On Easter this year I studied the church advertising page in the Muskogee Phoenix. I counted 33 Baptist churches and 42 non-Baptist churches advertising. Just on the basis of that rough count, 42% of the churches around us are Baptist. Now there is nothing wrong with the Baptist church. Our Episcopal tradition stands in sharp contrast to the Baptist tradition, so today on the Feast of St. Mary the Virgin, we could use a little refresher to help us understand and appreciate our differences with some of the other church traditions around us.
A few months ago someone noted our devotional candles in the back and they wondered as to why we would do such a “Roman Catholic thing.” There are many different purposes, intentions and meanings behind devotional candles, but I can assure you that devotional candles are not the unique prerogative of Roman Catholic tradition. Even Methodists and Lutherans can have them. Also in the realm of things Roman Catholic, did I mention that in our Anglican-Episcopal tradition we have a kind of Rosary called “Anglican Prayer Beads?” Did I mention that some Episcopal parishes in the NE United States have confessional booths and statues? Again, we might want to understand where the Episcopal Church fits between Baptists at one end and Roman Catholics on the other. We are in the middle and I like to think that we have the best of both.
How did the wider church through the ages develop such a tradition around Mary? For example, Mary is referred to as a virgin, yet there is the question of the brothers of Jesus. In another case, the Gospel of Matthew quotes Isaiah 7:14, saying the familiar words from Advent, “Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and his name shall be called ‘Immanuel’.” Jerome who translated the Bible from Hebrew and Greek into Latin in the 400s later acknowledged that he knowingly used “virgin” for the Hebrew word “young maiden,” because he was preserving the existing tradition about the Virgin Mary. There is another word in Hebrew that ALWAYS means virgin yet that word is not in the original Hebrew source text – only the word for “young girl” or “young maiden.”
The doctrines of the virginity of Mary and even the “perpetual virginity of Mary” before, during, and after the birth of Jesus apparently were well established long before Jerome produced the Latin Bible in the early 400s. Miraculous and virgin births were important to major world religions centuries before Jesus. Even the birth of the Roman Emperor Augustus was reported to have resulted from a virginal pairing of his mother and Apollo. You notice by now that we have neither denied nor accepted this doctrine. Scripture is just not clear on this matter.
There is another speculation about the development of Mary in the church. By the third century, the church was led by an exclusively male hierarchy. Although little is written about it, the feminine aspects of God needed to be integrated into the church of male priests and an even more masculine-centric Trinity – Father, Son and Holy Ghost. The elevation of Mary to “God-bearer” and prayers directed to her as healer and life-giver would be a natural development for the official church of the Empire as it waged war and took human lives throughout the world.
Regardless of your beliefs about Mary, the Song of Mary you heard from Luke contains a true miracle that YOU/WE can participate in today. When Mary says that God has “looked with favor upon his lowly servant”, the Greek text does NOT imply “lowly” as “humility.” It is about POVERTY. Mary is dirt poor, pregnant, and unmarried. This social status in her world would be equivalent to the kids who scavenge the giant garbage dump in Honduras. She is at the bottom of the social ladder. If we saw Mary on the street, we would scurry by her, trying not to notice or look her in the eye. She too is wretched and despised; rejected by her status as unmarried and pregnant. And yet for this unlikely, impoverished, dirty, desperate young woman, God has chosen to change her status forever. She will give birth to the son of God.
Mary sings a song of liberation not just for her but for all of the world’s poor and despised. Because of the child she carries, the faithful poor will have hope where there was no hope before. God will give them a future where they had no future before. She sings a song of justice brought about by God who has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts and who has brought down the powerful from their thrones and who has lifted UP the lowly; God who has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty.
By the world’s standards, we are ALL rich. HOW can we sing Mary’s song when we are not like her? We are not poor. We are not dirty and desperate, and we are in good social standing. Yet Mary sings of God who raises up those at the bottom of the ladder. Can Mary’s God be our God? Can Mary’s song be our song?
Realization of God’s justice means that for those of us who are rich (and we are all rich), it will cost us. Can we really praise this God Mary sings about?
Her song sums it up. If we who are rich cannot praise this God, then we are empty and we will be sent away.
So I ask you who have been watching recent events in our nation and the world with justifiable anxiety; what does the future look like given our godless politics and self-centered businesses? Do you see hope for many people? Does the future you see make you proud or anxious?
Mary’s God and Mary’s song gives ALL of us hope. God’s future and God’s promise to us will cost us. But so will the future the politicians and business leaders have in store for us. The choice we have before us is not about cost, it is about faith.
Mary’s God will raise ALL of us up: the homeless, the uneducated, those living in rough places, the disabled, those in prison, and the rest of us who have wealth but need a purpose. Mary’s God will raise ALL of us up if we to whom much has been given will learn how to join with Mary and the lowly of the world. And from their perspective at the bottom of the ladder we need to learn to look up and say with boldness to God, “May it be done to us according to your word.”
When we can truly join with Mary and the poor of the world and when we can submit to God in her way, then, as the prophet Jeremiah proclaimed, God will give us “hope and a future.”