Granted, I do not hold to the ideologies that Mary remained a virgin her entire life, that she was without original (or any other) sin, or that she is the queen of heaven by way of being Jesus’ mom. However, I think evangelicals veer too far toward over-analytic caution when they approach the passages in which she dwells. It’s as if the non-Catholic portion of the body feels the need to gloss over her very existence so that potential veneration of the holy mother not eclipse the Savior Himself. Thus we do much to shrink her from a revered position in our efforts to keep her our size. And most of the time this is a good thing. Jesus is the only human who was ever worthy of our adoration – because he was also completely divine.
But some of our attempts
at belittling Mary can be mistakes in themselves.
For God told her, and her
alone, that the Messiah was coming. Yes,
Mary needed to know; but in a time when a woman had little control over her
condition, it would have been so much easier if God had told her when she was
with Joseph or even her father. Easier,
and expected. But God, knowing the cost
of what He was asking, gave Mary the task of telling the people who would be
most affected, second only to her. Thus,
it was for her obedience that she was elevated over Zachariah. It was her willingness to be the handmaiden
of the Lord, to accept this task, to literally carry this burden that we should
remember and emulate.
For we must recall that
Gabriel, an angel who daily stood [stands] in the presence of the Lord said to
her, “Greetings to you who are highly
favored, the Lord is with you!” In a
time when the Lord’s presence was supposed to reside in the holy of holies in
the temple, the Holy Spirit descended upon Mary. The
only woman of her day to experience this continue presence of the Godhead; the
only woman to know of the impending arrival of God’s Messiah (though she could
not have known what that meant or would look like). The only woman in the whole of human history
to carry within her very body Christ.
Let us not forget, beloved
friends, that God did choose Mary to
be the mother to His One and Only Son.
And though she was still fully and completely human, sinning just like
all the rest of us, she remains the only person in all of history who carried
Divinity in her womb, who nursed the Messiah at her breast, who kissed the
downy softness of the head of one-third of the Trinity housed in flesh. And it was so because God ordained it
thus. He picked her out of all humanity
and history. It is because of this that
she should be highly venerated, as even
her angelic messenger told her that she had found favor with God.
No, we mustn’t elevate her
to a position which she cannot fill: intercessor on our behalf in the heavenly
realms. Person who stands between us and
Christ. Yet we do her, nor womanhood, nor
God’s very decision to let her be the mother of the Messiah, no favors when we
diminish this truth by making her smaller than she is to topple our perceived pedestals
on which the idea of Mary rests.
If we can seek to emulate Paul’s
evangelism after being left for dead by the people he was trying to reach, if
we can marvel at the powerful rhetoric of Stephen as he was being martyred, if
we can marvel at Abraham’s obedience as he took his only son up the mount to
sacrifice Isaac to the Lord, we cannot ignore the young woman who was picked by
God to care for His only Son incarnate.
The woman who wiped the boy’s tears, the woman who sang the songs of the
Israelites to her son, the woman who did what mothers do: tirelessly care for
the heart living outside of her person.
We mustn’t ignore her,
gloss over her in fear that we will misplace our worship. Instead, we have to tell her story, again and
again. Learn her words as she praised
God for what was to be the hardest and most crucial task assigned to humanity:
raise the Messiah, and then let Him go.
And we have to emulate her obedience, her understanding of the
scriptures and God’s promises. We have
to hold the truth of God breaking into humanity, so that we all might be save;
and run into the world with this news.
Nurture this truth, rear it in our hearts, care for it with all of
ourselves. And then, let it go. Watch its wild and beautiful truth change the
whole world.
For
God’s Kingdom Is Come.
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