“The Answer of a Girl” – Dec 11,2011 Sermon
Dec 11, 2011
Scripture: Luke 1: 26-38
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 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.
Sermon: The Answer of a Girl
by Rev. Doreen Oughton
She struck the angel Gabriel a hardly old enough to have a child at all, let alone this child, but he’d been entrusted with a message to give her, and he gave it. He told her what the child was to be named, and who he was to be, and something about the mystery that was to come upon her. “You mustn’t be afraid, Mary,” he said. As he said it, he only hoped she wouldn’t notice that beneath the great, golden wings he himself was trembling with fear to think that the whole future of creation hung now on the answer of a girl.
I love this little character sketch of the angel Gabriel by Frederick Buechner, and what it implies about Mary and her role in salvation. The scripture passage is called the annunciation, the declaration of what was going to happen to and through Mary. It makes it seem as if it is a done deal, something Mary is being informed about, but has no say in. Gabriel never asks a question, really, but does that mean that she did not make a choice?
I think about the declarations in the Hebrew scripture to various people. Sometimes they are instructions, sometimes promises. Sometimes it sounds like making a deal. God tells Abraham, “go from your country to a land I will show you, and I will make of you a great nation.” Abraham does as he is instructed, but he worries about whether God will keep God’s end of the deal. When his wife Sarah continues to be barren, they both figure it is a good idea to help God along, to put into action Plan B by having Abraham sire a child through Sarah’s servant Hagar. God continues to come to Abraham with promises of greatness and abundance, land and generations of descendants.
When I read these stories about Abraham, I am struck by how he hedged his bets. God told him to leave his kindred, but he took his wife and nephew and all his possessions, including slaves. God directed him to Canaan, and he went there, but when there famine struck, he high-tailed it out to Egypt, then encouraged his wife to seduce the Egyptian officials so that they would “deal well with them,” giving Abraham livestock and more slaves. When God was clear with Abraham that the promise of a great nation would be kept through a son of Sarah’s, Abraham said nothing about it to Sarah and insisted that his son through Hagar be blessed – just in case it didn’t work out with Sarah. Through the stories of Abraham in Genesis, I can see his spiritual growth, the way his trust in God becomes stronger and firmer over time until he gets to the point that he can openly challenge God’s plans for destruction, and to where he doesn’t hedge his bets when asked to sacrifice his son Isaac. But it is a real journey.
Mary doesn’t take so long to come around, she doesn’t hedge her bets, she never asks what is in it for her. And she is promised nothing for herself. In fact,what she is told promises to be a boatload of trouble for her. She doesn’t assume, as Sarah did, that she has to help the conception take place by speeding up her marriage to Joseph with a consummation. She may be feeling out that option as she reminds Gabriel that she is a virgin. But she accepts his response that will conceive through the Holy Spirit, not her fiance. There is no plan B in Mary’s mind. And so she willing takes on the prospect of a broken engagement, the shame of unwed motherhood, perhaps rejection from her family, perhaps even stoning. And even if none of those things happen, if things move forward as the angel says, she won’t really even have her son. He is being born for the sake of others. He is coming to rule over the house of David, not to devote himself to his mother, or even to give her grandchildren. In accepting God’s invitation, she accepts this background role in the life of Jesus, and is reminded of it throughout his life.
Other than the birth narratives of Jesus, and his presentation to the temple in infancy, the only story we have of him in childhood is Luke’s story of his staying behind in a Jerusalem temple at age twelve, unbeknownst to his parents. Once discovered, after 3 days missing, Jesus quickly dismisses his mother’s worry and distress, saying they should have known he would be in his Father’s house. Now if it was me, I might demand that he be more considerate, scold him for causing such trouble, but Luke says that she treasured all these things in her heart.
I love the story in the Gospel of John where Mary encourages Jesus to save the wedding as the wine ran out. She is not so quick to back down in the face of his dismissive question – “what concern is that to you and to me?” And he doesn’t even call her “Mother,” but addresses her as “Woman.” She still worries about him as a mother would. Mark tells us that when the crowds around Jesus were so great and consistent that he wasn’t even able to eat, his family went to fetch him. Can’t you just hear Mary that he has to take care of himself if he’s going to take care of others. And whether it is his focus on his mission, or the cluelessness of a young childless person, he gives nary a thought to her concern for him, to how encompassing mothering can be. When Jesus is told at one point that his mother and brothers are looking for him, he minimizes their claim on him, saying, “my mother and brothers are those that hear the word of God and follow it.”
Other scriptures tell us she was with him and the disciples at important moments in his ministry. Perhaps she gave up on trying to get him to come home once in a while and decided if she was going to look out for him, she’d have to go along. She was there when he was hanging from the cross. As parents are apt to do, she set aside her own anguish at witnessing this, at bearing this, to be there for him. And here, on the cross, Jesus considers her, offering the gift of family ties between her and the beloved disciple.
I am so moved by Mary. We talk so much about the self-giving nature of Jesus, but Mary also is a model of self-giving love. Yet even while I am moved by her, there are these niggling concerns in my mind. I worry that her active acceptance is too often framed as passive submission. I have to consider this characterization seriously, wondering if that was the way it was at that time – that women would be told what their future held, whether by an angel of the Lord – male no less – or a father. Marriages were arranged, after all. Maybe, unlike Abraham, it never occurred to Mary that she should expect a real negotiation with God. I worry that Mary is seen as a role model only for women, and only in a distorted sense – meek, passive, submissive, obedient, virginal, undefiled. If this is how you think of her, if this is what you learned to revere about her, I challenge you to rethink.
Think of her courage rather than meekness. She willingly faced one of the worst things that could happen to a woman at that time. And she was joyful about it – hardly the mindset of a girl concerned about obedience to the powers of her culture. She was set free in saying yes. She didn’t worry about her image. Mary was strong. She traveled about 80 miles while in her third trimester – on a donkey! And I don’t really mind that she is described as pure and undefiled, as long as we understand that she was corporeal. She got down and dirty – giving birth basically in cave, with animals, experiencing all the pain and mess of labor and birth. She nursed that baby, wiped his spit up from her clothes and hair, changed his dirty diapers.
Mary was wise. She understood in a way that took Abraham ages to figure out that her well-being was completely tied up with that of all of God’s people. She sang about the great things God has done for her, but only through what God has done for Israel – lifting the lowly, filling the hungry, scattering the proud, bringing down the powerful. This is not the song of a passive, submissive and meek girl. This is the song of radical. God promised Abraham greatness, but Mary declared herself blessed. She has much to teach us, men and women. Through her example we learn we are set free to rejoice by answering yes to God’s invitation. She teaches us to get swept up in the truth that you too have found favor with God. Fear not. The holy can be born through you. Listen for the message, listen. Today, this very day, look for the moment when you can sing with Mary, “my soul magnifies the Lord.”
