I grew up in the Roman Catholic church where Mary, the ideal woman, is both virgin and mother, meek and mild, obedient and perfect. Totally impossible as a role model of course and totally unreal. It seems to me that this idealisation of Mary is a major factor in what I would call the Walt Disneyfication of Christmas. It's part of making it a sort of fluffy story that comes around every year accompanied by Victorian, sentimental and inevitably sexist Christmas carols, and now with rampant commercialisation added to it. I find this image of Mary both sickly and sickening. But where did it come from? It was certainly not what Luke was intending to portray in his gospel. And I want to look at what Luke's Mary may have to tell us about Christmas and about our own story.
The Magnificat (my soul magnifies the Lord) which we heard in the Gospel is Mary's song when she meets Elizabeth. It has been set to music in many forms. I like the version we just sang "Sing we a song of high revolt" because at this point in Luke's gospel that is exactly what the text is supposed to be about. It is a revolutionary text full of historical meaning to it's audience of the time. Mary at this point is a revolutionary figure, although we would never guess it from the traditional imagery! Luke does not intend her to be "mother Mary meek and mild". The references, with which Luke and his audience would be familiar, are to heroines of Israel, to revolution and war.
Elizabeth addresses Mary as "Blessed....among women". This was not a normal greeting. There are only two other texts in the Bible where this phrase is used. In Judges, Deborah, who was herself a prophetess and a judge of Israel sings "Blessed among women be Jael". And Deborah's song goes on to tell us who Jael was and what she did.
"Most blessed of women be Jael,
the wife of Heber the Kenite,
of tent-dwelling women most blessed.
He asked water and she gave him milk,
she brought him curds in a lordly bowl.
She put her hand to the tent peg
and her right hand to the workmen's mallet;
she struck Sisera a blow,
she crushed his head,
she shattered and pierced his temple.
He sank, he fell,
he lay still at her feet;
at her feet he sank, he fell;
where he sank, there he fell dead."
Sisera was the commander of the Canaanite army. Deborah had promised Barak, the Israelites commander that Sisera would be delivered into his hands. So Barak summoned up his troops and went into battle. As the Israelites seemed to be winning Sisera fled to the camp of Heber the Kenite - Jael's husband, because the Canaanites and the Kenites were at peace. And as Deborah's victory celebration song relates, Jael invites him in, offers him hospitality - milk and curds - and while he is asleep she bashes a tent peg through his skull. Jael then is heralded as a great Israelite heroine and so is Deborah who sings her praises.
The second woman in the Bible who is hailed as blessed is Judith. Unlike the book of Judges which is largely historical narrative the book of Judith is probably not historical and it's one of the apochryphal texts. The story is again of an Israelite heroine. In this story the Assyrians are laying siege to the town of Bethulia, where the Israelites have almost run out of water. Judith leave the city, allows herself to be captured by the Assyrians and taken to their leader Holofernes. She pretends to be fleeing from the Hebrews and offers to betray them to Holofernes. He welcomes her, and offers her hospitality. She sets out to attract him and soon ends up in bed with him. He falls asleep, drunk and she chops off his head with his own sword. She takes his head back to the Israelites in her food bag. And on her return Uzziah, one of the elders greets her with the words "O daughter, you are blessed by the Most High God above all other women on earth".
Judith too sings a song to God, at the thanksgiving party, a song in which God's support for the oppressed is proclaimed, just as Mary proclaims that the rich and mighty will be brought down.
Luke makes other references in the reading which would have been equally clear to his readers. The angel Gabriel was not been portrayed at that time as some sort of cross between a swan and a hermaphrodite in a nightie. Gabriel was traditionally the angel of war and was associated with metals and metal workers. He would have been clothed in metal or as a metal worker in the images of that time.
The name the angel gives Mary's child - Jesus - is the Greek form of the Hebrew, Joshua. Joshua succeeded Moses, conquered Canaan and established the twelve tribes of Israel in the promised land. He was a hero and a warrior. Luke here is deliberately suggesting to his readers that Jesus will follow in the same mould.
Luke and his readers would have been very familiar with the parallels being drawn. Mary is being clearly established as a revolutionary heroine, in a nationalistic and violent tradition. And the Magnificat is a song of revolution which proclaims the downfall of the prevailing order. So it seems entirely appropriate to me to sing it to the tune we used today - a tune which I associate with the red flag, rather than the Christmas tree; with traditional socialist or possibly even communist values. Values which sought, however imperfectly, to overturn the established order of wealth; a tune intended to rouse the troops; a tune which gives it the kind of connotations I think Luke intended it to have.
Luke uses these kind of references throughout the first three and a half chapters of his gospel, at which point he makes a clear shift. His Jesus no longer meets the requirements of the traditional Jewish hero and offers a totally new and different message. The early chapters are used by Luke to set up his audience to expect a warrior Messiah, so that when he switches his imagery it is all the clearer how different Jesus is. But that's a different sermon, today I am talking about Mary.
Luke's description of her may well be a literary device to serve his later purpose, but it gives me an image that seems so much more useful and real. If she remains as peely wally as she is usually portrayed I don't know how she would ever have had the courage to say "yes" to the angel in the first place. It seems important to me that Mary is a woman who has a vision of what God will do, she misunderstands God's purpose, as do the rest of the disciples, but she goes for it anyway.
Mary says "yes" to God and sets out on a journey, a journey of faith and hope, of pain and fear. She also according to the story sets out on a real and arduous physical journey. For Luke goes on to tell us that she travels with Joseph from Nazareth to Bethlehem. At this point she is heavily pregnant and would probably not have had even the luxury of the donkey we fondly imagine. She is likely to have walked, a journey of 80 miles, or thereabouts! And for her this was just the beginning of her journey. A journey to the foot of the cross.
It is also the beginning of our journey, in terms of the story of our faith. And I think it is important to try to look at it with fresh eyes and to try to shut out some of the glitz and sentimentality and commercialism of this season. For me it helps to begin by trying to see Mary as a real person, because if she is real then perhaps she can inform and inspire my journey, not with the old, impossible ideal of being both virgin and mother, but with her energy and enthusiasm to say yes to God even when she had no idea what she was taking on; with her faith and courage; with her passion for justice and with wonder that God calls. Just as God calls each one of us now, today.
Tonight is about Mary's journey and about our own journey. We may be called to travel physically, but we are certainly called to travel spiritually, to listen to where God is asking us to go. We are here in God's presence as Mary was, called to meet God and to say "yes" to God in our lives. It is not the stuff of Walt Disney. It is hard and frightening, challenging and demanding, painful and utterly wonderful.
This sermon was delivered by Linda Hill at Holy Trinity MCC Edinburgh on Sunday 24th Decemeber 2000.
