| "Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your …?" Well, you know how the rest of that nursery rhyme goes. We've all heard it or sung it at one time or another. But Mother Goose is describing really quite a different kind of Mary from the one spoken of in this morning's scripture lessons-the Mary of our Advent and Christmas, the young woman who-when confronted by God's astonishing announcement that an earthshaking event would soon alter the course of her life and, indeed, of human history- the young woman who acted not at all contrary. For when told she would soon conceive and bear the savior of the world, the Word-of-God-incarnate, Mary consented. Now Mary is not the only one surprised by what happens in this morning's First Lesson, Luke's story of the Annunciation. We, too, are surprised, surprised that God would deign to be born among us as a human, subject to all the travails of fleshly existence, and surprised that if God was going to be born on earth the angel Gabriel was sent not to a woman of rank, of social and religious prominence-perhaps the daughter of the high priest or some other aristocratic woman in Jerusalem-no, the angel Gabriel was sent to a poverty-stricken teenager living in a backwater village called Nazareth. As for Mary herself, when she was confronted by this surprise, she moved from being shocked by Gabriel's appearing (vs. 29) and dumbfounded by Gabriel's announcement (vs. 34), to consenting freely to God's will. And at the end of this narrative, we find Mary responding to God in fullness of faith and without constraint. We see her agreeing to become with God a co-worker in fulfilling God's plan. For she says to Gabriel: "Here am I, the servant of the Lord. Let it be with me as you have said." (vs. 38) Now, Luke's story about Mary frames for us the central dynamic of the Advent season. For during Advent, God comes to us just as God came to Mary. God comes to ask us, like Mary, to consent in faith and without constraint to becoming co-workers with God in altering the presuppositions of our lives, in unloosing our old anchors of security and establishing new anchors. God comes to ask us, like Mary, to respond to God's call for transformation in ways not at all contrary, so that we too may give birth-give birth, through our everyday living, to the word of God, give birth, through the way we conduct our lives, to the way of Christ, to the will of God. For when our lives have been transformed in just such a way, people will then be able to see in us who Jesus truly was-and is. You see, Luke's narrative about Mary's being open to change by God is also a call for us to be open to change by God. And during Advent, God is asking us, like Mary, to offer faith-filled consent to changes in our lives that will give birth to fresh expressions of God's word. As the German mystical theologian Meister Eckhardt stated some 700 years ago: "We are all meant to be mothers of God. For God is always needing to be born." Now, Mary has been a person rarely talked about among modern Protestants, although we here at Rutgers have tried to redress that circumstance by focusing our Advent study courses on her. Interestingly, the Protestant reformers of the 16th century were not at all silent about Mary. Martin Luther, John Calvin, Huldreich Zwingli-all of these leaders of the Protestant Reformation spoke of Mary with great warmth and dedication. They revered Mary as the peasant girl from Nazareth who, at God's initiative, had been snatched from an ordinary life to play such a great and historic role in God's drama of salvation. I believe our modern Protestant silence about Mary has stemmed largely from our desire to distance ourselves theologically from the Catholic Church, which within the past 150 years has elevated to the status of dogma two teachings about Mary that we Protestants uniformly reject: First, the teaching that Mary herself was conceived miraculously, conceived "immaculately"-that is, without original sin-a teaching dogmatized by Roman Catholics in 1854. And second, the teaching of the Bodily Assumption of Mary-the teaching that when Mary died she was taken into heaven, both soul and body-something that became Catholic dogma as recently as 1950. Well, I believe we Protestants have been correct to reject these two Catholic dogmas about Mary, for which there is no biblical basis at all. But I believe we have not been correct to overreact to these dogmas by totally ignoring Mary and the role she should be playing in our theology, her role as a model for human faith and faithfulness. I believe we Protestants should be talking about Mary far more than we do, and learning from her far more than we are accustomed to. In many ways, of course, Mary was not at all like most of us here this morning. When she received that announcement of her impending pregnancy, she was young-probably around 13 or 14 years old. And unlike most of us, she lacked any formal education. Also, she came not from a wealthy metropolis like New York but from a poor rural village. And she was not a citizen of the mightiest nation on earth but rather belonged to an an occupied people who were being sorely oppressed. Yes, in many ways Mary was quite different from us. But in at least two essential ways, Mary was absolutely like us. First, she was human, and second, she was imperfect. Yes, Mary was singled out by God not because she was so uniquely virtuous but because she was so commonly ordinary. Amidst all the ups and downs of her life, she, too, vacillated between belief and unbelief. She, too, struggled throughout her life with issues of doubt and faith-even at times, as the Bible tells us, fearing that her adult son had gone quite mad (Mark 3:20-21) and in the end losing him to a cruel and bloody death before coming to full faith in him, before coming to be numbered among his disciples following his death and resurrection (Acts 1:12-14). So Mary can indeed become for us an example of how God's grace continues throughout our lives to come to us in order to call us back from sin and to renew us in faith and faithfulness. Mary can be for us a reminder that we, too, at each new