Feast of St. Mary the Virgin, August 15, 2010

The Rev. Dr. Katharine C. Black, preaching

Isaiah 61:10-11
Psalm 34
Galatians 4:4-7
Luke 1:46-55

Almighty God, of your saving grace you called Mary of Nazareth to be the mother of your only begotten Son: Inspire us by the same grace to follow her example of bearing God to the world. We pray through Jesus Christ her son our Savior. AMEN.

This fine new collect is from the new Holy Men, Holy Women volume, which supplants, adds to, and rethinks Lesser Feasts and Fasts. It's the first collect for "a Common of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Godbearer." The collect still does echo some of the church's fundamental awkwardness with Mary as a real, live, woman, who had a baby. The church holds on to Mary the Virgin, which I take as squeamishness about her as a vibrant sexual woman.

That discomfort is I think still evident in the Roman Catholic Church announcing that a sin equivalent to pedophilia was to participate in the ordination of a woman. Repeatedly the Church images something about adult women as essentially flawed and sinful. That pronouncement, with their prohibition against women priests, means women cannot represent Jesus. Further, Roman Catholicism names her: St. Mary the Virgin, and in their tradition this date was the Feast of her Assumption, "having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory." This doctrine was dogmatically and infallibly defined by Pope Pius XII on November 1, 1950, in his Apostolic Constitution Munificentissimus Deus. And yet...

The Orthodox tradition called this date the Dormition of the Theotokos (the Greek word for Godbearer.) They place the emphasis not on her virginity, but rather or her work, bearing god, not bearing just the Christ. Their understanding is that from his inception, conception, incarnation, Jesus was God. That meant that Mary was the life support of Jesus, son of God, before he was born, a creative part of his birth, life, existence, and person.

The Greeks were less obsessed with Mary Parthenos, because, of course, Athene, patron of Athens, Goddess of Wisdom, War, Peace, and so on, was also Athene Parthenos. The Parthenon, even in its ruined form, is a beautiful monument to her, but the Greeks valued her for her birth from mind, thought, word, and forehead of Zeus, and also her work, as advisor to many mortals, particularly Odysseus, as first warrior, goddess of peace, providing the olive branch as it symbol. She provided olives to Athens for it to be a leader in commerce, with olive oil trade, sea trade, and then in peace. The emphasis was on her many roles with and for people and the gods, not on her sexuality. They called her Athene Parthenos, to name her as special, but they didn't obsess on that one aspect of her deity.

It is not a surprise then that the Orthodox tradition praises Mary on this day in part of its Dormition liturgy with this hymn:

"Dance with joy, O peoples!

Clap your hands with gladness!

Gather today with fervor and jubilation;

Sing with exultation.

The Mother of God is about to rise in glory.

Ascending from earth to heaver,

We ceaselessly praise her in song as truly Theotokos."

Mary showed that same sort of exultation in her echo of Hannah's hymn, in the Magnificat, with her joyful, "My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior." She is not claiming that she makes God bigger, but rather that if she is filled with God, then looking at her, shows in microcosm, what a drop, a facet, a sparkle of God is, and so how unimaginably, ginormously, macroscopically magnificent God must be, how beyond imagining God must be. Mary understood how hard it would be for people to experience the God she responded to, so she raised her child to demonstrate God's reality for all other people.

Whatever happened between Mary, Gabriel, and God's creative force, she might have expressed this way in Mary Slee's lines:

"Handmaid to none but God

Helpmeet only to the Word

Servant of the Spirit and no man

My will my own

My word to give or withhold

God knelt long at Israel's door, awaiting my birth."

That annunciation and connection between God and Mary continues to be beyond understanding, but Mary knew what had happened, and how, and she knew she was raising God in person.

We don't know much about what she did or the way she exercised her maternal role. We know Jesus grew to be a strong, well-versed Jew, knowing many psalms and other scripture lines, teaching, learning, and spreading God's vision for the coming reign of God. We might notice that the Beatitudes of Jesus, in content and tone, echo Mary's Magnificat. Mary taught Jesus to love God, to respond to God, to follow commands however odd or unknowable, even through human suffering, to be with God forever.

Protestants have not been squeamish about her virginity, but about her role at all in the life of Jesus, or of God, let alone her life with us. When we do arrive in whatever Heaven is, I imagine Jesus, Savior of the world, Savior for all people, will have to introduce most of us to his Mother.

