Mary

Reading

Luke 1:39-56

Introduction

I've been asked to speak today about Mary, the mother of Jesus. As a Protestant who has worshipped in a variety of Protestant traditions, Mary has never had a high priority in my understanding of faith. Orthodox and Roman traditions have a very different view of Mary, venerating her almost (if not actually) above Jesus himself, calling her “The Mother of God” – which is something I can understand, within limits – or “The Queen of Heaven” – which is an idea I have no time for.

My wife and I went to Cyprus this year, and we visited some religious sites in the Troodos mountains. There are many small churches in that area with very ancient frescoes of religious scenes. We visited one of them and walked around, trying to understand what was depicted. One scene showed what seemed to be the visit of Gabriel to Mary, another the presentation of the infant Jesus at the temple. Then the guide joined us and put us straight: the images were not about Jesus, they were about Mary, the mother of Jesus. I discovered that there's a whole tradition about the birth, life, and death of Mary. Later research has shown that these traditions come from dubious post-New Testament apocryphal writings that reflect a growing veneration of Mary from the Second Century onwards.

Setting the Scene

Scripture itself says very little about Mary. In the old testament, she's an unidentified virgin who “shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Immanuel.” She has cameo roles in John's gospel and Acts. Matthew puts her in Joseph's shadow, and Mark doesn't mention her at all. Almost everything we can reliably know about Mary comes from Luke's gospel, and Jewish culture of the time fills in some of the background for us.

When we first encounter Mary in Luke's gospel, she's a young Jewish girl engaged to be married (by parental arrangement) to a decent Jewish boy with a reliable trade. So that makes her no older than 15 when the angel Gabriel appears.

As an ordinary Jewish girl, she'd have been well-versed in the Old Testament scriptures, and fully engaged in national and family festivals and celebrations and Sabbaths, and in synagogue worship. Family was important, and eastern cultures then, even as they do now, had a strong shame-and-honour basis.

Her parents had laid down a plan for Mary's life, and I'm sure she would have had hopes and dreams for what lay ahead of her with Joseph. Proverbs 19:21 says, “Many are the plans in a person's heart, but it is the Lord's purpose that prevails,” and Mary's plans were superseded when God's messenger, Gabriel, showed up. Mary's response to Gabriel—and all her responses in Luke's gospel—give us a clear example of the kind of response the Lord God Almighty expects from earth-bound believers.

She responds with:

• questioning doubt, but then
• simple acceptance, then
• faith from the heart

Questioning Doubt

As far as I know, I've never met an angel. I imagine that meeting one could be quite a shock! That seems to have been Mary's reaction: she “was greatly troubled at his words.” What had the angel said? “Greetings, you who are highly favoured! The Lord is with you.”

I don't know about you, but if a messenger from God came and said that to me I'd be delighted! Isn't that what we all want to be sure of? That we are highly favoured? That the Lord is with us? But Mary was troubled by the angel's greeting, and wondered what it might mean. In Mary's culture, as a woman, and a young one at that, she was a second class citizen; men got all the attention.

The angel's next words to Mary were, “Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favour with God.” Again, words we all want to hear but, actually, words that are true of all of us who belong to Jesus. Isn't it good to know that God is for us, not against us? And actually, at the birth of Jesus, the angels announced that God's favour is offered to all mankind. Because of Jesus, it's possible for all and any of us to find God's favour and salvation.

Mary was an ordinary, faithful, observant, Jewish girl. She was in the right family line, betrothed to a young man also in the right family line, and it was time for Messiah to come. And that's what the angel explained to Mary.

She was going to have a baby. She was to call him Jesus. He would grow up to be great. He would be called the Son of the Most High. He would sit on David's throne. His kingdom would never end.

As a Jewish girl, Mary would know about the promises God made to king David centuries before. So she points out an obvious flaw in the plan. “How will this be, since I am a virgin?” Good point!

There's nothing wrong with having doubts, although doubts can be of two kinds.

• The “I don't believe that!” kind are unhelpful; they're closed off and lead us away from faith. I heard a Jewish lecturer in Embryonics at Birmingham University say, “Parthenogenesis always gives rise to female offspring, so Mary wasn't a virgin.” (Parthenogenesis, by the way, is reproduction without the involvement of the male of the species, which some insects, fish, reptiles and birds can do—but not mammals.)
• The “How can this be?” kind of doubt leads us to questioning exploration, a search for answers. And God says that if we seek him we will find him. We may not always get the answers to our questions but, if we find God in our seeking, we can learn to live with them.

Mary asked a reasonable, rational question and she was given an answer: God is going to act out of the ordinary. This child is special. As evidence that God can do this, he's also enabled your relative Elizabeth to become pregnant in her old age. (You'll realise I'm paraphrasing very loosely here.) Nothing is impossible with God!

Nothing is impossible with God! There's a point my lecturer failed to grasp…

Simple Acceptance

“'I am the Lord's servant,' Mary answered. 'May your word to me be fulfilled.'”

