, there’s nothing wrong with sex, and there’s nothing wrong with enjoying it (and if you’re not sure about that, read Song of Songs in the Bible).
It’s also not that her virginity makes Jesus into some kind of demi-God, half human half divine. The mystery of the incarnation is that Jesus is 100% God and 100% human.
It’s not a magic trick. Like some divine party trick. Miracles in the bible are never just a party trick, they’re always rich in symbol and allusion from the Old testament
So, as you might expect, if we’re looking at someone who’s obsessed with the Bible, we need to interpret it according to the Old Testament. And the clue to its meaning is right there. When Mary asks, how’s this going to happen because I’m a virgin, Gabriel points her to Elizabeth, her cousin who was thought to be too old to have children.
Sound familiar? A visiting angel, promising an old couple they’d have a child. You see it’s all happened according to God’s word in the Old testament. This is re-living the story of Abraham and Sarah and the promised child Isaac. God’s promise to Abraham was fulfilled by a miraculous pregnancy.
And of course that wasn’t the only miracle pregnancy. At key parts in God’s story, there are miraculous pregnancies and the promised child plays an important part in moving God’s story forward. Sarah gives birth to Isaac, Rachel has Joseph and Benjamin, Hannah prays and gives birth to the prophet Samuel. And of course, last in a long line of infertile women becoming pregnant, Elizabeth gave birth to the last prophet under the Old Covenant, John the Baptist.
So when the angel visits a virgin and tells her she’s going to have a baby, this is the next baby in a long line of God being faithful to Abraham’s descendants. But God is also doing something brand new. This woman isn’t simply too old for a baby. She’s a virgin. This is a promised child who will do something radically new - who opens a way for everyone whether they’re a biological descendant of Abraham or not - to be born of the holy spirit.
A couple of years ago someone was spreading rumours about me, saying things that weren’t true. When you’re the subject of rumours, it sends you slightly mad. You begin to wonder if you’re imagining things, or getting paranoid. Is everyone talking about me? I distinctly remember being at the pedestrian crossing and passing someone who I knew walking my way. I waved and said hi as we passed, and instead of greeting me, this person averted their eyes and turned their face away. Am I being shunned? Does this person actually believe the rumours? Or am I just being paranoid. Maybe they just had the sun in their eyes. You can never know. In my case, six months later or so, when the truth became a bit more obvious, the person apologised. But I’m sure I’m not the only person in the room who knows what it’s like to be shamed and judged.
Now Mary lived in a small town. And you can imagine how the gossip went. She would overhear people saying ‘you know her baby isn’t Joseph’s. She told her husband it was a miracle. Some people say he’s so stupid he believed her, but I think he just didn’t have the guts to kick her out.’
And Mary didn’t get her vindication in her lifetime. When she said ‘let it be’ to the angel, she signed up to a lifetime of smalltown gossip, being the butt of the joke, the subject of innuendo. It didn’t even end there. It’s now 2000 years later, and still people are talking about how she made up the miracle to cover up the pregnancy.
Mary’s smart enough to know this. But she didn’t see her life as a mistreated smalltown girl, the victim of gossip and exclusion. She said ‘let it be to me according to your word’ because she understood her life as part of that bigger story of God’s plan.
Phil last week spoke about investing in a reality that isn’t here yet because you know it’s coming. It’s like buying a property on the beach at the central coast decades before the F1 was built knowing that, one day, the road will be straightened out. That’s Mary. So she says let it be – she’ll go through with this pregnancy that exposes her to public shame and ridicule because she knows how God’s story ends and she believes she’s part of it.
And notice that Mary is so confident in God’s plan to turn the world around, that she sings as if it’s already happened.
He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
Mary’s probably not even pregnant yet at this point in the story. King Herod, you know, the one who kills toddlers, is very much still on the throne. Mary, look around you?!
But Mary’s confidence is that although things seem like the world is still broken and unjust, she’s going to live in light of the reality that is coming. That’s what she’s investing in.
And of course her song points us to someone else who was willing to be shamed, humiliated, attacked because he believed that God’s word promised a better reality that was coming. Jesus is our ultimate example of trusting that what the world tells about what’s happening isn’t God’s version of reality. On the cross he looked like a victim and a fool, but that was where he achieved his victory. Jesus is not only our example, but he is the one who actually conquers the powers of evil, not by using power as the world would expect, but by dying for us.
So what about us? It’s 2023 and we’re in a different chapter of God’s story to Mary. We’ve already seen how God has fulfilled his promises through Jesus. But, like Mary, we’re waiting to see the full reality of Jesus’ kingdom.
We all make sense of our lives when we see them as part of a bigger story, and there are lots of bigger stories going around to choose from.
Perhaps you see your life as part of a story of people coming to Australia to make a better life for themselves and their children.
Perhaps you see your life as part of a story of the world getting better and brighter as humanity strives to know more, create more, be more just and create a better world for everyone.
Or maybe you see a story of the world abandoning the traditions and values you grew up with, getting meaner and more foolish.
Or perhaps you understand your life as witnessing an even gloomier story, of human arrogance and greed, that steals Indigenous land, pillages the environment, consumes and destroys until there’s nothing left.
Or maybe it’s some combination of all of these stories. All these stories have some truth to them.
But Jesus invites you to see yourself as living in a better story than any of these.
A story where God has seen the evil and chaos in our world and has promised to turn the world the right way around again. That’s the story Mary saw herself in.
But we’re a little further along in the story. Jesus invites us to see that God has acted definitively, to set the world right by dying and rising for us. We’re invited to be part of his reality by lifting up the lowly and filling the hungry and introducing people to Jesus, even if we don’t see this reality fully come to life just yet.
But just like investing in a house on the central coast before the freeway is built, we’re also invited to live our lives according to a reality we know is coming, but isn’t fully here yet.
Mary was blessed because she loved God’s word
And because she knew God’s word, she knew God’s plan
And because she knew God’s plan, she saw how her life was part of a bigger, better story.
And that gave her the courage to live as if the reality she waited for was already here.
That is the blessed life that we are invited to share.