Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on December 24, 2023, Fourth Sunday of Advent. Based on Luke 1:26-38, 46-55.
The event we hear today is memorialized by Roman Catholics in their prayer called the Angelus. When I go to the White House Retreat Center, we pray the Angelus three times daily. Each time through includes three Hail Marys. You know, Roman Catholics kind of have a “thing” for Mary. The Rosary is the most obvious example. The complete Rosary has five decades, each of which has ten Hail Marys. That’s fifty times praying, “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.” And so on. I think the reason they focus so much on Mary is that Jesus seems too intimidating. Yes, Catholics pray to and through Jesus, but more often, they pray to a saint like Mary and ask the saint to intercede on their behalf. Mary seems so close to Jesus, and yet approachable.
Yet along the way, Mary has been elevated to this ethereal woman, almost otherworldly. She seems so serene, so meek, an obedient handmaid of God. She is a source of peace and a role model for women. Sinless, placid, humble, obedient. OK, I can accept that she is a saint in the sense that she has joined the heavenly choirs, but the earthly Mary that we read about in the Gospels is nothing like that.
Protestants have rebelled against this elevation of Mary and instead have degraded her. They treat her almost like an empty vessel. She was just a convenient womb to incubate the Incarnation. This attitude gave rise to the popular song, “Mary Did You Know.” It’s a beautiful song that talks about the man that Mary’s baby would grow up to be. I love the melody, and I love the image of a baby growing into our Lord and Savior. But the song is all wrong. Listen to the last verse:
Mary, did you know that your baby boy is Lord of all creation?
Mary, Did You Know? Words & Music by Mark Lowry and Buddy Greene
Mary, did you know that your baby boy would one day rule the nations?
Did you know that your baby boy is heaven’s perfect Lamb?
That sleeping child you’re holding is the great, I Am.
This is a beautiful vision of the man that Jesus would become, and the potential within the infant that we will be celebrating tonight, but the answer to every line is a resounding “YES!” Mary knew, because Gabriel told her.
Mary was neither some perfect model of obedience and submission nor an empty vessel who had no idea what was going on. Mary was tough. When Gabriel gave her his message, she didn’t hesitate to ask what she needed to know: how will it happen? She needed to know what she was getting into.
Motherhood is a blessing, but it’s not easy. It certainly wasn’t easy in first-century Galilee. They had midwives but medical care was, shall we say, meager. Death in childbirth was common—I read somewhere that as many as 1 in 3 mothers died giving birth. Not only that, but infant mortality rates were pretty high, so she would be charged with caring for a very fragile young life. The serene image in Christmas cards or on display in nativity scenes doesn’t reflect the reality of childbirth: noisy, messy, and painful. Nor does it reflect the sleepless nights and utter misery of being a new mother. Compounding Mary’s situation was the fact that she would be pregnant out of wedlock. She was betrothed to a man who was not the biological father, so she didn’t know whether he would follow through with the wedding or not. She didn’t know if the rest of her family, and his, would accept her. And being the mother of the Messiah meant that the birth would be just the beginning. Almost every messianic movement ends in bloodshed. Next week, we will hear Simeon, a prophet in the Temple, tell her, “A sword will pierce your own soul, too.”
And yet, Mary said yes. This was not an act of submission and subservience, but a commitment to take on the challenge. Like so many prophets before her, when God called to her, she said, Here I am, Lord. Choose me.
And like so many prophets before her, she responded with a bold prophetic announcement that we call the Magnificat. This is not a hymn of joy so much as the start of a revolution. “God has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly.” And on it goes, declaring that the order of society will be overturned. Mary celebrates her role in the revolution. She rejoices that God has done this great thing for her, allowing her to birth the Messiah. She rejoices at being Jesus’s first disciple.
Catholics pray, “Hail Mary, full of grace,” a phrase taken from the Latin Vulgate. The NRSV translation is, “Greetings, favored one!” This more accurately captures the sentiment that Mary was the recipient of grace, not the source of it. God chose her to give birth to and raise the Messiah. Why? We don’t know. Nowhere does it say that she was particularly devout, or extra kind, or anything else. She was chosen just as other prophets were chosen: for no obvious reason except that God saw great promise in her heart. Her prophetic song helps us to understand the kind of mother that Jesus had. She was convinced that God was doing a great thing for her and for the world through her. She recognized God’s strength and mercy. She was prepared for a revolution that would raise the lowly and bring down the powerful. As we sang earlier, the world is about to turn.
But wait: in the Bible verses, Mary says that God has done great things—past tense. The hymn says that the world is about to turn—in the near future. Which is it? Well, just as Christ was born and will be born anew in our hearts, the revolution is still going on. The complete transformation of the world takes a while. Yet Mary knew that something important was happening. She knew that without the coming of the Messiah, God’s plan for the salvation of the world could not come to pass. She knew that she had been chosen for a critical role in that plan. God had been hard at work throughout the history of Israel, and had already done a lot, but now the transformation process would go into hyperdrive. She was willing to do whatever God asked of her so that Jesus’s mission could be accomplished.
But again, why was Mary chosen, and what was special about her? Well, nothing, really. She was just an unmarried young woman of unknown lineage from a small village in a backwater. She wasn’t a priest like Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist who received his calling in the Temple. She wasn’t like Simeon and Anna, prophets we will hear about next week who were righteous and devout and spent all their time in the Temple, worshipping with fasting and prayer. She certainly wasn’t one of the rich and powerful. Just an ordinary woman in an ordinary place.
In that way, she wasn’t much different from us. We are pretty far from the seats of power, whether political or economic or cultural. That doesn’t change the fact that God is calling each one of us to take part in the transformation of the world into God’s kingdom. Each of us has a role to play. None of us have as big a job as Mary did, but even small roles are important. I will again remind you to consider how God is calling you personally to work towards the reconciliation of the world. How can you take part in God’s work, and how can this church and its members help to further your calling? What seemingly impossible task has God set before you, and how can you say, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord”?
Tonight, we will gather again to worship and remember that Jesus was born more than 2000 years ago. He took on flesh and came to demonstrate what true love looks like, to help us to turn towards God and participate in God’s work, to re-orient our priorities. Yet that would not have happened if Mary hadn’t said “yes.” May God show you what task has been laid out for you, and give you also the courage to say “yes.” Amen.
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