Christmas Eve SermonIt’s sad to say that Mary doesn’t really get much attention these days, at least not within our Protestant tradition. Yes, we acknowledge her role in giving birth to and raising Jesus as a boy. We accept that she was devastated by his untimely and cruel death. But we don’t revere her. We even minimize, play down her formative influence in the development of Jesus’ character and personality. We like to think that Jesus arrived on the scene fully-formed; sure, he had to grow physically, but as far as his character and his personality were concerned, he didn’t really have to grow or learn or develop because he was already perfect. The idea of Mary telling him off, of teaching him good manners, or of comforting him after a run-in with the local Galileean bullies—for some reason none of this seems quite right to us. The problem is, when we make this assumption, as well as detracting from Jesus’ genuine humanity, we also end up detracting from the significance of Mary’s input into Jesus’ life.
We have become so fearful of the Catholic veneration of Mary that we now probably don’t honour her enough. Revering Mary sometimes seems all too close to the Catholic practice of praying to her. How many of us, for example, would be comfortable using Mary’s traditional title of Θεοτόκος (God-bearer)? And yet that very title was affirmed by the third great Ecumenical Council at Ephesus in 431. All of the major theologians and church leaders at that time agreed that the title of ‘God-bearer’ was a necessary defence against heresy. Even Martin Luther, the architect of Protestantism, called Mary ‘the workshop in whom God operated’; the ‘highest woman whom we can never honour enough.’ It seems, in other words, that we have missed out on a great deal of the richness of Jesus’ life by not taking enough account of his mother. So that’s what I want us to do today. It’s this girl, Mary, who models for us faith and grace, whom we will look at this morning, especially through her song of praise, the Magnificat.
First, though, who was Mary, and why was she chosen for this extraordinary honour of bearing and raising the Son of God? Apart from the New Testament accounts, we don’t know very much about her at all. She doesn’t figure much in Jewish sources, simply because of the ambiguity of Jesus’ own place within Judaism. She is mentioned in the Qu’ran—in fact, she is the only woman spoken of by name in it—but while the Qu’ran heaps praise upon her, there is little information in it about her own life. And there is similarly little about her in secular sources. So what we do know of her can be summed up fairly easily.
We assume she was from Nazareth in the region of Galilee; that, at least, is where she met Joseph.
We know too that she was related to Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist. There is a tradition that John and Jesus were cousins, which would make Elizabeth and Mary sisters, or sisters-in-law—on the other hand, there’s no specific word in Hebrew or Aramaic for ‘cousin’ and so the actual relationship between John and Jesus, and therefore between Mary and Elizabeth, remains uncertain. Clearly, though, the relationship was close enough for Mary to stay in Elizabeth’s house for the first three months of her pregnancy.
We also know that Mary was very young when she became engaged to Joseph and fell pregnant. The word which is usually translated as ‘virgin' also means simply ‘a young girl’—probably about 14 or 15.
It’s also likely that Mary was economically disadvantaged. Maybe not poor, but certainly working class.
Apart from that, we really know nothing else about her. We don’t know how long she lived, or where she died. We don’t know for how long the Apostle John cared for her after Jesus’ death. We don’t even know what role, if any, she played in the young church. After the Gospel accounts, and aside from one brief mention in Acts 1, Mary simply disappears from the record. There are some legends and traditions about where she was buried; according to one story, she was buried in Bethlehem; according to another, it was at Ephesus. Essentially, though, our knowledge of Mary’s life is extremely scarce. What we can say with absolute certainty, though, is that, all in all, this is one very ordinary girl, to whom God entrusts the most extraordinary burden and blessing.
Given all of this, what can we learn from her hymn of praise, from her response to the news that she would be the mother of Jesus? Perhaps the most striking thing is that Mary is utterly unable to explain why God should have done this for her. It would be very tempting, I imagine, to think of this amazing gift as some sort of reward for exceptional behaviour. Instead of that, though, Mary understands that it is a gift of pure grace, entirely unmerited by her. She knows that she is simply the Lord’s humble servant, literally, His slave. She has no pretensions of grandeur, of being better than anyone else. She knows of no reason why she should be chosen over anyone else for this task—and in fact there is no reason, other than the unmerited favour of God. That’s why all future generations will call her blessed; that Mary will be the mother of Jesus is a blessing in the truest sense, because it has nothing to do with her. It is not conditional upon her good works, or obedience; she has done nothing to deserve this. That’s why the old doctrine of Mary’s immaculate conception is wrong; if she was born without sin, then she did deserve to be Jesus’ mother. The point, though, is that she didn’t deserve it. Rather, it is the Lord God, the Mighty One, who alone has accomplished this great deed.
