Visiting The New Mother
Peter C. Raymond
Presbyterian Church in Sudbury
December 28, 2003

 

 The New Testament Lesson: 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 in 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.  -Luke 1: 26-38
 

Here am I the servant of the Lord. Let it be with me according to your word. What utterly wonderful words. What an absolutely magnificent rejoinder to what must have been an experience of shattering consequence. A revelation. Truly a response for the ages of incomparable transcendent significance. Here am I the servant of the Lord. Let it be with me according to your word. That rejoinder is so significant because in unblemished simplicity it speaks to, in fact, encapsulates the essence of what we all grapple with in faith. Service of, service in and servitude to the Lord. Let it be with me according to your word. Now from my perspective, that is righteousness. It is not fancy. It isn’t theologically detailed nor is it confessionally convoluted. It is much much more; a stark, simple and pointed declaration of submission. It embodies no mystery, requires no liturgy and probably suffers no sermon. It has nothing at all to do with image or tradition or abstract confession. Now tradition, mystery, image, liturgy, confession and proclamation are all important. Each assumes a critical role in the business of righteousness. The righteousness we all want or claim we want in variant degrees at different times during our earthly sojourn. But I wonder if we have over complicated righteousness? I wonder if we have over analyzed the matter? I just wonder. Nearly as I can tell we have scads of exegetical meanderings, boatloads of hermeneutic speculation and enough theological pontification to go around and get just about everybody good and righteous. Have you ever met anybody who is righteous? Then we have the simple little declaration from an uneducated 1st century teenager; here am I the servant of the Lord- let it be with me according to your word. We have righteousness. The confession and a submission which allows the mindset wherein our will is synchronized with that of the Heavenly Father. We all pray for that don’t we? I think we do so earnestly. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. I think we offer that prayer earnestly. It all just never seems to materialize. Maybe that is because we offer a sentiment rather than a commitment. Do you for one second think it a coincidence that the fellow who taught us that blessed prayer of which those words are a part called “Mom” the woman who uttered those magnificent words of submission, confession and commitment…in that order…six months before His birth? Here am I the servant of the Lord. Let it be with me according to your word.

You know one of the nicest Christmas greetings we can convey to one another …we just conveyed to one another. And we managed it all for less than  thirty-seven cents a pop. Together we sang Reverend Watt’s great old hymn Joy To The World. The lyrics flowed from our tongues effortlessly as they have for many preceding generations; Joy to the World…the Lord is come…let earth receive her King…let every heart prepare Him room. Of course therein lies the rub. Once the music dies down, we confront again and anew the problem…the challenge…the call…confronted by each of us and all of us  who have ever raised our voices in that hymn. Our present difficulty with actually and truly preparing Him room. We struggle mightily with that one don’t we?  Each of us and all of us…preparing Him room. We are not alone. No less than 100 generations of God’s children have thusly struggled and then fallen woefully short of preparing any real room for the Son of Man. It all began, for goodness sake, with our Lord’s own relatives. Likely those aunts and uncles and cousins…family…distant and maybe otherwise in the City of David who apparently wanted no part of His birth. Who avoided that indelicate situation like the plague …and in so doing committed the most blessed and historically consequential event in the history of world to the ignominy of a stable and the squalor of a feeding trough for farm animals.  I don’t know about you but I’m not a heck of a lot better at actually preparing Him room than they were. I’m just too busy. Far too busy. Sadly too busy preparing plenty of room for everything and everybody else (starting with myself of course). I am far too preoccupied with my own agenda…my own self assessed exigencies and importance to get down to the nitty gritty of really accepting and committing to and preparing room for the Lord. What a poignant irony; no time for the same Jesus who spent His entire short life and then willingly gave up that life preparing plenty of room for me. It is not that I do not want to be like Mary. It is simply that I am not. I am far too disconnected with absolutizing my present to even roughly approach the majesty of Mary’s declaration; Here am I the servant of the Lord. Let it be with me according to your word .

I wonder if maybe it might help to visit Mary. To visit the new mother. To pay our respects and express our joy over the new addition to her life. To travel back thousands of years to a different time and place. To attend to a social convention we have all observed with other new mothers many times. To spend a moment with the new mom and, if nothing else, to tell her how beautiful and special and precious her tiny little boy is. That squirming…bawling…insistent…demanding little bundle of perfect joy…whom she has loosely and proudly named (with God’s help) after the great leader of her people, Joshua .

