Mary (Maria Hearl)

The candles that we light during Advent represent the forerunners of Jesus: firstly the patriarchs, secondly the prophets, thirdly John the Baptist and now, on this fourth Sunday of Advent, the Church looks at Mary the mother of Jesus.

We find very little about Mary in Scripture. The four gospel writers mention different aspects of her life, so we need to put them all together to get a composite picture. If we were an evangelical church with pew bibles I could get you all to leaf backwards and forwards, to pore over different passages, thoroughly confusion you. Instead I have, for once, produced a handout.

The early life of Jesus seems to have held no interest for Mark or for John.

Matthew, as you see, states baldly that as a young unmarried woman Mary ‘was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit’; he describes how an angel appears to Joseph, to whom she was engaged, and informs him that the child is from the Holy Spirit and therefore he should not be afraid to marry her. The account makes it clear that Mary and Joseph had ‘no marital relations’ until after the birth of her son whom they named Jesus – more of this later.

Luke gives a more detailed account: an angel appears to Mary, who goes to visit to her pregnant cousin; we read of the birth of the baby at Bethlehem and the arrival of the shepherds – the story we know so well.

Luke also writes of Mary’s purification following the birth of Jesus, coupled with his presentation in the temple; many Jewish women were not purified after each birth – the journey to the temple was expensive so best wait until they had finished their family; Mary and Joseph must have been devout enough and have had sufficient resources to make the trek to Jerusalem – even if they did offer the sacrifice that poor families were allowed to – the pair of turtle doves or pigeons. Luke writes of Simeon and Anna’s reaction to Jesus. Simeon tells Mary directly that her son ‘is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed’ and warns her that ‘a sword will pierce your own soul too’ – more of this later.

Matthew relates the story of the wise men from the East visiting the Holy Family – by now in a house, rather than a stable, and goes on to recount how Joseph with his wife and child escaped to Egypt – where, incidentally, there was a large Jewish population living – before returning home.

Finally, in Jesus’ childhood, Luke gives us an account of his parents taking him up to the temple again, losing him and finding him there debating with the teachers; after this Jesus goes back with Mary and Joseph and lives in obedience to them.

Fast forward some 15-20 years and the gospel writers give us their varied accounts of Jesus’ adult life only touching on Mary’s role in it. John starts the ball rolling with the account of a wedding at Cana in which Jesus’ mother intervenes over the provision of wine; in response to her intervention Jesus performs his first miracle. Then Mary, Jesus and his brothers go back to Capernaum.

Interestingly all three of Matthew, Mark and Luke describe an incident when Mary together with Jesus’ brothers turn up at a time when he was surrounded by his disciples; they wanted to talk to him – we don’t know what about. But Jesus does not act as a dutiful son and put family commitments before his life’s work; instead he indicates that he now has a far more important family – perhaps this is the start of the piercing of Mary’s soul that Simeon talked about.

The next passages in your handout show Matthew, Mark and John describing the consternation of the people who knew Jesus’ family and couldn’t square what they knew with the way he was teaching and living.

Until we get to the crucifixion, that is all we hear about Mary. Was she there at the crucifixion? – John tells us she was. The passages from Matthew and Mark, which you see, are less clear. In chapter 13 Matthew has referred to James and Joseph as the brothers of Jesus and in chapter 27 he tells us that ‘Mary, the mother of James and Joseph’ was there. Mark has a similar account, except that he refers to Joseph as Joses. But neither of them specifically mention her as being the mother of Jesus. A similar puzzle can be found in the accounts of the resurrection – also included for you. Why the discrepancies? We do not know. Attention to detail and checking one’s sources do not seem to have been part of what the gospel writers thought they were about.

Mary appears one final time in scripture: Luke’s account in the Acts of the Apostles of the days leading up to the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, shows that Mary as well as Jesus’ brothers were all present with the disciples.

So Scripture gives us very little to go on about Mary, apart from the fact that she was the mother of Jesus. And yet we seem to ‘know’ (in inverted commas) so much more about her. For example, tradition has it that her parents were Joachim and Anna – the source of this is a couple of what are termed the apocryphal books of the New Testament[1].

