What about Mary?
What about Mary?
Luke 1:46-55
In my last sermon, we spent some time with Joseph. He received terrible, shocking news: his fiance’ was pregnant. He knew that the child was not his. He could have immediately given into rage and made it his singular goal to shame and humiliate Mary. He didn’t. He could have done whatever it took to make sure that his reputation was unharmed. He didn’t do that either. He could have invoked the law and seen to it that Mary was at least punished or perhaps even killed. He didn’t go there.
Instead of reacting and raging and ridiculing, Joseph reacts with reserve. He thinks things through, which is not an easy thing to do when you receive terrible, shocking news. He comes up with a choice that he can live with and that will allow Mary to have a life. He will cut off their relationship but he will do it quietly so as not to cause Mary any shame. In doing this, he was likely to be lambasted by other men who would have wanted to make an example of Mary for all the other women about what would happen if they strayed. He also left things ambiguous about his whole role. By being kind, he opened the door to being the object of rumors.
If the story stopped there, Joseph would deserve plenty of credit. In a male dominated culture that valued men who displayed their dominance, Joseph was resisting those pressures. As a human being, when we so often mistake reactivity for decisiveness and strength, Joseph chose not to rage. He took some time. He sorted things through. He may have done about as good of a job as a human being can do.
Then, something else happened, something shocking in its own right. Joseph falls asleep and has a dream. An angel of the Lord appears in that dream and tells him that he shouldn’t be afraid to have Mary as his wife, that it was the Holy Spirit that made her pregnant, and that this child would be named Jesus which means “the one who saves,” because that was what he was going to do. Shockingly, amazingly, tellingly…Joseph believes this! And the Jewish audience, hearing the Gospel, would have been thinking, “Oh my God, we have another Joseph who listens to dreams, just like the Joseph of ancient days!”
That’s Joseph…but what about Mary? Here, we have to flip to the Gospel of Luke. In the first chapter of Luke, the angel, Gabriel, appears to Mary. Like all angels, he has a message to deliver, that’s what angels do, after all. First, though, the angel says, “Greetings, you who are highly favored. The Lord is with you.” Mary is literally stopped in her tracks.
Unless we pause, you won’t really catch this. It just seems like a nice way of saying hello, right? That’s not how Mary would have heard this. It was dangerous to be a woman out in that ancient world. The goal was to be invisible. Talk to no one. Don’t make eye contact. Just keep your head down and slide on by the strangers.
I always get a chuckle at this point. In the midwest, I’ve been thoroughly trained to make eye contact with everyone and say something nice, “Hey, what a beautiful day, huh?” In Iowa, such behavior might fly but not on the steets of Chicago. Such kindness there is disturbing. “What’s his deal? What’s he angling for? What…is he crazy?” If you don’t know any better, you can just plow right through the rules and really disturb the world around you.
Mary meets this stranger. She has no idea that he’s an angel. She just thinks he’s a guy. Instead of just walking right past her, he walks right up to her. He looks her staight in the eye and speaks: “Greetings, you who are highly favored. The Lord is with you.” Mary isn’t flattered. The words are shocking. This stranger seems to be “shmoozing” her. He wants something from her. This is wrong. The warning lights are flashing and Mary is terrified: “What’s this guy’s deal, anyway?”
The angel says to her: “Do not be afraid.” These are the same first words that were spoken to Joseph in his dream: “Do not be afraid.” These are also the words that will be spoken a lifetime later to the women at the empty tomb on Easter morning: “Do not be afraid.” There is a part of all of us that might long to experience something more in life, some sense of God’s presence, some experience of the holy or the sacred. The problem is that almost as soon as something unique or powerful or mystical begins to happen, the core human response is to feel afraid: “I don’t understand. I can’t make sense of what’s happening. I’ve never see this before.”
A lot depends in life on being able to tell the difference between the feeling of fear that is there to tell us that we are in danger and the feeling of fear that arises because we are experiencing something new. What do these experiences have in common: your first day in kindergarten; your first competition in something that really mattered to you; your first kiss; the birth of your first child; the first time you sat and held the hand of someone you loved who was dying? All of those experiences are novel moments in our lives, powerful moments in our lives. When they happen, we have plenty of fear. However, the job is to talk back to the fear, to not let the fear keep us from leaning into the moment. At it’s best, fear insists that we pay attention. At it’s worst, fear convinces us to altogether check out on life.
