SunDec212008
Remembering Mary –the Forgotten Mom
Lectionary: Romans 16:25 – 27, Luke 1:26 – 38.
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In talking to Hamilton on Wednesday night about this service, as he was preparing to join his family during this difficult time in their lives, I was pleased to learn of a focus in theme upon the person of Mary, Jesus’ mother. Special thanks to Kim and Natalie for their contributions to our morning of considering Mary. Bless you, ladies!
About 500 years ago during the Protestant Reformation, the doctrine and teaching about this little teenage mother of Jesus took a hit as being one of the contrived abuses of the Catholic Church. Over the decades the Catholic Church had nearly deified Mary in their appreciation of her place in the story of the Savior. They developed special doctrines about her that were based on church tradition and not the biblical record. As a result, when the Protestant forerunners looked for perceived abuses or heresies in the Catholic Church, they shredded the place of Mary, reducing her to a status not unlike a vessel that carried water. It had the same effect that removing the mother in the story of the three bears would have had on that story if we took her out. The story loses it impact and potential.
A lesson here for us to consider in passing is the human tendency to become almost fanatical and frantic when we are caught up in important change. The Protestant reformation was certainly an important time in history. Some call it God’s great Rummage Sale for through the Reformation huge errors were faced and purged from the church. Also during that time, but nearly never discussed, was a season of important change that occurred within the Catholic Church itself in the years following the break away of the protesters. While the protesters never returned to the Mother Church as they promised, the Mother Church did indeed make many, many of the changes that were being called for by these new Protestants. God’s renewal movements bring change and growth to all parts of the Christian family when they occur.
But today we look at Mary, this child by our standards, who bore within her the savior. This girl of low means, who for reasons we will never know or understand, was selected and used by God to fulfill the part of Christ’s birth that required that he follow the same life path that all humans follow. Jesus had to be somehow born and he needed a family within which he could survive and thrive. Jesus, like all of us, needed a loving, caring, protecting mom, and Mary was God’s choice.
I first became aware of our Protestant tendency to overlook Mary through a letter to the UCC churches in Ohio for our then Ohio Conference Minister, Rev. Tom Dipko I read some 25 years ago. In his letter Tom raised the question of what the church has lost in overlooking the remarkable nature and character of Jesus’ mom. He noted that in our enthusiasm 500 years ago to put down the perceived trappings of Catholic doctrine, we left an unfortunate casualty of the Christian understanding of Mary. Mary has an essential place in the life of Jesus, and thus, all of us.
I spoke with a good friend of mine about Mary this week. Daiv, one of my former youth group kids in Ravenna who has entered those ranks of being one of my greatest friends, decided to write me a few words about how he saw Mary. He admitted that he, too, had left her behind as a Protestant, and after some thought Daiv wrote this to me. First he began, as many of us as Protestants are likely to admit, saying self-revelation, “I've never thought of this stuff before now.......she was really an amazing human and mother!”
Then Daiv got to the heart of matter as he began to consider Mary: “I think Mary's big character strength is her faith to know it would all be okay, and also her ability to keep quiet and, as the Bible says she, "pondered all the things she had seen." She was clearly very wise, and that makes sense - she was being entrusted to raise God's Son and inculcate into him a lot of good characteristics and behavioral traits. She was in charge, along with Joseph, of protecting him as a child, as well as accommodating his supernatural essence - who knows the wild things she experienced as a mother to God-in-the-flesh?!! And, she was responsible to care for and nurture the Savior of the whole world for all times past and present - talk about a care taker and custodian of something precious. She guarded the most important person that ever lived - more important than the atom bomb or the monarchy in England or the invention of electricity.” In typical Daiv enthusiasm, he hits so many of the vital points that we too often forget or overlook about Mary.
In my own journey with Mary I have been blessed by the fact that know God’s selection in her so personally, struck by responses to the angel who revealed God’s plan to her, and helped by way she responded to having Jesus, the Savior, as her son. These are the points I’d like to share with you this morning.
Put yourself in Mary’s position as perhaps a 16 year old woman, although she may have been a bit younger. Our tendency is to compare her to a 16 year old today, which would be a mistake. In Mary’s day she was at a suitable age for marriage, and had likely been treated as a young woman, not an adolescent, for some time. So God was not “robbing the cradle” as some have suggested in modern times. Mary was an appropriate choice, and it was not her age that made her stand out to God. It was who she was as a person.
Can you imagine the criteria that God expected in the woman who would carry the messiah? Can you grasp what Mary’s character must have been like? I can only get glimpses for the only life I have to compare with Mary’s is my own. And I often I am shocked that God uses me at all. For I am selfish, clueless, opinionated. Sometimes I catch myself looking down on others, or judging them, or wanting to avoid. I have my own struggles with sin and being unkind, and all the rest. When I look at my own dark heart, I get a better idea of who the blessed woman was. For in her God saw sufficient reason to make an investment that changed the world.
God needed someone who would raise this infant in the right path, loving him, fussing at him, teaching him right from wrong, to raise him as all humans are raised. Jesus’ mix of divinity and the best earthly rearing would make a man who could, would, and did change the world. To fulfill his plan, God needed to find the perfect mom, and God’s gaze fell upon Mary.
My intention this morning is not to go overly long to make my point. And I think I said enough to get all of us to ponder Mary in new ways. So I conclude with this thought.
Catholics are often accused of worshiping Mary, but in fact, they don't worship her, but they have not lost their way in respecting Mary and acknowledging her place among all of God’s saints. Catholics venerate her, as we venerate others who display extraordinary devotion to God and to all of God’s children. Nobody ever accused The Beatles of being overly respectful to Catholicism, Christianity, or Jesus himself, but even they got it right:
When I find myself in times of trouble
Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.
And in my hour of darkness
She is standing right in front of me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.
Let it be, let it be.
Whisper words of wisdom, let it be.
Mary, like our own mothers, whispers words of wisdom and shows us a light, reminding us that in the darkness so we are not alone.
Amen.