Over the centuries many of the Church fathers and Church teachers have put forward ideas about Mary – some of them rather perplexing to me at least. In Roman Catholic and Orthodox tradition there is considerable emphasis on her perpetual virginity – whereas a glance at the passages we have considered today, including today’s gospel, indicate that following Jesus’ birth she had a normal married life and produced several more children. It takes some manipulation of the text to ‘prove’ otherwise. Why would people want to ‘prove’ otherwise, I wonder? Was it related to the views that certain of the church fathers had which denigrated women: I quote Tertullian who lived in the late second and early 3^rd century AD who wrote against ‘too gladsome a style of dress’ for women ‘in order that by every garb of penitence she might the more fully expiate that which she derives from Eve – the ignominy, I mean of the first sin, and the odium of human perdition…. You are the devil’s gateway, you are the first deserter of the divine law… You destroyed so easily God’s image, man. On account of your desert even the Son of God had to die’[2].

In similar vein, in Church thinking where there is considerable emphasis on what is termed the ‘stain of original sin’, it has seemed important to assert that Mary must have been completely different from all other human beings, if she was to be the mother of the Son of God, hence the ideas promulgated by some (but not all) that she was not only sinless during her life but that she was ‘conceived without the least stain of original sin’ – what Roman Catholics term ‘the immaculate conception’ –which they promulgated as a dogma in 1854.

I wonder…. Now this may be a flight of fancy but, by promoting the idea of Mary who was not only ‘completely without sin’ but also completely without sex, it is possible to see her as not really a proper woman. It may therefore be acceptable in such circles to continue to regard all other women as inferior beings, and to put Mary on such a pedestal that we no longer relate to her as a fellow human being, but as someone completely above us.

Some individuals I have met in this church quietly tell me that they get worried about all this ‘praying to Mary’ that we seem to do here. I try to help them see it in a way which is more acceptable to them. I say that if I am in difficulties I ask people to pray for me; Similarly I will ask Mary to pray for me, as we do in the Angelus, particularly as I tend to relate to her as a surrogate mother (I never got on very well with mine, I have to admit). I do not see Mary twisting her son’s arm on my behalf, or as any of us having to go through her to get to Jesus – in good Christian mystical tradition I approach God directly. Others may see things differently, and that is OK.

I suppose what I am really saying is that a lot of the ideas about Mary are just that – ideas developed by different theologians over the centuries and without necessarily a sound basis in Scripture. We should not worry if we find them not to our own way of thinking.

But enough of that. What, I wonder, does Mary mean to us personally? On this Sunday last year I preached about Mary being the second Eve and by her ‘yes’ being instrumental in helping overturn Eve’s legacy. I spoke too of her willingness to do what God asked of her, whatever the cost, and how I had also found that important in my own vocational journey. Other women I know speak of how helpful they have found their relationship with her when there has been a particular sword piercing their souls in regard to their own children. Some third world Evangelicals find in her Magnificat, a bold statement of liberation.

Mary is a model of what our own ministry should be: she accepts what God asks of her, carrying Jesus within her as he grew, giving birth to him, nurturing him, and then releasing him to the world at large. Our own ministry as individual Christians needs to be similar to that of Mary. We are each called to allow Christ to grow within ourselves, to nurture our love for him and to present him to the world in whatever way God calls us to do. For some of us this will be and has been primarily in raising our own children; for others it will be and has been in bringing Christ’s love to a needy world; for others it will be and has been in bringing the liberating challenge of the Magnificat to the world; for some of us it is and will be as priests, nurturing the love and life of Christ within ourselves and bringing it to others in the special way we are called to do. Indeed in the writings of various Popes (Pius X and XI) and Cardinals there is reference to, and indeed prayers, to ‘Mary, Virgin, Priest’, together with paintings of her in priestly vestments. Such references and pictures were ultimately banned by Rome, the pictures in 1916 by Benedict XV and devotion to Mary Priest in 1927 by Pius XI[3].

I end on a personal note: our church – and you can think of that phrase at whatever level you like – local, national, global - has moved a long way in the journey towards acceptance of the priestly ministry of women; some perhaps believe it to be impossible for an otherwise Almighty God to call a woman to the priestly role, even if Mary was called to be the mother of the Son of God. I pray that those who still find it impossible to accept the priestly ministry of women, for whatever reason, will continue to pray about the matter and seek the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

God bless you all – and may this final week of Advent bring to birth within you a new flourishing in your love of God and of God’s Son Jesus this Christmas.