Luke 1:39-55
December 23, 2018
I.
Mary, pregnant with a child that an angel informs her about and which she consents to bear, goes to visit Elizabeth, her elderly aunt who is also miraculously pregnant. These two women will bear the future of the world into the world. The older of the two babies will become John the Baptizer, the Forerunner of the Messiah; and the younger, of course, is Jesus the Messiah himself.
Filled with the Holy Spirit, God’s very breath that permeates and enlivens everything in creation, Elizabeth greets Mary with the words, “Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb!” And then she pointedly refers to Mary as “the mother of my Lord.”
Elizabeth recognizes, in other words, that this child whom Mary is carrying is even more miraculous than an ordinary baby. She ratifies the bizarre and traumatic experience Mary has with the angel Gabriel. And she affirms that Mary is nothing less than “the mother of [her] Lord.”
That does not simply mean that Mary’s child will be a great leader, rabbi, or even the promised Messiah, all of which are true, of course. Remember that the title, “the Lord,” is the primary euphemism in the Hebrew Scriptures for the God of Israel, whose holy Name is forbidden to be pronounced (except once a year on the Day of Atonement by the High Priest in the Holy of Holies in the Temple). Elizabeth, therefore, is giving Mary the title, “Mother of God.”
Having been raised, educated, and ordained as a Presbyterian, I have always assumed that the very idea that God could have a mother was somewhat absurd and ridiculous. Though in seminary I did learn that, technically, in terms of orthodox Christology, it makes necessary, logical sense. If Jesus is God, and Mary is his mother, then she is indeed the Mother of God. Presbyterians do accept that… but we never talk about it. We dutifully check off that dogmatic box because we have to, and then we move on.
But what if this is all more important than we Protestants have ever allowed? What if our theology and spirituality have been somewhat bereft and impoverished because we neglected or diminished the appropriate role of Mary? What if we have been cutting ourselves off from something deeply important, something that connects us to the faith of the early church? What insight and wisdom might we gain by paying attention to Mary’s role as the Mother of God?
What we are liable to lose due to our reticence about calling Mary the Mother of God comes from the fact that the logic works both ways. If Mary is the mother of Jesus but not the mother of God, then Jesus isn’t God. So who Mary is for us relates directly to who Jesus is for us. That’s the real question upon which everything else depends, including who we take Mary to be and how we talk about her.
II.
From the earliest days the church, one of the primal confessions of faith in Jesus is the simple affirmation that “Jesus is Lord!” The political implication of that is that Caesar is not Lord… and neither are the leaders, celebrities, and authorities of our age. They are all fallible and wrong all the time. There is only one Lord.
And the spiritual meaning of that confession is that Jesus is God, as the New Testament says many times. Indeed, this is the beginning of Christian faith; it is not something we induced from analyzing the data. It is what we have to trust and accept first, even before we understand it, which most of us never do. But it is the lens through which we view the world and by which we see the truth.
On the basis of this confession that Jesus is God, Mary delivers her famous hymn about her unborn son. This hymn basically proves her status as the Mother of God because it proves that the One to whom she will give birth is the God of Israel. For no one else could do, or would even imagine doing, the things she predicts of her son.
Mary recognizes that God is about reversal of the world’s orders. From the very beginning, when God miraculously liberates a band of slaves from Egypt, the most powerful empire on the planet, neutralizing Pharaoh and using nature to cripple his economy and wipe out his army, God has been turning our world upside down. God has always been lifting up the powerless and poor, and bringing down the privileged elites. That kind of thing is God’s very signature. Mary’s song is a template of God’s work in the world; it will be the outline of Jesus’ whole ministry, starting before his birth.
One of the greatest Americans who ever lived, and a great disciple of Jesus, is Sojourner Truth. She herself does God’s work by liberating countless people from slavery in the 1850’s. And she famously reminds the men who were trying to silence her just exactly how Jesus Christ comes into the world. It is through God and a woman. Man has nothing to do with it, she says. No powerful man can go around boasting that Jesus is his doing.
Which means that Jesus, even before he is born, is already about overturning the normal, accepted, established domination system. God always makes a point of dispensing with precisely the people who proclaimed themselves indispensable by grabbing power for themselves. The affirmation that Jesus is Lord and Caesar isn’t, extends even to all the little Caesars who think they are in charge of other people’s bodies, right down into communities, households, and relationships.
One reason why people are confused about the Virgin Birth is that they assume God is just a super-powerful man, like Caesar on steroids. They think God is like a king who came down and had his way with Mary. And the Caesars of the world have made a point of propagating this ideology, propping themselves up as God’s agents. As if God needs them and depends on them; as if God wouldn’t dare come into the world without their permission and action.
III.
But just the opposite is true. Our God is the anti-Caesar. God is the One who dethrones Caesars and kings, bosses and owners, executives and judges, sires and generals. Indeed, Mary’s pregnancy is from the Holy Spirit, who is, according to the Hebrew, Ruach, a feminine Presence who envelopes, subsumes, and overwhelms her in love.
The same Spirit inspires Elizabeth to offer her words of praise, and call Mary the Mother of God. It is only by the Spirit that we recognize Jesus’ Presence in the world. And the Spirit tells us to look in the places that the world has decided are the least likely. For Elizabeth this is her mysteriously pregnant niece.
Mary’s great hymn, sung by her when she could have been as young as about 14, in the presence of an elderly woman, summarizes for us the Wisdom and power of the true and living God. The real God does not trickle down to us through layers of wealth, bureaucracy, and power. The real God enters the world from the lowest place, filtering up, infusing everything with light from within. The real God expands widely out from the ordinary.
God’s strength is indicated by action that is radically contrary to the gravity of the world. Instead of solidifying the order and stacking of human power, God dissolves it, undermines it, shakes it to its foundations.
God scatters the proud and brings down the powerful, Mary says.
God lifts up the lowly and fills the hungry, Mary says.
God sends the rich away empty, Mary says.
These are all things we will see Jesus do in his ministry. He heals the sick. He welcomes the outcast and excluded. He liberates the oppressed and possessed. He even raises the dead. He points out God’s presence in birds, animals, and flowers. He feeds the hungry. He empowers the powerless.
At the same time he has severe words for the leaders and the privileged. He sternly warns those whom he says have already received their reward by gaining wealth in this existence.
And he begins to gather together an alternative community, outside of the influence and authority of the establishment, beholden only to God and each other, in him, fed by him, obedient to him.
Jesus doesn’t do any of this from a position of power-over. Rather, his divine power is made manifest in his self-emptying, self-giving generosity, compassion, and love. Finally, he fulfills his own mission, fully revealing himself as our God and King, in the offering his own life for the life of the world. He dies a shameful human death on a Roman cross, pouring out his own blood to purify and sanctify creation itself, and then rises to new life in resurrection, and ascends to be everywhere. In this he reveals to us our true destiny.
IV.
Who is Jesus Christ for us? He is the God of creation, who self-empties, pouring out compassion and love. He is the God who is born of Mary without owing anything to the sinful powers of the world. He is the God who offers life to us on the cross, and feeds us with his own body and blood. He is the God whose life and nature we share in by participating in his offering, as we empty ourselves in love for all.
This is what is at stake here. It is why we need to open our eyes with Elizabeth and see in Mary the Mother of our Lord, the very Mother of God.
+++++++
