2 SAMUEL 7:4, 8-16

PSALM 132:8-15

ROMANS 16:25-27

LUKE 1:26-38

Sermon – December 18, 2005

During Advent, we keep running into people who don’t figure at all in the commercial, American “December holiday” extravaganzas all around us.

The first person we run into, who dominates the First Sunday of Advent, is Christ-who-is-yet-to-come, the future judge and ruler of all the world, more powerful than any other person or forces, who will end and mend this broken world in ways so spectacular it is almost hard to imagine. He is our ultimate hope. And yes, he is far, far too awesome and holy to fit under anyone’s tree.

The second person we run into is that wild man of the Judean wilderness, John the Baptist, fiercely preaching about – no, demanding repentance. Gosh, personal morality and social justice? I don’t see any statues of him at the mall. Certainly wouldn’t move the merchandise.

But today, on the last Sunday of Advent, we finally run into someone we think we know, someone we think makes us comfortable, someone who even is found in Christmas displays. Today, we celebrate Mary.

But how well do we really know her?

Mary, actually, is one of the more controversial figures in the Bible, and one about whom many traditions have grown up which are not in the Bible. The Roman Catholic church today teaches that Mary was conceived without sin (“the immaculate conception”) and was taken up into heaven without dying (“the bodily assumption”), both doctrines which are based on nothing in the Bible, are very recent (19^th and 20^th century in origin) and have been proclaimed as “infallible” by the popes.

Protestants over the years have reacted against those doctrines and the long-time medieval veneration of Mary by going to the other extreme of often minimizing her importance.

Episcopalians are, as usual, in the middle. We regard the Blessed Virgin Mary as a Major Saint, one of the “Hall of Famers” due great respect, like Peter and Paul, and worthy of emulation. But we give thanks for saints, we do not pray to saints, and we definitely do not think of any of the saints – even Mary – as superhuman. To do so would miss the point: the major saints are ordinary mortals like us who lived and died but who were chosen by God and inspired by God in extraordinary ways. Only Jesus was born without sin. Even Jesus died.

Then, of course, there are “pseudo-Christians” like retired Bishop Jack Spong of Newark, who sneer at the idea of a virgin conceiving and bearing a son. Well, if God can create the whole universe from nothing, how hard could it be for God to create a fertilized embryo inside the womb of a teenaged girl without the physical involvement of a man?

So, the creeds declare and I believe that, as the Bible states, “Jesus was conceived miraculously and born of a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David.” But that was hardly the only remarkable fact about the birth we will celebrate next weekend.

For Jesus’ conception was, in fact, the beginning of an extraordinary, revolutionary development in the relationship between God and humanity. Mary was, is and should indeed be wonderfully controversial – but not for any of the reasons I’ve mentioned.

A teenaged Palestinian Jewish girl of the first century like Mary had her life scripted for her. And she may not have felt the least bit oppressed, because everyone she knew would have been following the same script. Her life was scripted in broad strokes by her culture and in detail by first her father and then her husband (yes, that was assumed). “Career choices,” as we would call them, were strictly defined and concentrated on bearing and raising children. Status was based on who her father or husband was. Women as a group were second class at best. Men spoke for them. Including, until the incident related in today’s Gospel, to God.

All that changed nine months before the first Christmas. And the tremors from that mighty God-initiated societal earthquake have not nearly stopped yet.

When, nearly 2,000 years before Mary, the Hebrew people were about to begin because Sarah would miraculously become pregnant in her old age, the angel of the Lord came and told – Abraham.

(Sarah found out by eavesdropping.)

The same phrase was used: “For nothing will be impossible with God.”

All through the Old Testament the patriarchal domination, with a few exceptions, continued. And I found it to continue today among traditional Palestinian (Muslim) men I met on the archeological dig I served on while a college student. Our Palestinian archeologist talked about having “Two sons and three other children.” His own nickname was Abu Issa – which means “father of Issa” the name of his first born son, there being nothing more important than being the father of a son. A Bedouin chief who visited our expedition pointed to one of my female classmates and said to the chief of our expedition, “I’ll take that one,” fully expecting to be able to add her to his harem.

