Loading...I knew when I drove past it and only caught some of the words that I certainly had missed the message. Have you ever done that? Driven past a sign, only catching a portion of it, realizing you would need to see it at least one more time to get what they were trying to convey?
Maybe that’s why they made those one-line-at-a-time Burma Shave-like signs along the highways and byways to Wall Drug in South Dakota. You’d speed by, too fast for more than a few words and then, a half a mile later or so, another of the signs would continue the message. It was brilliant marketing!
Well, this sign was just west of here, at one of our neighboring churches, and while I have read the whole thing since only catching part of it, it is the short part of it that I have been mulling over, pondering, and considering for about a week.
What I caught was “God gave Jesus Mary.”
I had never thought of it that way before. God gave Jesus Mary. I mean, that’s exactly what happened when the Angel, Gabriel, came to Mary inviting her to become the mother of Jesus. She must have been vetted in some celestial conclave, and it was determined that she would be the best mother for God’s only begotten Son.
Why her? Why a young woman, barely into her womanhood, with no life experience? A girl, really, recently betrothed, promised by her father, Joachim, to marry what could only be an older, established man who we know as Joseph. What made her so special?
In the film, A Nativity Story, we get a glimpse of what an ordinary day in the life of Mary may have been. Of course, it is a story about a story, so there’s no guarantee that it is true, but there are a couple of sweet scenes showing her helping her mother, Anna, in their home and of Anna sending Mary to an elder woman with something she had made for the woman to eat. When Mary enters the woman’s home, the room is filled with young people, boy and girls, listening to stories of God from the Hebrew Scripture, repeating lines, and learning about who they understand God has been and why they should trust God.
Mary smiles as she whispers the words along with the children. It is evident she knows the stories of God and has not only embraced them but comprehends the depth of the history of God and the Israelites. She has learned at the feet of this woman, and at the sides of women in their town.
The children love both the older woman and Mary. It’s easy to see in Mary’s countenance the importance of community and of the religious education of children, and her own level of understanding of God’s agency in the world.
If it was only this incident the celestial conclave observed when God chose Mary for Jesus, it may have been enough. Mary expressed her love for both God and others. She would make a good model for the man who would remind his followers over 30 years later that the two greatest commandments are to Love God and to Love your Neighbor as you Love Yourself.
Later in the week I was listening to a young woman reciting a poem she wrote that included a line with a message that expressed her frustration that the only thing she knows about Mary is that she birthed Jesus. The way she angrily spat out the graphic words made me think she thought that this was all Mary had done.
That made me sad. Sad because this poet may never have heard or learned or remembered the depth of who Mary was and what the impact of her role in Jesus’ life means for us today. I wondered if she ever heard the words Mary spoke to Elizabeth that day, those words we read or sing each year that remind us of the depth of Mary’s faith and expectation in the God she knew and trusted.
I wondered if this poet did not know of the revolution Mary birthed in Jesus, a revolution of love.
Had she not heard of the journey Mary took to be with Elizabeth? A dangerous journey, miles from her home to the home of a past-her-prime pregnant cousin. Two miracle pregnancies in one so old and one so young, bellies meeting, babies leaping, knowing that these boys (they knew they were boys) were going to play some important parts in right-side-upping the world.
Three months. Mary would stay with Elizabeth and Zechariah for three months. Perhaps Mary was in the room when John was born, and when Zechariah regained his speech. Maybe she needed to see what birthing looked like so she would not be so afraid when her time came. And then it would be time for Mary, now ripe in her pregnancy, to return home to a little town full of people who would not understand, and who, by rights and rules, could kill her.
Mary was brave. Resilient. Fearless. Not so much the meek and mild girl in blue we hear about in hymns or see on the covers of Christmas cards. She takes risks by accepting Gabriel’s invitation, by going to Elizabeth and back again. In going with Joseph, so close to her due date, to be counted in the census in Bethlehem. But her bravery, resiliency, and fearlessness does not end with the birth of this Son of God.
Mary, with Joseph, must protect, nurture, and raise this child to understand the world in which he lives. To teach him, even though he knows better than anyone alive, who God is and what God has done and means to these people. Mary must show Jesus about the inequities of humanity. What indignity, illness, hunger and poverty look like. But not only that, she must teach him why. And who. And what causes this chasm that lies between those who have and those who have not.
We know that this is what she does, not because the bible tells us so in so many words, since we do not know much about his life between birth and the beginning of his ministry, but because of the words she said to Elizabeth. The words we call the Magnificat.
My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.
Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name.
His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.
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.
It is in these words she expresses the depth of how she understands the world, even as a young person, and how her trust in her God and the history of her ancestors impact how she will show Jesus the world. In these words, she tells of her faith, of her reverence, of her hope and of her obedience.
God gave Jesus Mary because she was who God trusted to be the mother and teacher Jesus needed to show him what was necessary to do all that it was God sent him to do: To show people then and now what a just and merciful world could look like, if only we focused on loving and respecting the dignity of one another.
In this act of God giving Jesus Mary, God has given her to us. We, too, can receive from her Magnificat a picture of what the world could look like. Through her words we can share her commitment to praise, to study and to teaching, and with hope that passes all understanding, we can trust that God will not abandon creation.
God gave us Mary to raise Jesus to be the one to show us God’s abundant concern for the ways humans treat one another, and to teach us that there is another, radical way.
And what is that way? It is the way of love.
Amen.