This is a young woman with a right perspective in life. She is the Lord's servant. She's raised her questions, had them answered, and accepted that this is what God wants: who is she to resist?

Just think about what's being set in motion here. She's been told that she's going to have a baby, something that would normally be thrilling news! But—she's not married. What will mum and dad think? What about the neighbours? How will mum and dad cope with the shame? What will Joseph do? How will I ever live this down?

“I am the Lord's servant,” and that's enough for Mary. She's not just having any baby; she's having the most important baby ever. Whether the immensity of that has sunk in at this point we don't know but Mary is the Lord's servant. May God's will be done.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if we were more like Mary? So often, when we get an inkling of God's will for our lives, our response can be quite different. “That's not what I had in mind. This will ruin my career. My reputation will be in tatters. This can't be right—think about the consequences. Lord, I think you've got this wrong! I'm not the right person. Can't you send someone else?”

Mary has a simple acceptance of God's will and a quiet confidence in God's plan. It may be problematic for her but God is in it. And what did the angel say? “… no word from God will ever fail.”

Do you have an inkling of God's will for your life? Have your been wrestling against it for a while? It's time to stop fighting and to go with God's plan.

Perhaps you're being called simply to follow Jesus, to become a disciple, a Christian. Today would be a good day to accept God's gift of salvation.

Faith from the Heart

In recent years, televised depictions of these events have made much of the shame that would have been laid on Mary for having become pregnant out of wedlock. But Mary was not universally rejected as a harlot, as our reading clearly shows.

Mary hurried off to see Elizabeth, who was six months pregnant by then. “When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit.” And Mary's step of acceptance was rewarded with clear confirmation that she had it right.

The words Elizabeth spoke were a tremendous encouragement to Mary; affirming words in keeping with what the angel had said. Words that were spoken before Mary had any chance to explain her own encounter with the angel. She was convinced that God was in all that was about to happen to her. She knew she could count on Elizabeth's support.

She was so thrilled that she overflowed with joy! Here's my paraphrase of what she said:

I'm thrilled with God!
I'm a nobody but he's doing something with me that everyone forever will marvel at.
He's so good to everyone who trusts him, all through the ages.
He's done amazing things.
He's put those who think they're something back in their places.
And those who seem actually to be something, he's taken down a peg or two.
He's blessed the poor instead of letting the rich grab it all.
He's keeping his promises to his people.
He's blessing them just like he said he would,
all those years ago!

When we step out in simple faith to follow God's calling, confirmation of that calling will come, perhaps in unexpected ways. Faith pleases God; God responds to faith and encourages it.

By now, Mary's heart is full of faith; faith that will sustain her through the months and years to come.

And Mary has another quality: the ability to hold on to things God has said to her. We read about her treasuring up the things the shepherds told her, and pondering them in her heart (Lk 2:19); she marvelled at what was said about Jesus when they presented him at the temple for the first time (Lk 2:33); The things that the 12-year old Jesus said when they found him at the temple, she treasured in her heart (Lk 2:51).

Following through on my call to preach hasn't been easy. I almost gave up at one point. But I can recall words of prophecy and encouragement that have been spoken into my life down the years, words that even now help me to keep going. We have to remember the words God speaks purposefully into our lives. When the going gets tough, rely on God's promises.

Plain Sailing?

If God has a plan for our lives, shouldn't everything be plain sailing? When we hit obstacles, doesn't that show we made a mistake—that we heard God wrong?

At this point in her life, Mary knew about God's big picture but she had no detail about what was going to happen, and she didn't have an easy time of it.

• Would Joseph still want her? Well God sorted that one out by sending Gabriel to have a word with Joseph.
• Then they had to go on the run to Egypt to get away from king Herod, who was hell-bent on destroying any rival for his throne.
• Once Herod was out of the way, they came back from Egypt to a remote existence in an unimpressive rural backwater known as Nazareth. “Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?” says Nathanael in John's gospel.
• She and Joseph had more children, but then Joseph disappears from the record with the most likely reason being that he died. Mary had to face all the challenges of Jesus' public ministry and execution without support from Joseph. 
• She suffered the loss of Jesus himself and, as foretold, a sword of pain pierced her own soul. Perhaps only those among us who have lost children can imagine how painful it must have been for Mary to watch Jesus die on a Roman cross.

The last we read about Mary is in Acts, after the resurrection and ascension of Jesus. Luke records, “They all joined together constantly in prayer, along with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers.”

Remember Mary's words: “I am the Lord's servant. … May your word to me be fulfilled.”

Mary had been God's choice. She had been the right choice.

Remember the angel's words: “… no word from God will ever fail.”

God's plan, and Mary's role in it, had been fully accomplished.
Challenge

Mary's story shows us that no one is too ordinary for God to use, even in extraordinary ways.

When God calls, let's be like Mary and respond in simple faith.

We may have reasonable doubts or questions, but let's not let them stop us moving forward.

Opposition doesn't mean we're wrong. It means we have to rely on God's promises.