This, I think, is a cue for us. Sure, only Mary bore Jesus physically. But those of us who bear in ourselves his name have likewise been blessed—and like Mary, not on account of our own goodness but purely because of God’s unmerited favour. That is good news for those of us who struggle with an image of God as a stern and judgmental ruler. How often do we feel, even if it’s only a deep secret in our hearts, that we’re not good enough for God? How often do we think that God is on the lookout for reasons to punish us? Let me say that that is a theology, an understanding of God, based on the assumption that we get what we deserve. And yet Mary reminds us that in fact we don’t. Just as she didn’t deserve the amazing grace and favour shown to her by God, neither do we—and yet for Mary, who bore Jesus physically, and for us who bear his name, we nonetheless still have that grace and favour, entirely undeserved. We have received a blessing every bit as miraculous and unmerited as Mary’s virginal conception of Jesus. That, indeed, is the essence of the gospel.
But what about the second half of the hymn, from v.50 to the end? Here, Mary’s focus changes from what God has done for her, to what He has done more generally throughout history. And what she says makes it clear that this is not a God who keeps a respectable distance from world affairs. He is not a God somewhere up there in the ether. God did not create us only to leave us to our own devices. In fact, quite the opposite: God is intimately involved in peoples’ private lives and in the public political scene. This is a God who causes rulers and tyrants to fall, but also a God who cares for those in need. He has His eye on the big picture, but also on the smallest details. This is a God who is truly Immanuel—‘God with us’. And, as Mary’s song and Jesus’ own life show us, He is ‘God with us’ in very particular ways. So what are those ways?
According to Mary, God lifts up the humble. These, of course, are the ones who, in the Beatitudes, Jesus says will inherit the earth. He also fills those who are hungry—by His provision they will be satisfied (v.53). This, too, is a promise affirmed by Jesus in the Beatitudes. In other words, by saying that this is the work of God, Mary not only recalls God’s past faithfulness, but she also anticipates what her son Jesus will do. This part of her song is as much a messianic prophecy as a remembrance of God’s goodness through the ages.
In Jesus’ first public sermon, which he gives in the synagogue at Nazareth, he quotes Isaiah, to say that his task is to preach good news to the poor, to proclaim freedom for the captives, sight to the blind, and release for those who are oppressed. That is how God is present with us. That is what Mary foreshadows in this hymn of praise. What Mary says here about the work of God, what she prophesies about the work of her son the Christ is, in fact, a glimpse of the Kingdom of God.
But there is also another way in which God is with us. It is not all good news. In Mary’s song, God scatters the proud, those who think more highly of themselves than they ought. In the very next verse, we hear that God brings down kings and other rulers. If we take these two elements together, we can suppose Mary to mean that those rulers who become arrogant, who are filled with hubris and who stop listening to the voice of the people—in the end, they are brought undone.
Similarly, those who are rich are sent away empty. As Jesus himself says in Lk.6, ‘woe to those who are rich, for they have already received their comfort. Those who are well fed now will in the end go hungry.’
That is to say, Bono was quite right when, in his speech at President Bush’s prayer breakfast earlier this year, he made the point that God does show favouritism. We like to think that God has no favourites; that He views all people the same, as though there was no difference between us. But the fact is, He is always on the side of the poor, the outcast and the marginalized. And like it or not, He is always against those who persecute or cheat or stir up hatred. He is always against those who create the conditions whereby poverty, persecution and prejudice are made possible. How appropriate, then, that God came to us, to be Immanuel with us, through a girl whose chastity and good reputation were called into question by that very act of bearing the Christ-child. How appropriate, that God came to us in the form of a child who was chased from his country, forced to be a refugee, and hounded throughout his life.
On Christmas Eve, then, how should we sum up this song? What does Christmas look like through Mary’s eyes? First, the God who has come to be with us is faithful and trustworthy, not just once but ‘from generation to generation’, indeed, (v.55) ‘into all eternity.’ Mary can face her task because she knows she has this God on her side. And so can we.
Second, the God who has come to be with us knows us in our own unique individuality, and He treats us accordingly. He doesn’t treat us all the same, as if we were carbon-copies of each other. He deals with me according to my circumstances, and He deals with you according to yours. So, those who presume for themselves more than they ought, and in that presumption mistreat others, will in the end have to answer to God. But those who are hurting, who are mistreated, who are on the margins of society, who are voiceless—God embraces, comforts and liberates.
Finally, the God who comes to be with us is gracious. He is with us, in Christ, not because we deserve Him to be, but because He chooses to be. The grace, the mercy, and the comfort that He extends to each one of us is, as Mary understood, a pure blessing: entirely unmerited, entirely without cause, but simply because God so loved the world that He sent His only Son Jesus to rescue us, to journey with us, to be with us—Immanuel!
Amen.
