There’s Something About Mary
By Patty Friesen
Luke 1:39-45
I can remember the first time our Catholic neighbour friends took us to church at the St. Thomas More parish in our northern Alberta town. In the lobby of the church was a huge statue of Mary with a crown on her head, dove eyes raised to heaven, hands clasped in a beseeching gesture. She was so ethereal, so holy. I was mesmerized. Then my friend said that they prayed to Mary to intercede for them before God. I asked Mom why we didn’t have a statue of Mary in our Mennonite church who interceded for us. Mom said, “We don’t pray to Mary. Jesus is our intercessor, not Mary.”
At that point in my adolescent life, I needed all the people I could get to talk to God for me. I imagined praying before Mary in our little crèche set at home. I’ve been secretly seeking Mary ever since, an undercover Mennonite admirer of the mother of Jesus. There’s something about Mary that I need.
Our Anabaptist ancestors got rid of Mary, as did the Lutherans, the Church of England and other Protestant reformers. Our church buildings and prayers are devoid of any reference to Mary. The reformers thought devotion to Mary had gotten way out of control. Pre-Vatican II theology claimed that not only was Mary a virgin, but she also was born of a virgin Anna. It got complicated to imagine how many virgin births it took to be pure enough to conceive Jesus. Vatican II later adapted its theology of Mary saying, “Devotion to Mary is legitimate, but is never to be equated with devotion to God and Christ.”
Modern Christian women are working out new images of Mary. Some believe the emphasis on Mary’s virginity has had disastrous consequences on women. If the point of Mary’s quality to bear God is her being a virgin, what does that mean for the rest of us who are not? Kathleen Norris in The Cloister Walk reflects that virginity is not merely a physical state but a spiritual state, reflecting our heart’s devotion, which has been preserved solely for God. In this respect all of us, men and women who have open hearts, are pure enough to bear God within us.
Let us look to the gospels to discover who Mary is and what her role might be for we Anabaptists. Mary first appears in the Gospel of Matthew in Matthew’s long genealogy of the people of God. Mary appears along with other women in the genealogy: Tamar, Ruth and Bathsheba, all foreign women with scandalous pregnancies. Mary fits right into the family tree of unlikely female candidates who have been chosen by God for the salvation of God’s people. Matthew’s intent is to remind the puritan Jewish community of their own questionable origins – that they may be humble and open to the work of God in new ways. In the same way, our own genealogies humbly remind us of the crooked branches in our family trees.
We glean from the gospels that Mary at a marriageable age to Joseph must be young, an adolescent. And she must be strong, for in today’s scripture she hikes pregnant from Nazareth to where her cousin Elizabeth lives in the hill country. Mary is no pale-faced passive blonde with downcast eyes and a halo around her head as art often depicts her. She is young, strong, dark-haired and dark-skinned, from Palestine and can hike over mountains and ride a donkey for 50 miles in her ninth month. She is active and takes initiative. She is not chosen because she is pure or even because she is the perfect mother. In the gospels, she is a real nag. She is chosen to bear Jesus because she says Yes despite her faults.
In Luke’s gospel, Mary is the first person to receive God’s grace. The angel Gabriel tells her, “You have found favour with God.” There is no description of her virtues, no description of her virginity or even of her obedience. It doesn’t matter if she responds to Gabriel’s message or not. God has simply looked upon her and loved her as she is in all her adolescent awkwardness and angst. It is this experience of the outpouring of God’s love that makes her open to God’s call on her life. The fact that she says Yes to carrying Jesus, makes her the first disciple to give her life over to his.
Mary is going to need to ponder God’s love and favour throughout her pregnancy to get her through the drama of it. Indeed, through her pregnancy Mary becomes a practiced ponderer the rest of her life. Everytime Jesus does something bizarre in the gospels Mary ponders it in her heart. She reflects on who Jesus is and what God is up to in the world. She alone knows who Jesus really is. This knowledge often creates tension between Jesus and her when she wants him to reveal who he is but Jesus is not ready to be outted. Mary and Jesus have several mother-son clashes. She is always following him around, telling him to turn water into wine and to heal people. Not because she wants to show him off but because she knows he is here to do God’s work and she is ready for God’s kingdom to be revealed, even if no one else is. Jesus has to tell her several times to back off a bit.
But Mary follows Jesus right to the cross. None of the other disciples followed him to the cross. Mary was not afraid to be implicated with Jesus because she knows who he is. She is present at his burial and returns to anoint his body out of love and devotion. She, more than anyone could have imagined the possibility of a resurrection because she knows who Jesus really is. The gospels record her presence at the resurrection and actively involved in the early church. Acts 1:14, “the disciples all joined together constantly in prayer, along with the women, and Mary, the mother of Jesus.”
Mary is a key disciple and leader for the early church. She is the eyewitness of Jesus’ life from the beginning and it is likely, because of her relationship with the disciples that they relied on her for the writing of the gospels. Her life long meditations and ponderings have led to how we know about Jesus today. No wonder she was dearly loved by the disciples and became revered in the early church through their writings and artwork. Mary is great, not only because she gave birth to Jesus, but because she was a follower and believer her whole life long.
Mary has become a beloved, accessible figure of faith for all people throughout the world. At Mary’s chapel in Nazareth, there is a promenade of artwork depicting Mary from around the world, as an Ukranian peasant girl, as a Vietnamese woman working in the rice paddies, as an African mother with a baby on her back. Believers throughout the world have made her in their own image to give them strength for whatever their lives and struggles may be. Mary is the Lady of Guadelupe for the indigenous people of Latin America and their struggles for dignity. She is Our Lady of Lourdes for all who are sick. She is Our Lady of Fatima for those who work for peace. She has a thousand faces. What might be the face of Mary for we Mennonites?
As Anabaptists, we believe in following Jesus the whole nine yards, in giving our lives to him, even if it costs us our lives. In this respect, Mary is fits our theology as one who also followed Jesus faithfully her whole life whatever the cost. She is a wonderful example along with our other heroines of faith, Marguerite Satler and other unnamed women whose spiritual state was pure and open to the movement of God in their lives and who were faithful unto death. We need heroines of faith and we need Mary.
Mary is no different than any one of us. The fact is that God has found favour with each one of us. We may not been visited by angels but we have certainly have known the love of God from our families and our upbringing. Some have had a mystical experience of God’s outpouring love during a traumatic time. God wants all of us bear the presence and love of Jesus within if we are open to saying Yes to that.
Mary’s faith-filled partnership with God is underscored in her prayer the Magnificat, the longest set of words places on the lips of any woman in the whole New Testament. She is in the embrace of her cousin Elizabeth; Zechariah has been struck dumb; the house is now women’s space and they fill it with a prophetic language of faith. Mary launches into divine praise. Her spirit rejoices in God her Saviour, for poor and common woman though she may be, the powerful, living, holy God is doing great things for her. Not for her only but for all the poor – bringing down the mighty from their thrones, exalting the lowly, filling the hungry with good things. She herself embodies what God has begun in the world, the liberation of all peoples.
Mary is a partner in hope in the company of all the graced women and men who have gone before us. May we be encouraged by her mothering of Jesus to bring him to birth in our own world. May we reclaim the power of her pondering the ways of God, for our own deeper relationship with the living God and stronger care for the world.
Let us pray:
Gracious God, visit us as you visited Mary. Remind us that you have found favour with us. Fill us also with your new life and strength that we may follow you all our days. Amen.