Connecting With Mary

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector

St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas

December 21, 2014; 4 Advent, Year B

Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

Luke 1:26-38 – In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin's name was Mary. And he came to her and said, "Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you." But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. The angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end." Mary said to the angel, "How can this be, since I am a virgin?" The angel said to her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with God." 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.

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I want to visit with you today about something I've never addressed from the pulpit, and I do so with some trepidation.

First, a little back story. Many years ago I was in a class or workshop – I forget the exact venue – where our leader asked us to try to articulate our calling. What is your mission? What is your purpose? Can you put words around why you do what you do? I can't remember what the process was, but I remember an insight that exploded, self-evident into my consciousness. "I want to connect people with God." Yes! My whole being responded to that realization. I do. I do want to connect people with the Divine. It is a desire that is so deep in me that it seems to have its own source and energy. From the moment of that insight, I've never lost a sense of that purpose. The knowledge of such a purpose has seemed to me like a great gift.

But it seems that all gifts also have their shadows. You see, I have a fear that goes along with that calling to connect people with the divine. I have a dread of ever being the cause of someone losing their sense of connection with God.

I'm not worried from God's end. I know God that God's connection with us is eternal and unbreakable. God loves every human being infinitely, and the God I have experienced is such boundless love that I have no anxiety about God's ultimate intention that every human being will be brought ultimately into loving union with the divine. I just have a dread that I could get in the way of someone's journey into that union.

And so, with that dread, I want to talk about something that is part of today's gospel reading. The angel Gabriel says to Mary, "You will conceive in your womb…", and Mary asks, "How can this be, since I am a virgin?"

If you are someone who finds it wonderful and satisfying to ponder the miracle of Jesus' birth to Mary the Virgin, please honor your faith and ignore whatever I have to say today. You are connected to the divine, and this story is a beloved part of your connection. Good. Hold on to that delight. It would break my heart to get in the way of your connection with God through this story.

But if you are someone like me – a natural doubter – who has found some of the supernatural stories of the scripture hard to accept in simple, literal terms, and who has sometimes found them to be barriers to a relationship and connection with God, then come with me on a brief journey.

The members of early church reflected on their experience of Jesus of Nazareth. As they remembered the effect of his presence with them, they knew that being with him was like being with God in a human life. He was God-with-us. The human face of God. Jesus was so filled with divine Spirit, that they experienced an intimate union with God through their human friend Jesus. Jesus connected them with the divine. They believed him to be the fulfillment of everything that God had promised God's people through the prophets. So, naturally, they looked to the prophets for words and images to give expression to what is ultimately ineffable.

There is a prophesy from the eighth century BCE prophet Isaiah. In chapter 7 Isaiah says that a child named Immanuel shall be born – the name means literally God is with us. Isaiah tells the faithless king Ahaz that before the child begins to take solid food, the military threat that the nation faces will have passed. The early Christians would have been drawn to this story about a child named Immanuel, God is with us, for in Jesus they experienced indeed that God is with us.

The Hebrew word that Isaiah used to describe the mother of Immanuel was almah – meaning a young woman of childbearing age who has not yet had a child. She may or may not be sexually active. But the authors of the Christian gospels probably weren't using the Hebrew texts. They wrote in Greek, and they knew their ancient scriptures through the Greek translation called the Septuagint. The Greek word that the Septuagint uses to translate almah is parthenos, a word that usually implies virginity. That implication is not in the original prophecy.

So, I think it is likely that Matthew and Luke let the Greek translation of Isaiah's prophecy about the virgin who bears a child named Immanuel inspire their narrative of Jesus' miraculous birth. Their hero would of course have a miraculous birth, not unlike the wonderful, miraculous births of Isaac, Moses, Samson, and others from Hebrew scripture and from other ancient sacred stories.

For me, the story of the virgin birth is a poetic way of speaking of the uniqueness of Jesus, God with us. But I take it as a metaphor and symbol, not as something literal and historical. In fact, I believe our most profound language for the mystery of the divine is best expressed in metaphor and symbol. Can there be anything richer in meaning and divine presence than the Eucharist – an experience of sacrament, an enacted symbol?

This whole process of inquiry leads me down several lines of thought.

If I consider the story of the virgin birth to be a composition of the gospel writers, then I have a sense of appreciation for what it is they are saying in the writing of their story. Mary's embracing "Yes!" has a compelling aspect of trust, abandoning herself to God in the presence of the impossible possibility. Her "Yes!" is an inspiring act of trust in God. She invites us to similar hope when we cannot see the way forward within our means.

I also know that it was customary among some at that time in history to make sure a potential wife would be fertile and able to bear a child before a marriage would be finalized. So it may be that the unmarried Mary and her espoused Joseph simply followed that custom, which might explain her single state, if that is the case or needs explaining.

More intriguing though, I wonder if there was some scandal around Jesus' birth that may have prompted the need for such a story of divine conception. In his version, Matthew omits any story about the angel Gabriel visiting Mary. Instead, he starts with the inconvenient pregnancy of Mary and turns the camera lens on Joseph. "Being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, [Joseph] planned to dismiss her quietly." (1:19) That sentence say a lot. Joseph acts with great compassion toward Mary. Similar circumstances more typically resulted in the woman's exile or in some cases death by stoning. Matthew concludes his version of the story saying that Joseph married her, "but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son."

I like that scandalous interpretation of the story particularly on behalf of all the women in the world who have ever found themselves inconveniently pregnant. May they find an understanding friend in Mary. May they find men like Joseph who will regard them with compassion and gentleness and who will not enforce harsh conventional judgments.

For me, Mary is a model of what we are called to be as the church. Open, willing containers for the mysterious work of God in the world. "Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word."

I talk about all of these things today in hopes that my own doubts and wrestling with these texts may encourage you not to cut off your relationship to God or to the Bible if you ever find yourself in a state of discomfort or unbelief. I happen not to believe in the historicity of the virgin birth, yet I find that offers no impediment to my connection with God or my delight in the Bible. In fact, it seems to me that my discomfort has opened me to other creative ways to interpret and deepen the story's meaning for me.

Historically the faithful have always sought myriad ways of interpreting the sacred scriptures. In the old days Christians treasured interpretations that were mystical, symbolic, metaphoric, allegorical, and analogical in addition to the historical and literal. Only in recent centuries have some Christians insisted on the primacy of the literal and historical. When they do so, I find that they sometimes can destroy our connections with some of our beloved sacred texts. For many of us it's just too impossible to believe literally.

For me, the story of the virgin birth is poetry, wonder and beauty, inviting my imagination into a state where I might even find within me the capacity for heroic trust like Mary. Can I be an open womb to bear Christ in my body as well? Can I too say with virginal trust, "Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word"?

I hope you also can connect with Mary, so that you may be like her, a Christ-bearer, bold enough to say "Yes!" to the impossible possibilities in your life. May you be brave enough to say, "Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word."

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