Mary was Chosen Because She was a Real Woman.
Posted by Priest on August 16, 2009 under Sermons |
Do you remember this nursery rhyme?
Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells, and cockle shells,
And pretty maids all in a row.
Mary remains one of the most controversial characters in the church, despite the fact that Mary is one of the central figures in the New Testament.
Mary, Mary, quite contrary.
Of course, I don’t think God had controversy in mind when He picked a young woman to bear His Son. For God, this choice was not so contrary as we sometimes make it out to be. God had His reasons. And even if we never fully figure out why God chose this young woman, which in the end is totally God’s prerogative, one thing remains clear: It really wasn’t about Mary. Within the Jewish setting of God’s revelation, Mary had one prerequisite to fulfill, and one prerequisite only: She had to be human.
Mary didn’t have to be special, different, better, more holy, or closer to God. She had to be one of us. Despite the fact that some of her veneration gets out of hand at times, Mary is not part of the Godhead. Mary is not God or even a demi-goddess. She was born of a biological father and a biological mother. Created by God, just like you and me. She is first and foremost one of our human sisters.
So why then all this fuss about Mary? Why did she get this special status in the history of the church? Why did our Roman Catholic siblings find it necessary to declare as dogma her immaculate conception and her deathless assumption into heaven, something not really warranted by scripture?
Well, I believe the reason for this over-glorification lies not just in bad biblical scholarship, but also in the sexist misogyny of society.
For centuries, men have kept women subservient: Women supposedly are members of a subspecies. Just look at the way our language is constructed. Too often we use the word “man” to talk about humans in general. Some might roll their eyes at these linguistic realities. But our language betrays us and reflects the power structures of our society.
The sometimes violent submission of women in the past was particularly eminent in the way men thought about female sexuality in general and women’s sexual and reproductive organs in particular. For men, it was all just deeply flawed, dirty, and even wicked. And this included the womb and the birth canal.
The church inherited this particular problematic thinking from her Greek pagan neighbours, whose philosophers had no kind words for women: Women were the seat of evil. Sexual desire was unclean, because, for most men, it meant intercourse with women. Some Greek philosophers even thus were able to idealize pedophilia with boys, because, after all, it did not involve women. (And I am not even going to go into the abusive and harmful nature of these “relationships” today!)
Into this reality of male dominance entered Mary.
God decided to be born of her, a woman. A woman, for crying out loud! Think this through: God decided to be revealed in Jesus, who came into the world through Mary’s birth canal. God decided to grow under a woman’s heart, experience the messiness of a human birth, be nursed from a woman’s breast, and be subjected to a woman’s care. God intimately touched women’s bits!
No wonder this was not just problematic for the time. This was radical. It was outrageous! Mary and her story really did not fit into a male-dominated and male-dictated religion. It blew apart everything that society stood for. “We can’t have this!”
Unless… unless, we clean it up. Unless, we put Mary on a pedestal. Unless, we proclaim her to be conceived immaculately, to be born without sin, too. Unless, we sever her from her sisters, from her female sexuality, by declaring her an ever-virgin.
The early church fathers really did not try to harmonize popular pagan goddess-worship with the Christian message when they turned Mary into something special. Quite the opposite! Because women, real women, could in the mind of male theologians not be connected intimately to the divine, the church effectively neutered Mary turning her into a pure maiden.
But this stands in opposition to God’s revelation in the book of Genesis, which boldly proclaims that we are all created in the image of God, male and female. Men and women reflect God’s image equally, which also means that God is both male and female.
And the de-sexing of Mary also stands in opposition to the incarnation, to God’s coming into human flesh. If we put Mary on a virgin pedestal, if we make her sinless and sexless, if we neglect or negate her humanity, her gender, and her sexuality, then we do not believe that God came among us in Jesus Christ to redeem us all in all that we are. All of Mary was chosen by God. God became one of us in Jesus, to walk our ways fully, not just partially.
