As a college student I was incredibly lucky to hear William Willimon preach on Sundays. Now a bishop in the United Methodist Church, he was at that time the Dean of Duke Chapel. One day a student, distressed that he was losing his faith, came to Willimon. The two began discussing the student’s faith—what it was exactly that he was losing. Finally it surfaced that the student had trouble believing in the Virgin Birth of Jesus—it just wasn’t something he could buy into anymore. The first thing Willimon did was to suggest that the student focus on the gospel of Mark, since that gospel begins when Jesus is 30 years old and doesn’t even mention Jesus’ birth. But the student protested: “Don’t I need to believe the miraculous birth of Jesus in order to believe in Jesus? Don’t I need to believe this miracle to be a Christian?”
“In one sense, ‘no,’” Willimon answered. “Yet in another sense, ‘yes.’ We ask you to believe in the virginal conception of Jesus and, if we can get you to swallow that without choking, then there’s no telling what someone can get you to believe. Come back next week and we’ll try to convince you that the poor are royalty and the rich are in big trouble, that God, not nations, rules the world, and on and on. We start you out with something small, like the virgin birth, and then work you up to even more outrageous assertions.”[1]
August 15th is the Feast of Saint Mary the Virgin. But what exactly are we celebrating? Who exactly are we celebrating? After all, Mary isn’t portrayed uniformly among the gospels. Matthew and John seem to diminish her role in the Incarnation. In the gospel of Matthew, the angel comes to Joseph in a dream and we never hear Mary’s account at all. In the gospel of John, we don’t hear about Mary until the wedding at Cana when she complains to Jesus that the wine has run out. And Mark doesn’t mention her at all in his gospel.
Of course, in the gospel of Luke, Mary takes on a crucial supporting role—that of theotokos, or God-bearer. But she’s not in Luke’s story just to perform a biological function. For Luke, Mary is a prophet! She boldly announces God’s faithfulness to Israel, proclaims justice for the oppressed, and declares the goodness and mercy of God in the here and now.
First comes the call itself, along with the specific task the prophet is commissioned to carry out. For the prophet Moses, to whom the Lord spoke from a burning bush, the mission was to go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt. For Isaiah, the commission came in a vision of the Lord sitting on a throne surrounded by heavenly beings: “Go and say this to my people…” For Jeremiah, the word comes: “Before you were born I consecrated you, I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” And then there’s Mary. An angel appears to her, saying: You will conceive in your womb and bear a son.”
Next, there always seems to be an objection from the prophet—a reason why he or she is inadequate to the task or why the task itself is impossible. Moses proclaimed himself slow of speech and slow of tongue, Isaiah lamented his unclean lips, and Jeremiah protested that he was only a boy. Mary also voices the impossibility of her task: “How can this be, since I am a virgin?”
But here’s the thing: God never seems to pay attention to the prophet’s objections, never weighs the unlikeliness of the whole endeavor and decides to go with another plan. Instead, what the prophet receives is reassurance and a promise that God is with them. To Moses: “I will be with your mouth and teach you what you are to speak.” For Isaiah, a hot coal to the lips removes the sins that he sees as an obstacle. Jeremiah hears: “You shall speak whatever I command you, for I am with you to deliver you.” And Mary receives the reassurance that the Holy Spirit will come upon her, and that nothing is impossible with God.
Finally, we see acceptance on the part of the prophet. For Mary, it comes in the form of these words: “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Unfortunately, this statement of acceptance has been used throughout the history of the Church to paint a picture of Mary as a quiet, purely passive woman. But nothing could be further from the truth.
Because in the fist chapter of Luke, Mary embraces her role as prophet and speaks. She takes the call from God and adds her own voice to it, breaking into a song which the Church calls the Magnificat. And here we find a story that may actually be harder to believe than the Virgin Birth itself.
Just like the trajectory William Willimon laid out for that Duke student, the first chapter of Luke starts with something small like the Virgin Birth, and then works up to some truly outrageous assertions—that those who are powerful are being brought down and those who are lowly raised up, that those who are hungry are being filled with good things and those who are wealthy sent away hungry, that an unwed pregnant woman in first-century Palestine will be called blessed by all generations.
In Mary’s song we find the bold assertions that God can act in the world, that those acts turn the systems of the world upside down, and that at the base of all these reversals lies the goodness, mercy, and faithfulness of God.
So, we might ask, God is acting in the world and Mary is a prophet, but what does this mean for us? How does it change what I do? Well, I think the Church has done Mary a disservice in two ways. First, some Christians see Mary as an icon of piety and perfection, and we place her on a pedestal. We see her as having such a special status that she becomes irrelevant to our daily lives as Christians. Second, many Christians who are uncomfortable with this elevation of Mary have responded by dismissing her altogether. We assuage our discomfort at the reverence shown to Mary by choosing not to talk about her at all, that is, outside of a passive character in the Christmas pageant.
But to be faithful to Mary’s role in the Incarnation demands that we do neither one of these; instead, it requires that we actually see Mary and not ignore her, and it requires that we see her as one of us (as just like us). In fact, Meister Eckhart, a Dominican theologian, philosopher and mystic who lived in the 13th and 14th centuries, once said that “we are all meant to be mothers of God”—in other words, we are all meant to be Mary.
If that’s true, then just what might it look like to be Mary today? If we’re called to sing the Magnificat in a key, rhythm, and style unique to our own place and time, then what would our song be today? What would it mean to embrace the prophet in us? What could it look like not to just proclaim the goodness of God with our lips, but to carry that truth in our body as well and to give birth to it in the world—like Mary did?
Even an occasional glance at the news and we know that our world still needs to experience a new story. The world still needs to believe that a new way of being is possible. We still need to hear that a world shaped by God’s tremendous love and goodness isn’t a pipedream, but a reality that God can birth through and with and in us—a world in which KKK and Neo-Nazi slogans go unmuttered, a world where violence isn’t met with more violence, where trust in God’s provision enables us to open our hands in generosity, where there are no winners or losers but only an entire creation wrapped in God’s love.
So spend some time today asking yourself what it might look like to embrace the prophet, the Mary, in you. Don’t bother with all the usual objections—God doesn’t usually listen to those anyway when it comes to prophets. Instead, look at the world around you and write your own Magnificat. Imagine all the possible ways you could give birth to Christ, all the places you could be the presence of Christ. Start with the Virgin Birth if you’d like, and then dare to move on to the truly outrageous assertions of our faith.
[1] As told by Jay Carlson at http://metrolutheran.org/2010/12/the-song-of-mary-is-our-song-too/.
[2] In Mary, the Reluctant Prophet at http://www.patheos.com/Progressive-Christian/Mary-Reluctant-Prophet-Alyce-McKenzie-12-17-2012.
An Honest Hope 