The problem of course is that we don’t really know Mary. Never have. Not much has been written about her which is sufficiently authoritative to be considered canonical. We are  not even sure of her name…although Mary is probably a gentile adaptation of Merriam. We know that she was from the town of Nazareth. A backwater outpost plunked down in the middle of nowhere about 50 miles north of the big city of Jerusalem and its’ suburb, Bethlehem. We know she was engaged and eventually married to a house builder named Joseph. We are uncertain about her family background. The various translations of her relationship to Elizabeth and her husband are conflicted enough to be less than dispositive. She may have been of the priestly Levite tribe but, given her utter lack of worldliness and betrothal to Joseph (who was of the “lineage of David”) it is probably much safer to surmise that Mary was a Davidian. We are not clear on the parameters of her initial relationship with Joseph although some scholars have, based upon the custom among poorer Jews, concluded that that relationship may have resembled something along the order of ward-guardian. Certainly Joseph was considerably older.  We can be fairly confident in concluding that the “betrothal” had been established when she was a pre-teen and that by the time she had brought forth her “firstborn” on that miraculous night long ago…she was still very very young. A teenager. From our modern perspective hardly an adult and in many ways still a child. Still a little girl herself…likely fourteen or fifteen years old…probably not more than nineteen.  So very young and very alone to give birth in the filth of a stable. So very young. So alone. No loving mother or caring sisters or aunts…or even kindly midwife to help. Just Mary the teenager. And you can be sure that Joseph. unabashedly took his place among at least 70 succeeding generations of about to be daddies as having all the utility in that circumstance of a coal furnace in equatorial Africa. So very young and alone. Isolated by forces over which she had no control from the care and kindness of loved ones. We just know she must have been frightened and worried. We also know she was resolute. That mélange of fear and consternation and faithful resolute determination certainly began for Mary the moment Gabriel had announced her condition and her future three months earlier. Among other things, she feared for her life. A fear imminently justified for a 1st century, betrothed and pregnant adherent to the Law of Moses. As we know from the Gospel of Matthew, the situation left Joseph presumptively dishonored and he had initially resolved to “dismiss” her quietly. As was the custom, that would have left her completely alone and helpless as a social outcast. Still, that outcome demonstrates for me how kind Joseph was and how much he loved Mary because the alternate outcome would have been worse. He might well have publicly prosecuted  a “bill of divorcement” which we know from Deuteronomy carried the very real (although by then increasingly disfavored) possibility of execution by stoning. Of course his initial resolve was further softened after a visit from the angel. Joseph and would marry the young girl as was commanded by the Lord. I often wonder if that command was not, in fact, the embodiment of what Joseph really wanted to do all along anyway. Whatever, throughout it all that teenager   …Merriam our Mary the Davidian from Nazareth…could not have been anything other than terrified and confused and conflicted. She was also magnificent. Magnificently resolute and magnificently faithful as she brought her precious child…our precious Savior into the world. Here am I the servant of the Lord. Let it be with me according to your word.

You know Mary was a great mother. A wonderful mom to her Jesus. She loved and nurtured and fed and bathed and changed and sang to and soothed his childhood cuts and bruises with a gentle kiss. And yes, I suspect attended to his childhood indiscretions with something a bit more startling than a gentle nuzzle. She just…well she just loved that little guy of hers. Mary and Joseph were great parents. St. Luke tells us they raised a kid who was a great joy to them. They attended to his education and Mary was probably a critical early influence as she passed on to her son the great oral tradition that had been passed on to her so few years before. By the time Jesus was in His early teens (becoming a man according to Hebrew tradition) and sat with the scribes and priests and rabbis at the Jerusalem temple…he was able to give as good as he got in theological debate. By then Mary’s little boy had become articulate, sociable and likeable.

But it was not easy. It was never easy for Mary the Davidian from Nazareth. In that sense, I suppose Mary is representative of us all as a liver of live…an endurer of tribulation…a survivor of trial. Yet she differs from us doesn’t she?  Here am I the servant of the Lord. Let it be with me according to your word.