Imagine, ladies, if every man you ever met was like them! Then you have an idea of the kind of world Mary of Nazareth was born into.

Add to that the fact that, as a Jew, she was living as an oppressed person in a country occupied by a foreign, pagan power, the Roman Empire, which routinely suppressed uprisings by her people the way you or I might squash a bug. And, among Jews, she was living in a very unprestigious part of the country – think Arkansas – which was looked down on by the urban sophisticates and religious powers-that-be in Jerusalem.

How much power did this girl have?

And now, an archangel shows up and talks to her – not to her father or her fiancé or her rabbi or any other man, to her – and asks her if she is willing to be the means by which God will invade the world.

Suddenly, God’s personal messenger waits for the reply of a teenage, Jewish girl from a backwater province at the fringe of the Roman Empire. Suddenly, all social conventions and entrenched cultural norms and the well-muscled powers of the world are secondary, and history holds its breath.

“Then Mary said, ‘Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.’ Then the angel departed from her.” And then the liberation of the world could begin. In her womb.

Mary didn’t say, “Let me go and ask my father… or my fiancé.” Mary didn’t say, “God doesn’t talk to women, I must be a heretic, or having a nightmare I should ignore.” Mary didn’t even say, quite reasonably, “No one will believe me when I get pregnant. They’ll all think I’ve shacked up with someone else. If I’m lucky I won’t be executed,” as women were in those days if convicted of adultery.

Did this lady have guts or what? Did this lady have courage? Did she have faith?

She was awesome. In five minutes her life was changed more radically than anyone’s life ever had changed, and (until Joseph was clued in as an afterthought by another angel later) she had absolutely no one she could talk to about it. Except God.

And this, of course, was just the beginning. Joseph, a good but traditional Middle Eastern man, had to learn that yes, God could and did speak directly to women without asking anyone’s permission. Get used to it. He did. They became husband and wife, and according to the Bible (which Roman Catholics ignore on this question) they had several more children. And then Joseph, apparently, died before Jesus became an adult.

So Mary had to face the unique stresses of being Jesus’ mother not just in those cute Christmas card scenes in the manger, not just raising him and others as a widowed, single mother, but while he was preaching and people said he was crazy or devil-possessed, while he was doing miracles and becoming ever more controversial – and while he was whipped to a bloody pulp and strung up to die on a cross.

She was there.

Joseph was dead. None of their other kids even showed up.

Was she strong? Incredible. Was she “real”? Of course. Is she someone we can respect and be inspired by? Absolutely.

And yes, we even can seek to emulate her. No, no one else can be the Virgin Mother of Our Lord, but we can seek to live the prophetic values she gave voice to in her speech known as “the Magnificat”, which she gave (Luke 1:39-56) when she, pregnant, visited her relative Elizabeth, then pregnant with John the Baptist.

The medieval Church, as it grew richer, more powerful and more remote from the people, emphasized increasingly those aspects of Mary which were unique and unable to be imitated, because Mary, as a prophet was – and is – so subversive. Listen to this. She says of God, “He has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly, he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.”

If you’re lowly or hungry, this is good news: God is on your side. If, on the other hand, you’re proud, powerful, rich or on a throne, Mary is not bringing you good news. You’re “toast.”

No wonder the institutional church has often rushed to say other things about Mary instead of letting Mary speak for herself!

If you have a crèche at home, or an icon, or a Christmas card of Mary, or just a picture of her in your head, think about this incredible woman when you go home. Draw strength from her example.

And then lift up the lowly and fill the hungry with good things. Let the powerful and proud have as little influence on you as possible. God’s priorities; her words. “Mary, you rock!”

And one more thing – you don’t have to have been a first century teenaged Palestinian Jewish girl to have God ask you to do something unexpected and wonderful. You just have to be you.

Could happen. Look for it.

(The Rev.) Francis A. Hubbard

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church