Leading into
Christmas this year I want to invite you to join in my family tradition of
unpacking the nativity scene and placing it at the centre of our thoughts this
Christmas. Unpack it not simply by taking the figures from out of a box and
arranging them in a certain way but unpacking it in the sense that we look
again and afresh at each of the figures from that scene and look past the way
they have become very much stylised characters and see what they have to say to
us as we too allow the one born at the stable to have a central role in our
lives as he did in theirs.
This week I want
to invite us to reflect on Mary, a woman of faith and of courage. Maybe she is
the hardest figure for us to unpack because she has become a figure of deep
religious devotion and adoration. The cover story of a ‘Time’ magazine in April
this year reported on the way that Mary was growing in importance even in
protestant circles. Despite this how we should honour Mary has been a focus for
division and argument between various Christian traditions. This perhaps hides
a lot of what she has for us today.
The best sermon I
ever heard about Mary was from a 16 year old girl from our youth group at St
john’s in the City, Leslie was a gifted speaker and when I had asked here to
speak on Mary all I had given her as a starter from this talk was well Mary
would be a girl about your age, and Leslie really related to it. You see Mary
was a young woman possibly no more than in her mid-teens. She came from a lowly
place. She lived in a small town in a small unimportant province in occupied
Israel. In here society she had little importance, position or status. In fact
even Luke, who of the gospel writers are most prepared to use women’s remembrances
and perspectives, starts not by naming her but referring to the name lineage
and occupation of the man she is betrothed to. She would have been a virtuous
Jewish girl and we can see from her song recorded in Luke that she had a deep
faith. Like most Jewish women of her time she would have been praying for the
coming of the messiah to deliver Israel.
In Phillip Yancy’s
book “the Jesus I never Knew” he reflects
that in religious art Mary is always shown as accepting the angels
visitation like it was a benediction but this does not reflect the gospel
narrative. It tells us that she was troubled by the angel’s message.
She is troubled at
the angels affirmation that God is with her and that he has blessed her
greatly. The angel goes on to tell her that she will become pregnant and have a
son and name him Yeshua or as we know him by the Greek equivalent Jesus. The
angel tells her that this child will be the messiah taking on David’s throne
and reigning forever. This does nothing to alleviate her troubled mind and she
asks how it is possible for her to have a son, as she is a virgin.
The angel says
that this will happen by a miracle, God’s power would rest on her. The angel
then points to another pending miraculous birth, Mary’s relative Elizabeth who
was barren and deemed too old to have a child is now six months pregnant and
the angel concludes ‘there is nothing that God cannot do’: A good definition of
a miracle.
Mary’s reply shows
her faith she says, “I am the Lord’s servant, may it happen to me as you have
said”. AS her relative Elizabeth will say to her how blessed you are to believe
that the Lord’s message to you will come true. Mary continues to show her faith
in her song, known as ‘The Magnificat’ that points to the profound effects that
this child will have and God’s goodness to his people. She has been described,
as being the first disciple, declaring the Kingdom of God her son would usher
in.
But we see that
Mary not only had faith she also had courage. For Elizabeth there was great
rejoicing and praising God for her pregnancy and the birth of her son. Luke
tells us her neighbours and relatives rejoiced with her and celebrated the
baby’s birth. In Jewish custom the Village choir would gather and sing for the
birth of a baby boy, as this maybe the coming of God’s promised messiah. But
for Mary it was a troubling time. She was a young girl only betrothed to Joseph
and her she was pregnant. Maybe the impact of that has been lost in our society
today where there are many teenage pregnancies but it was a great scandal. Her
husband Joseph could have easily rejected her and she would have been stoned
for adultery. Matthew tells us he was going to give her a quite divorce until
the same angel too visited him.
We are never told
how the grandparents reacted to this situation but perhaps from friend and
family dealing with similar situations you may guess some of the anguish they
went through. Despite all this Mary faces the situation with faith, trusting in
God. It may have been wise for Joseph to take Mary away from her home village
for the birth of the child, as she would not have to put up with the shame of
not having the rejoicing and support of everyone. It is rather ironic that the
village choir would not have come to sing for this particular birth because of
the stigma of the child being illegitimate. It fell to the angels to herald
this child’s birth. She would have had
the child without the comfort of relatives, as a mere male it’s interesting to
note that when each of my children was born my mother in law appeared, God
bless her, and that was of great comfort to Kris. It took courage for Mary to
face this.
Malcolm Muggeridge
questions weather it would have been much different today, with family planning
clinics offering convenient ways to fix mistakes that may bring embarrassment
to families. He says “it is point of
fact, extremely improbable, under existing conditions, that Jesus would have
been permitted to be born at all. Mary’s pregnancy, in poor circumstances, and
with the father unknown, would have been an obvious case for an abortion; and
her talk of having conceived as a result of the intervention of the Holy Spirit
would have pointed to the need for psychiatric treatment, and made the case for
terminating her pregnancy even stronger. Thus our generation, needing a saviour
more, perhaps, than any that has ever existed would be too humane to allow one
to be born.”
Courage and faith
exemplify Mary through out the gospel accounts. When she goes to the temple a
week after Jesus birth simeon the one person in the Christmas story who seems
to be able to look beyond the child to see the shadow of the cross tells Mary
that a sword will pierce her soul she stores even these things in her heart. In
John’s gospel we see her prepared to approach Jesus about the wine problem at
the wedding in Canna, looking to her son to do something, even though his time
had not come. Maybe in a moment of doubt and confusion in Marks gospel it tells
us that she and Jesus brothers came to bring him home fearing that he had
become deranged, it took courage to question what she had stored in her heart.
She is there at the cross, as her son is brutally and unjustly crucified. She
receives his kindness as Jesus asks his much beloved friend to care for his
most beloved mother. She is also there in the upper room at Pentecost, knowing
her son has risen from the dead and faithfully standing with his disciples.
This is the woman of faith and courage that God chose to carry and nurture his
only begotten son.
For us today there
is there are two things I want to draw from Mary.
Firstly, that we need both faith in God and the courage to live that faith out. Seeing the kingdom of God being born into the world today not only takes convictions it takes the courage of our convictions. Our faith needs to be put into action. Mary’s words “ I am your servant may it happen to me as you said” are not words of passive resignation to fate they are an active embrace of God’s will and purposes.
It takes courage
and faith to allow God’s kingdom to be our priority. For example in Mary’s song
it tells us the good news of Jesus Christ will mean that the poor receive their
fill and the rich go away empty handed. We tend to want to think that the rich
are blessed, that we are blessed in this country with what we have, but the
gospel call on people who have much, is that much is expected. Jesus calls us
to side with the poor and the powerless in our world and it takes courage to go
against the flow of consumerism and materialism. It takes courage to speak up
and say that we follow a different set of values and truths when the situation
demands it, knowing the resistance we will face, the possible scorn and being
written off.
Secondly, we need
to realise that God is able to use the humble and lowly to achieve great things
for him. The fact that a young Jewish girl of faith could be chosen to bear the
son of God shows that we too who ever we are can be used to achieve God’s plans
and purposes in the world if we will be prepared to respond with faith and courage.
It does however take faith and courage.
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