We surmise an estrangement in Mary’s life. An estrangement certainly from her husbands family and probably hers as well. . We do not know how long. We do not know if ever that estrangement was abated. We do know she became a fugitive shortly after her first child’s birth. A family on the run from injustice or justice depending on your socio-political perspective. She had no time to enjoy those traditional joys attendant upon the starting of a new family and settling into the excitement of a first home together because she was forced to flee from all she knew and cherished and felt comfortable with to a foreign land she knew nothing about except that it   had institutionally enslaved, intentionally brutalized and haphazardly murdered her people years earlier. She must have been absolutely heartsick and utterly terrified. We are quite certain that shortly after she endured that awful scare when her child appeared to be lost in the big and dangerous city of Jerusalem she became a widow. A single parent before her 30th birthday, having lost her beloved Joseph who had so clearly and demonstrably loved and nurtured her. She must have cried. Mary carried on as a single parent continuing to teach and to nurture and to discipline and love so very tenderly that boy of hers. Not so little anymore. Growing up ever so fast. Now the eldest of her brood which … probably included two younger brothers and possibly several sisters. And then there was Jesus himself.  Jesus (like every young man or women in every generation) wasn’t content with growing up. He wanted to grow out. To expand himself and his perspective. Jesus was becoming a   modern man. Some would suggest a modern thinker on the early cutting edge of Rabbinic Judaism. For Mary, Jesus’ increasingly shaped divine mission and transcendent focus became increasingly problematic. Maddening I suspect. Strange and confusing for an unsophisticated and uneducated and traditionally devout woman from a tiny village in Galilee. There can be no doubt that Jesus dearly loved his mother. Among His final utterances at Calvary was a directive to take care of His mom. And clearly Mary adored her Jesus. Her baby. You know for us Jesus of Nazareth is the mighty Son of God and Man, the Wonderful Counselor, the Patient Good Shepherd, the Prince of Peace, the Everlasting Savior of the World but for Mary, this was her child for goodness sake.  You just know that first and foremost He was and would always be her baby. But he was changing and the Gospels are full of at least implicit references to that and of Mary’s incapacity to keep up with those changes. Jesus grew up. Mary did not understand. There must have been at least pangs of melancholy. The kind of melancholy that one supposes to be most acute among moms.

Mary may not have been a child of 1st century enlightenment (although we might explore the nuances of that presumption some other time) but she was not dull. And clearly by the time Jesus was in his early 30’s she could sense with increasing alacrity the ever widening swirls of social-theological-political intrigue, which aligned conspirationally to threaten and eventually claim his life. Before she was 50 those forces succeeded and with excruciatingly painful brutality and wretched humiliation they killed her little boy.

And Mary faithful to the end stood at the foot of that cross…this time forever helpless to soothe His cuts and bruises with a gentle kiss. I cannot begin to imagine her torment…the ultimate in parental pain. But at the base of her son’s instrument of torture she stood in faithful and resolute silence.  In her silence we hear powerfully and clearly her grace and magnificent resolve. We hear powerfully enacted the penultimate of   that glorious promise of hers sworn 33 years earlier here am I the servant of the Lord. Let it be with me according to your word.

Blessedly Mary was present with the risen Jesus. We have no record of her thoughts. But we sure can bet they included an overwhelming sense of unequalled joy. Tradition, attributed principally to the Protoevangelium of James, suggests that Mary outlived Jesus by many years, residing with her son James the first Bishop of Jerusalem and that news of her impending death impelled the final convocation of the original disciples to her side. It’s a lovely story but we simply don’t know for sure.

Of course, we don’t know for sure because we have so little information about Mary. At least the empirical stuff our modern rationality so shortsightedly demands. Our visit leaves us with little that is anecdotal or substantiated or canonical. We just don’t know a great deal about her. Yet at the same time we really know all we need to know. In that sense I think we probably know all we ought to know.

Mary never heard much less sang those wonderful lyrics of Dr. Watts… let every heart prepare Him room. Had she, they would have been old hat to her. Expressive of nothing knew or unique and certainly not a sentiment to be trotted out once a year. Because what Mary did was actually live those words. All day. Every single day of her life. Mary literally and figuratively prepared Him room. She did so in word and in deed. She did so in a life of resolute trust and faithful dedication made possible by determined willingness to really and truly submit to God’s will. Here am I the servant of the Lord. Let it be with me according to your word. Mary did what we struggle with. She made room for our Savior. Loved Him and nurtured Him. Adored Him. Stood with Him and by Him and never, ever denied Him. I think you will agree that she was certainly the greatest in a long and unending line of great moms. The Blessed Virgin. The unschooled and unsophisticated Davidian from tiny Nazareth. The teenage mom who lived the first version of Joy To The World. Her version. The real version. The one that counts. For her, her blessed child, His Heavenly Father and for each of us who marvel at, sing praises to and long to be a part of the Miracle at Bethlehem. Here am I the servant of the Lord. Let it be with me according to your word.

You all know that the Our Father has blessed Mary of Nazareth. May He bless all of you.

Amen
 

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