Saying “Yes” to God Luke 1:26-38, 46-55

What have you done to me? What have you made of me? I cannot find myself in the (one) you want me to be..... Haloed, alone.....marble and stone: Safe, Gentle, Holy Mary.

My sisters, look at me! Don’t turn in pain from me. Your lives and mine are one in rage and agony..... Silenced, denied or sanctified..... Safe, Gentle, Holy Mary.

These lines, from the anonymous poem “Mary’s Song”, capture the dilemma that many of us experience when we reflect on the story of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Who is this woman, really, and how important is she to our understanding of Jesus and the Gospels and our own spirituality? In the Roman Catholic tradition, of course, Mary has been highly exalted; called “Mother of God”, “Queen of Heaven and Earth”, “Madonna”, “Mediatrix” and “The Blessed Virgin Mary”. At the same time, she has been tamed and domesticated as a passive, obedient “yes-woman”, a humble maiden, sugar-sweet and fragile. “Haloed, alone.....marble and stone: Safe, Gentle, Holy Mary”. In the Protestant tradition, on the other hand, we basically ignore Mary. She is acknowledged only at Christmas-time, and then usually in a Sunday School pageant, a young girl dressed in her mother’s blue bathrobe, a white towel wrapped around her head, speeding down the aisle like a house on fire toward the stable where she gives birth to a rubber doll with curly blond hair and blue eyes that close when she lies down! “Silenced, denied or sanctified.....Safe, Gentle, Holy Mary”. But the truth is that neither of these images of Mary is that helpful to many of us today. o Putting her on a pedestal – [in marble and stone] - has distanced Mary from many of us, and made her basically irrelevant. o Ignoring her – [or taming and domesticating her] - we miss the opportunity of having a model of personhood who is wise and faithful and strong. Both images are disempowering, in different ways. Mary is either too clean, too high and too holy.....or she is too sweet, too meek and too passive. Either way, she is outside the realm of our everyday, concrete experience. And so the invitation I extend to you today is to explore with me some new ways of thinking about Mary, ways of redeeming this “silenced, denied, sanctified, safe, gentle, holy Mary”, so that she speaks constructively and positively to people of faith at Richmond Hill United Church today. In order to do that, it’s necessary for us to deconstruct these old images of Mary as either too holy or too wimpy - and to reconstruct new images that speak to our own time and experience and condition as people of faith living in hope and expectation in Advent 2014. Feminist Korean theologian Chung Hyun Kyung, in her book “Struggle to be the Sun Again”, identifies 4 images or ways of thinking about Mary: Mary as Virgin, Mary as Mother, Mary as Sister, and Mary as Disciple.

Now, I know that the whole “virgin thing” has been a huge stumbling block for many people. But that’s because we’re such literal thinkers, not really open to “poetry” and “metaphor”. We now know that Jesus’ so-called “virgin birth” is not unique to Jesus at all. Many spiritual leaders are said to have been fathered by gods and born to virgins. It’s not something to be taken literally, but is, rather, a common literary device in religious mythology of all kinds. It’s a way of saying: “This is an important birth! Heads up! Pay attention!” It was Tom Harpur, I think, in his book “The Pagan Christ” who said that, in religious mythology, “virgin births are a dime a dozen”. Chung Hyun Kyung would also say that Mary’s virginity represents her identity as a self- defining, independent, autonomous person. It’s an active symbol of resistance against the established order. Mary is a complete human being in her own right; she defines her own life by her own experience and her own faith in God. 1 Mary as Mother enables God to be born through her own body, and that starts with her saying “yes” to God. And here’s the crux - Mary’s saying “yes” to God was not mere obedience and submission, but a conscious choice on her part. It was an outrageous thing to ask: “You will conceive and bear a child, whose name you shall call Jesus.....the Child of the Most High God”. The proposition was not merely unusual, but unbelievable. Almost inconceivable. And Mary said “yes”! There was a price to pay for her choice: social ostracism, the probability of losing Joseph, and the distinct possibility of being stoned to death for adultery. Mary was no “puppet”. She was a wise, strong woman, a partner with God in creating a new world order. Her choice was not only a personal choice to give birth to a baby. It was also a political choice - to give birth to a new humanity and a new community of wholeness and justice. The image of Mary as Sister has its roots in Mary’s solidarity with 2 other strong women of faith. Elizabeth. Elizabeth was a relative of Mary. Elizabeth was also pregnant. She was a very old woman, way too old to be having a baby. Mary seeks shelter in Elizabeth’s house where they comforted and supported one another in their unusual (to say the least!) and similar circumstances. And there was Hannah, Mary’s foremother who was the mother of the prophet Samuel. When Mary overcomes her shock and her fear, she finds her voice and she regains the power to tell the truth. She sings a song of revolution, which we’ve come to know as “The Magnificat”. She expresses her yearning for the liberation of the oppressed by recalling and echoing the words of Hannah, another strong woman of Israel:

“God has scattered the proud..... has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted those of low degree; God has filled the hungry with good things, and has sent the rich empty away”.

The Magnificat is an amazing piece of literature – [and another whole sermon!] – but I want to say just 3 things about it this morning, because it’s so important in understanding the Gospel mandate. One. The Magnificat is a revolutionary document; there’s no way around that. It talks about a new world order, a different way of living. Any lingering notion of “gentle Mary meek and mild” is blown out of the water by these words. Two. The revolution of which Mary sings is not about “personal salvation”. It’s about the salvation – [the health, the healing, the well-being and wholeness] – of the whole world. And three. Because of the first 2, one can only conclude that this is a very political statement. It’s not about “charity”; it’s not about the rich giving alms to the poor. It’s about justice; it’s about building a just society; it’s about addressing systemic, root causes of poverty, inequality and oppression. It reminds me of the words of Latin American Archbishop Dom Helder Camara of Brazil, who once said: “When I give food to the poor, the call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a Communist”. And lest we feel “holier-than-thou” about this, remember that this year - 2014, in this country - Canada, [according to the Globe and Mail and other media outlets] Revenue Canada informed the international development group Oxfam that “alleviating” poverty is an acceptable goal for a charity, but “preventing” poverty is not. On the contrary, it seems pretty clear to me that we are called – [as individual Christians and also as faith communities] – not only to alleviate poverty and suffering, but to prevent it by working for the Kingdom of God here and now.

2 Mary as Disciple is probably less familiar territory for most of us than Mary as Virgin, Sister and Mother. Mary’s life – [the little we know of it] - was one of faithful action. After Jesus’ birth, we are told “she remembered all these things and thought deeply about them”. At the Wedding Feast in Cana, where Jesus performed his first miracle, it was Mary (not Jesus) who was sensitive to the need around her and who took action to address it. And after the resurrection, and before Pentecost, Mary is listed among those gathered in prayer. Mary’s strength as a disciple lies in her receptive and unbeatable spirit, which enables her to be sensitive to the ways of God and to the needs of others.

Of course, Mary’s story is more than her story alone. It’s our story as well. Mary is more than an “historical person”. She personifies the soul of each believer as we experience the presence of God and say “yes” to that presence, not always knowing where it will lead. Mary’s experience of God – [her relationship with the Divine] - can be seen as a paradigm for all of us seeking to meet and know and respond to God. As God calls Mary to give birth to the Christ-child, God also calls us to “give birth” to the “holy” in our lives. Like Mary, God calls us to be partners, co-creators in bringing Christ – [whatever that means to us] – into the world. Advent reminds us that we are a “pregnant people”, for we are called to conceive and to give birth – to dreams, to hopes, to relationships, and to new ways of living that are just, life-giving and whole. What is asked of us is a thoughtful, considered response that “counts the cost” of saying “yes” to God, for the cost is sometimes high, requiring us to step outside societal boundaries, opening ourselves to social ostracism, to political threat and even the possibility of pain, because the gospel – at its core – is counter-cultural and subversive.

At Christmas, we celebrate. We celebrate the fact that 2000 years ago Mary said “yes” to God. And we celebrate the fact that we have said “yes” to God in our baptism.....yes, God lives with humankind.....yes, we are loved by God.....yes, we are committed to hope and peace and justice.....yes, God calls us to work and to pray for all those things. It makes an incredible difference in history that Mary said “yes”. And it can make an incredible difference in this world right now for us to say “yes”. Because when we do, the story comes true over and over again. Thanks be to God.

Resources: “Struggle to be the Sun Again: Introducing Asian Women’s Theology”, by Chung Hyun Kyung

Warren McDougall Richmond Hill United Church Advent 4 - Dec. 21, 2014

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