This week we are also celebrating 90 years of Women in this country having the right to vote. The process was more than slow. According to Gail Collins in the Times, it took 70 years, "56 referendum campaigns directed at male voters, 480 campaigns to get Legislatures to submit suffrage amendments to voters and so on. The great roadblock to progress was the U. S. Senate. Carrie Chapman Catt and Susan B. Anthony worked with hope for years. Finally the House of Representatives passed the legislation, but the Senate didn't. President Woodrow Wilson then worked to get the requisite number of State legislatures to ratify the Voting Rights Act. Collins goes on, "Ninety years ago this month, all eyes turned to Tennessee, the only state yet to ratify with its Legislature still in session. The resolution sailed through the Tennessee Senate. As it moved on to the House... [there] was vigorous opposition [driven by liquor producers fearing that if women could vote, there would be Prohibition, so they provided many samples as the time for the vote arrived.]The women and their allies knew they had a one-vote margin in the House. Then the speaker, whom they had counted on as a 'yes,' changed his mind...Suddenly, Harry Burn, the youngest member of the House, a 24-year-old 'no' vote from East Tennessee, got up and announced that he had received a letter from his mother telling him to 'be a good boy and help Mrs. Catt.' 'I know that a mother's advice is always the safest for a boy to follow,' Burn said, switching sides."

Is that not a fine summary of what Mary's role was for Jesus, more than advice, I suspect. Mary Slee's book, The Book of Mary articulates a range of what we value, trust, and understand of Mary in sections such as: "faith and daring," "solitude and freedom," "companionship and sisterhood,"  "sexuality and the body," "wisdom and authority," "ministry and priesthood," "pain and lament," "resistance and refusal," "hiddenness and identity," and more. For many of us Mary is not on our personal radar. We may know her in music, sculpture, and art, but she is not an active part of our understanding of Jesus' story. We don't include her in our liturgies much more than by name. Many representations of her are static, sitting, holding either the baby or her son removed from the cross, but my favorite medieval image was of her reading a book, while Joseph minded the baby.

We know from the bible's record that she responded to Gabriel's message, went to see her elderly cousin, was with Jesus after he was late back from the Temple, she traveled with him, prodded him at the wedding in Cana, was with friends in Jerusalem, and was still in attendance in the garden by the tomb. Again it is the Church that has immobilized her, and draped her in genteel limited roles, without influence on Jesus, or within the Church.

From Slee's book, here's a litany, called "Truly our sister." I'll read the petitions we'll all respond with "Mary, our sister and friend: "Let her lay down her burden of motherhood" "Mary, our sister and friend," "Let her takeoff her starry crown, / step down from her throne; Mary... ""Let her loneliness be comforted, /let the communion of saints gather her in: Mary..." "Let Elizabeth meet with her often, over the years. /Let them gossip as women do, / unburdening their souls to each other: Mary..." "Let her grief be shared with others, /let her not bear up her dead son alone: Mary..." "Let her wait in the upper room with other women, remembering their stories together:  Mary..." "Let us join hands with her, dancing our way to the banquet, singing with the company of heaven, Mary, our sister and friend."

It is this companionship of Mary, and this role as exemplar to which this new collect leads us. "Almighty God, of your saving grace you called Mary of Nazareth to be the mother of your only begotten Son: Inspire us by the same grace to follow her example of bearing God to the world. We pray through Jesus Christ her son our savior." However we understand Jesus, however we understand the reign of God, we are to bear that to the world. The way we do that will be as distinct as each of us is from the other. Unlike the Church's limitation of who may represent Jesus, there are no such restrictions for following Mary's example. Anyone, everyone, each of us can bear God to the world in our own way, every listener to Jesus, every seeker after the truth, every person who follows Jesus, comforts him, knows him, wants to know him better, wants to see him again, wants to prepare a way for him to be seen more clearly in the world, who wants to be there with him as he works, is invited, inspired, enough to bear God to the world.

Again in Slee's words, "Mary, Queen of all creativity. let the Word be made flesh again/ in word, in sound, in colour and form, in movement and vibrancy and in jesting./Let the Christchild be born in our artistry. Let the universe bring forth joy."

We can follow her example finding an image, a statue, an Ave Maria or other piece of music written to Mary, one in which we see our selves, and carry it in our mind's eye or ear, cooking, keeping company, watching over children, working. See an old image of her letting down her Rapunzel-like hair for us to use as a scrambling net up to her and her son. "Mary our sister and friend, help us join hands with you, dancing our way to the banquet, singing with the company of heaven."  Singing. Hearing. Sharing. Good news.

© Katharine C. Black 15 August 2010