The Apostle Paul never mentions her and John never gives her a name. In Mark, she comes to take Jesus home when she thinks he’s gone mad. In Matthew, she’s talked about rather than spoken to – but she does, at least, make it to the empty tomb.
However, in Luke, she’s present, she has a name, and she has a voice. She’s not only spoken to, but she responds as well. Responds memorably, powerfully and poetically.
Of course, I’m talking about Mary, the mother of Jesus.
Awkward
The protestant church often has an awkward history when it comes to Mary. But in the Church of England there are more church buildings dedicated to St Mary than to any other saint.
Our Gospel comes just after another seemingly impossible announcement by Gabriel and another highly favoured lady. That time it was Elizabeth, the cousin of Mary, who we’re told was barren and elderly. Well, she’s still one but not the other. Still elderly but now she’s pregnant and declares: “This is what the Lord has done for me when he looked favourably upon me…”
If you look, you’ll see that the angel’s confession to Mary that “nothing is impossible with God” is about Elizabeth as much as it’s about Mary.
Perplexed and pondered
We’re told Mary was perplexed and pondered at the words of the angel. But that’s not to the news that she too will become pregnant – the angel has not even got to that part yet. Mary is perplexed and pondering at just Gabriel’s opening words to her: “Greetings, favoured one! The Lord is with you.”
And instead of “favoured one”, the Greek wording can also be translated as “full of grace.” Not full of grace in the future but the Greek suggests that she has already been and is now full of grace.
You can imagine, can’t you: “Me? I’m nobody from nowhere. How am I favoured? How am I already full of grace? In what way is the Lord with me?”
Will I even survive?
Then Gabriel drops the big news. Not just pregnant, but Son of God pregnant.
And Mary responds to the angel with a whole barrage of questions: “What will my parents say? What will Joseph do? Will I get dragged into the square and stoned when the neighbours find out? Who will help me when my time comes? He might reign over the House of Jacob but will I even survive the birth?”
Well, actually, she could have quite fairly asked all of those things – but no, she didn’t. “How can this be?” It’s her only question. “How can this be?”
A few verses later it becomes “Here am I, the servant of the Lord: let it be with me according to your word.” In the space between we move from the absence of God to the presence of God and the fulfilment of his promises. The peasant girl becomes a prophet. From Mary to mother.
Mary’s story should move us all from whom we think we are… to what God has called us to be. At the same time, God is transformed too. With Mary, the Most High God becomes a vulnerable, helpless, baby in a manger. Dependent on humankind for his survival. That is the promise of Christmas. Mary helped to transform God. This Christmas and beyond, how is God transformed by you and by me?
God bearer
Mary has a special place. In the eastern church she is known as Theotokos, ‘the God bearer’. She carried, gave birth, nursed and raised the Son of God. She’s the only person who has been asked to do that – but this story can’t fail to make us question how we respond when choices are placed before us too.
We might think we have our future mapped out but we don’t really know what’s round the corner. Good things happen and bad things happen. Perhaps a job opportunity or an unexpected chance to move location. Or sudden ill health, or an unanticipated death, or a change in the economy. We too might find ourselves in a yes/no situation. Yes, I’ll take a risk or no, I won’t.
Maybe we say “no” and drop our eyes until we think that our angel has left the room. We go back to our own equivalent of spinning or reading, which is often what Mary is depicted as doing in the paintings when the angel arrives. We put our energies into ignoring what’s happening to us. And maybe our angel returns a couple of times more and asks again – but eventually the angel stops coming.
Smuggle God
Or maybe we take a chance and say “yes”. It’s not the life we planned and we don’t really know what we’re doing or how to do it. But we do it anyway with no guarantees of what the final outcome will be. As Barbara Brown Taylor puts it: ‘We agree to smuggle God into the world inside our own bodies.’
It doesn’t mean we’re not afraid. It just means that we don’t let the fear stop us. We collectively say our own: “Here we are: let it be with us according to your word.” We each become another Theotokos, willing to bear God into the world.
What good is it to me?
The medieval theologian, Meister Eckhart, wrote: “We are all meant to be mothers of God. What good is it to me if this eternal birth of the divine Son takes place unceasingly but does not take place within myself? And, what good is it to me if Mary is full of grace if I am not also full of grace? What good is it to me for the Creator to give birth to his Son, if I do not also give birth to him in my time and culture?”
So, today, I wonder if this church is full of unseen angels saying to each one of us: “Greetings, favoured ones! The Lord is with you. Do not be afraid. For nothing will be impossible with God.”
Gabriel
And I could have finished there but instead, I want to end, not with us, but with the Angel Gabriel. He’d already been busy with Zechariah, announcing the birth of John the Baptist (Luke 1:13-17). Earlier in the OT, he explains a vision to the prophet Daniel about the end times (8:15-27). In the Book of Judges an angel comes to Gideon and says to him those exact same words: “the Lord is with you.” And big chunks of his dialogue with Mary are similar to our passage from 2 Samuel 7 (verses 12, 13 and 16), though oddly the Lectionary leaves some of the verses out. With all his vast experience, what was in Gabriel’s mind with his most important task yet, as he approached Mary?
We don’t know, of course, but we can idly ponder and speculate. This is a poem by Jan Richardson, called:
Gabriel’s Annunciation…
For a moment
I hesitated
on the threshold.
For the space
of a breath
I paused,
unwilling to disturb
her last ordinary moment,
knowing that the next step
would cleave her life:
that this day
would slice her story
in two,
dividing all the days before
from all the ones
to come.
The artists would later
depict the scene:
Mary dazzled
by the archangel,
her head bowed
in humble assent,
awed by the messenger
who condescended
to leave paradise
to bestow such an honour
upon a woman, and mortal.
Yet I tell you
it was I who was dazzled,
I who found myself agape
when I came upon her—
reading, at the loom, in the kitchen,
I cannot now recall;
only that the woman before me—
blessed and full of grace
long before I called her so—
shimmered with how completely
she inhabited herself,
inhabited the space around her,
inhabited the moment
that hung between us.
I wanted to save her
from what I had been sent
to say.
Yet when the time came,
when I had stammered
the invitation
(history would not record
the sweat on my brow,
the pounding of my heart;
would not note
that I said
“Do not be afraid”
to myself as much as
to her)
it was she
who saved me—
her first deliverance—
her “Let it be”
not just a declaration
to the Divine
but a word of solace,
of soothing,
of benediction
for the angel
in the doorway
who would hesitate
one last time—
just for the space
of a breath
torn from his chest—
before wrenching himself away
from her radiant consent,
her beautiful and
aweful “yes”. Amen
‘Mothers of God’ was delivered by Ian Banks at Christ Church Walmersley on 24th December 2023. It was based on Luke 1:26-38
References:
- http://adventdoor.com/2014/12/19/advent-4-gabriel-and-mary/
- https://www.blanchflower.org/cgi-bin/qsaint.pl
- Brown Taylor, B. (1995). Gospel Medicine. Cowley.
- https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/fourth-sunday-of-advent-2/commentary-on-luke-126-38
- https://www.academia.edu/45154934/Full_of_Grace_A_Text_Analysis_on_Luke_1_26_38