year's virginal beginning need to be open to receiving God's proffered gift of a transforming grace, the grace made known to us in Christmas love. And we need to be open to receiving that gift from God with Mary's spirit of cooperativeness, rather than with any trace of contrariness. But, of course, that's easier said than done. Few of us want to change even a little bit. And very few of us would ever welcome having our lives turned topsy-turvy. Yet in our Second Lesson, the song that Mary sings during her visit to her cousin Elizabeth, Mary celebrates the wondrously topsy-turvy effect that God has on human lives as pride is humbled and power is tumbled and the previous order of things is jumbled. You see, Advent and Christmas are not what the world imagines them to be-sugar and spice and everything nice. No, throughout these seasons God comes to us to ask that we let go of our worldly presuppositions and allow any of the sinful anchors of our security to be uprooted-so that we, too, like Mary, can bring God to birth in our world, so that we, too, like Mary, by working with God, can bring God's reign of joy and love and peace to earth. Mary is called "blessed" not because she simply gave birth to Jesus, but because upon hearing God's word she acted not at all contrary. She freely consented to letting it happen (cf. Luke 11:27-28). And it was Mary's faith-filled consent that enabled God to be born on earth. During this season we are asked to join with Mary in offering to God our personal faith-filled consent to God's desire to be born in our world. During this season we, too, are asked to say to God, "Here am I, a servant of the Lord; let it be with me as you wish." And by doing and saying that, we too, metaphorically speaking, can become mothers of God, giving birth in our own lives to the joy and love and peace that is God, to the joy and love and peace that stands in such perpetual need of coming to birth on earth. Let me tell you a true story. Willie had long ago lost touch with his family. He hadn't seen any of them for twenty years, during much of which time he had been on the streets, without work and homeless. Last June, he started sleeping on the steps of the 5th Avenue Presbyterian Church, where he was befriended and helped to feel worthy and secure. Around early November, he told various church workers that he was beginning to feel ready to make changes in his life and to find a job and get off the streets. But as a homeless person he couldn't imagine that anyone would actually offer him a job. That would require nothing short of a miracle. Then, one cold, wintry Advent night, the police arrived at the church to enforce the city's cold weather policy of taking all the homeless they could find, Willie among them, to Bellevue Hospital for assignment to an overnight shelter and a bus ride there. It was about 1:00 am, and amidst all the crowds and confusion at the admitting desk at Bellevue, Willie managed to slip out unseen and then to find his way to a subway station, where he boarded a train for his long night's journey. Early the next morning he emerged from the subway at what was for him an unusual place, not one of his familiar haunts. He began walking, and then suddenly, right in front of him, there miraculously appeared his own "angel Gabriel," in the form of the twenty-years-unseen brother-in-law of his brother. Right there, in midtown Manhattan. Now, the first miracle was that they had encountered each other at all. The second miracle was that after all those years they actually recognized each other and stopped to talk to each other. The third miracle was that Willie was able to tell this "angel" the true story of his condition and of his newfound willingness to change. And the fourth miracle was that this "angel" actually said to him: "Come tomorrow to the HAndH Bagel bakery in Brooklyn where I'm in charge, and I'll see what I can do for you." And finally, the fifth miracle was that the next day Willie actually showed up at the bakery, where it came to pass as had been spoken. His very own "angel," his brother's brother-in-law, gave him a job at $10 an hour and told him he could sleep in the bakery as an overnight security person until he could save enough money to get some place to live. Willie had consented to change, and a miracle happened. That day the joy and love and peace of God was born anew on earth. Ands Willie literally danced for joy. But having told this story, I've by no means completed my sermon. For you see, it's simply too easy a thing for us to acknowledge that homeless people, and others who are quite different from ourselves- that they should let God transform their lives. But it's a much harder thing for us to acknowledge that we, too, are ones who need to be changed, who need to let God transform our lives from sin into ever greater faithfulness. In this morning's corporate prayer of confession, we acknowledged sin-we acknowledged that we live casual lives, often ignoring God's commandments, that we violate God's image in ourselves and others, that we accept lies as truth, that we exploit our neighbors, that we abuse the earth, and that we refuse God's justice and peace-for example, in race relations, in international disputes. In that prayer, we proclaimed to God our willingness to change, and then, after hearing words of assurance, we sang certain words. Do you remember them? Please turn with me to page 3, and let us sing those words again: "O holy Child of Bethlehem, descend to us, we pray; cast out our sin and enter in, be born in us today. We hear the Advent angel the great glad tidings tell; O come to us, abide with us, Our Lord Emmanuel!" "Cast out our sin and enter in, be born in us today." Now, if we were serious when we offered that prayer and sang that response, then during this season, we, too, like Mary and like Willie, should be preparing ourselves for some dramatic transformations in our lives. For, like Mary, we, too, are meant to be mothers of God. You see, God is always needing to be born. And this Christmastime, God is asking to be born in us. Let us pray: Amen |
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