Celibate chastity is indeed a calling from God for some. But it is not the ideal state for all. The church cannot choose to only embrace women’s sexuality if it is kept sexless. But rather the church must lift women to their rightful and equal place at the table and must learn how to assert female sexuality. All sexuality is affirmed by God in creation, and re-affirmed in the incarnation. Human sexuality, male or female, is something that is equally part of God’s good order. And God’s goodness also includes human birth, which is something wonderful, something awesome, something mysterious, and something so beautiful it defies words. Mary was chosen, because she was a woman, a real woman. She is one of us. She is just like us.
But then, what to do with the Gospel according to Luke, which does call Mary “favoured by God among women,1” something too many Protestants are rather eager to overlook? There is obviously biblical precedent to remember Mary in some special form. If we relegate Mary just to the margins or put her on a shelf altogether, we would not be true to her place in God’s reign. The reaction to misrepresentations and misunderstandings about Mary in Roman Catholicism should not make us go to the other extreme. That would put us on the same level with fundamentalist wing-nuts, whose blatant anti-Marianism and anti-Catholicism fall short of the deep beauty of the divine revelation!
However, when we fall into the arms of the living God2 like Mary did, something profound, something beyond our understanding will occur, something that might indeed turn us – by the grace of God – into a blessing for the world.
And this is why we can and maybe even should venerate Mary. And there are three aspects in particular to consider when we think of doing so.
First of all, let’s look at Mary’s most prominent title: “Mother of God.” For many, this is rather problematic. It sounds as if Mary indeed is superhuman, almost on a par with God.
Far from it! This title is Mary’s most important title, because it really isn’t about Mary. It is about Jesus.
During the first few centuries the church debated hotly Jesus’ identity. Finally, after many debates and discourses, after much prayer and Spirit-led discernment, the church proclaimed that Jesus is of the same substance as God the Father: Jesus is truly divine and truly human, “one and the same … Lord … recognized in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation.”3 And this is not just true for Jesus’ adult, public life. It is true for all his life from conception to death, and on to his resurrection and ascension.
Mary, therefore, conceived not just a human being, but Mary also conceived God. And to underscore this important, yet mysterious truth, the church gave Mary the honorific title “Theotokos,” which literally translates into “God-bearer” or in our usage: God’s mother. It is in this title that Jesus’ two natures are proclaimed.
Mary provided the human aspect of the incarnation. She was the guarantor for humanity’s participation in God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ. She became the first realization for God’s new creation. And she is the symbol of something into which we are all invited: in Jesus Christ we can all become God-bearers, bearers of God in our hearts and souls.
For this alone Mary deserves our respect and our veneration.
And this is, by the way, one of the reasons why I do believe and hold on to the virgin birth of Jesus: Mary supplied all the humanity needed for the incarnation. Nothing else was warranted. Sometimes men are just not necessary!
The second reason why we should honour Mary, is her “yes” to God. It is a willingness to be totally available for God. This is no simplistic submission to a hierarchical God. But this is a willingness to be penetrated in all that we are and all that we have by the God of life, so that we can be agents of life in the world – and for ourselves.
Finally, I believe Mary deserves to be venerated because of her own words: The Magnificat, words from the Gospel according to Luke. Words we just heard.
These are words by one who said “yes” to the God of life. These are the words of one who carried God under her heart. And these are words that proclaim God’s upside-down kingdom, in which the small are big and the big are small, in which the living light of God pierces death in all forms, in which greed and oppression have no power whatsoever, but in which justice and peace reign for ever. Mary’s song reveals God’s vision for our world, a vision that is as radical as is God’s choosing of Mary and Mary’s response to God. And due to the radicalism, due to the total otherness of the Magnificat to our reality, these words offer hope beyond imagination, hope for all, but hope particularly for those on the margins.
So, yes, a certain dose of “Marian” spirituality is healthy for our souls, valuable for the life of the church, and beneficial for our mission to serve the world in Christ’s name. Let us therefore not just today venerate and learn from the Mother of God, who is “blessed among women.”4
[The Reverend Markus Duenzkofer delivered this sermon on August 16, 2009.]
Footnotes
1 Cf Luke 1:30, 42
2 Cf Hebrews 10.31
3 Council of Chalcedon, 451 AD, Act V
4 Luke 1.30