When people are told, “Do not be afraid’ in the Bible, they are not being told, “Run!” They’re not being told, “Move on…there’s nothing to see here.” Nope…the angels are looking that person in the eye and saying, “Stay with me here. Don’t let the fear control you. Lean into what I’m about to share. Listen for all you’re worth.”
Mary does exactly that. She sets aside the reality in her world that strangers are dangerous. She quits trying to figure out this man’s ulterior motives. Instead, she listens to what he has to say. What he says is…well…a lot…and most definitely not anything Mary was expecting to hear: “Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”
What do you say to that? “God is in your corner and thinks your “the bomb.” That’s why you’re pregnant with God’s son. You’re going to name him, Jesus, “Mister Savior,” and he’s going to end up on David’s throne and rule there forever.” What Mary says is so human and wonderful and familiar: “How can this be?” How could I get pregnant? I’m a virgin. How could this be happening to me? I’m no one. What does any of this mean?”
It’s the kind of moment when most of us would shake our heads and turn and walk away. We’d console ourselves with thoughts like, “Well…that was weird!” We’d think, “He seemed like a nice man. Too bad he’s lost his mind…” We’d do our best to get on with our day and have a nice cup of tea because maybe that will calm us down. When something amazing happens, even though we’ve kind of been hoping something amazing might happen, we usually shake our heads and walk away because amazing things don’t actually happen, right?
Mary, who probably was a young girl—maybe 15?—doesn’t run. Faced with the strange and the unimaginable, she pauses (not unlike the pause that we saw Joseph take). She reaches deep down inside of herself and what she finds is courage and faith: “Well, I actually do believe in God. If this is God’s plan for me, then, I don’t understand but I’m in.” She says to the angel, “I am the Lord’s servant. May your word be fulfilled.”
If you’re paying attention, we have a man, Joseph, who is acting against type: he’s being patient and understanding; he’s not only listening to dreams but trusting them and acting on them. And we have a woman acting against type as well: she’s being brave and faithful and fierce in a world that insists that a young woman be subservient and invisible and silent. Jospeh and Mary, each in their own ways, leave behind the comfort of being who everyone expected them to be in order to become who God was calling them to be. Really…so much depends in this life on us being willing to do that very same thing.
Mary stands her ground and finds her voice—and what a voice it is! In a world that would look at her askance as an unwed mother, in a world that would declare a woman like her to be rotton to the core, Mary stands her ground and declares, (and I’m paraphrasing here…) “Do you want to know what is at the core of me? My soul magnifies the Lord! If you look at me and see something shining, just understand, that light is the presence of God. Here’s the thing: God chose to work through someone as humble as me, which should surprise no one, if you have any understanding of how God has always worked. God always chooses to work through the humble to scatter the proud. God takes the most powerful leaders and knocks them off their thrones and replaces them with humble people. God sweeps the rich aside so that the hungry can be fed. Do you remember our ancestors in slavery? He took them and made them a nation.”
Really, this is what Mary and Joseph share. They are humble people who are brave enough to not be consumed by fear. They stand their ground and consider what’s happening. Unlike the rich or the haughty who think God has blessed them, Mary and Joseph are shocked to be touched by God’s presence and God’s favor. Instead of thinking, “Well, it’s about time,” they think, “Wow..who would have ever guessed.” Then, they make the turn, “God, if this is what you need me to do, I’m all in if you’ll help me. Whatever you need.”
What God needs is for a humble young woman to hear something impossible and go with it. God needs her to ready herself to raise a child who will change the world. God needs her as the whole world whispers behind her back to keep her eyes straight forward on the path ahead. God needs her to be brave and compassionate and strong. God needs this woman not to ask, “How is this happening,” but to ask the world, “Do you see what’s happening here?” Having so loved the world, God needs her to so love his beloved son.
God has given her a good man, a humble man, to join her in that task. They’ll never forget what makes this child special, what sets him apart. They’ll also never treat him as anything other than their beloved son. One day, he’ll have some amazing work to do but until then, their work is to love him to pieces and show him just how much there is that is worth loving in this life.