How do you solve a problem like Maria?

 

SERMON PREACHED AT St JOHN’S, EAST BENTLEIGH

FEAST OF MARY, MOTHER OF OUR LORD

Sunday, August 14^th, 1988

 

Mary. Known paradoxically to theology as Mother of God, she and the titles given to her have caused more confusion and misunderstanding, more bitterness and the hurling of insults, than almost any other figure in Christian history.

Who is she, this child bride who has little less than divided Christendom? Loved mother or rejected mother? Saint or sinner? Mother of God, mother of Christ, or mother of Jesus? Was she translated into heaven without first dying? Who is this woman who could have been no more than a teen when she was catapulted onto the stage of human history and on to the forefront of literary and religious imagination?

Who is Mary, and what does she matter? Protestant theology has all but done away with her. She becomes an embarrassing distraction to the male-dominated imagery of Protestant thought. And equally male-dominated Catholic theology found another way to silence her, by exhorting her to the heights of Mediatrix and Queen of Heaven, Removing her from normal human experience. In so doing the thinkers of the West removed Christ even further from humanity.

Anglicanism has never been clear what to do with Mary. Sandwiched between Catholics and Protestants, we have relegated her to the too-hard basket, giving her only passing mention even in our formative Thirty-nine Articles.

There is a story of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, well known for his mystical devotion to Mary, that he was one day on his knees in church, praying to a statue of Our Lady. The miracle occurred, and the lips of the statue began to move, as if to speak. But before she spoke, Bernard hushed her. “Shhh,” he said. “Women must remain silent in church.” The story may be apocryphal, but it signifies a great deal. We have exalted Mary, but neglected the feminine within our own ranks.

So who is this woman that we have so neglected? In early Christianity she was seen as the new Eve, the obedient woman who, by her obedience made-up for the disobedience of the first Eve. By the fifth century it was being taught that this mother of the saviour did not die, but was translated or “assumed” bodily into the heavenly realm. By the time of the mediaeval church, as Christ came to be seen as stern and distant, Mary came to take his place as the subject of popular devotion. Timid believers, and especially women, began to pray to Mary, fearful that the stern male Christ-judge would reject their prayers and condemn them to torment. She became, then, the Mediatrix, the mediator between humanity and Christ in the same way that Christ the Son is the mediator between humankind and the Father. Christ had become too holy, too superhuman to be approached. 

Later still Mary became the Queen of Heaven, sitting stiffly on the throne of heaven, herself now too holy to be approached, sitting with the child Jesus, all but insignificant, perched demurely upon her knee.

Such was the worst of Marian theology. Many Protestants still believe this to be the teaching of the Catholic Church today. Many Protestants are still mistakenly fighting the theological battles of five hundred years ago.

Yet reflection on the person of Mary offers the church so much that is of value. She was in any case an enigma even to the very earliest Christian writers. For Luke, from whose gospel we read this morning, she is the archetypal believer in Christ, the first Christian. For Matthew and Mark she is one of the old order, part of the unbelieving family of Israel. For Luke, the angels address her:

Rejoice, so highly favoured … you have won God’s favour.

 

Matthew and Mark record Jesus turning to a messenger sent by Mary and retorting,

Who are my mother and my brothers?

 

Luke knows of no such question, allowing only the theological statement,

My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.

 

John makes no reference to the coming of the angels to Mary – in this respect he is similar to Mark. But he does place Mary at the foot of the cross at the time of the crucifixion, something the other writers know nothing about. And yet it is John who records the miracle of the wedding at Cana, when Jesus turns water into wine, but where first he turns and addresses his mother with the harsh words,

Woman, what have you to do with me?

 

So even the gospel writers did not understand how they might weave Mary into their accounts of the life and teachings of Jesus. Mary was an enigma from the first.

Since the early 1960s, however, when the Catholic Church and consequently all of Christianity was turned upside down by the deliberations of the second Vatican Council, much has changed. I offer you some brief modern insights into the person and work of Mary.

In these recent years Mary has become a symbol of what it is to hear and to obey the call of God. She is the original follower of Jesus, as Luke depicts her, the mother who follows the child, who believes in the child and takes to heart the meaning of his life and teachings. She is the woman who bears the God-child in her womb – who reminds us of our responsibility to obey the call of God, to bear and give birth to the God-child, the Christ of the world, and our responsibility to reach out and make available his love to the world.

From Latin America there is emerging a new understanding of Mary. She becomes not only a symbol of the obedient mother of Christ, but also, in her concern for the poor, she becomes a symbol of the oppressed peoples of the world within whom Christ is conceived. The poor of the world become the womb in which dwells the Saviour who

has pulled down the mighty from their thrones and exalted the lowly,

and who

has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.

 

No longer then can Mary  be a mere paragon of womanly virtue, a figure like dear bland Esther Summerson in Dickens’ Bleak House. No longer is she to be ignored as an icon of dedicated motherhood and submissive womanhood, but rather as a far more potent figure. We must see in her, women and men alike, the call to become a home for God, to become a dwelling of Christ. We must see in what little we know of Mary a call to us to take the risk of being ostracized, misunderstood, emotionally scarred in the service of the God-child who we spend a lifetime giving birth to. And we must see in Mary a call to us to make possible the birth of the word which proclaims unflinchingly the greatness of Yahweh, the greatness of the God whose name is holy and whose gospel is the routing of the proud of heart and the exaltation of the lowly.

As a male I can say little more about Mary. It is women who are teaching the church the meaning of the pain of waiting to give birth to the Messiah. It is their obedience to God’s call that is bringing to them misunderstanding and accusations of heresy. Perhaps Mary, too, in her time, was seen as heretical for her faith in the child she bore and in his radical message of justice and love.

I can, however, urge you to look seriously at Mary, and at all that she stands for. I urge you to set aside five hundred years of theological argument and to marvel and muse anew at the miracle of this young, sinful human being who gave birth, at the risk of great pain and isolation, to the Saviour of the World.