Sermon 24th January 2016

Today, our Assistant Minister, Gill Tayleur, continues our study of faith heroes of the Bible. The reading is from Luke 1 verses 46 to 55. 

Today’s heroine of faith is Mary, the mother of Jesus. What was she like?

Mary is often depicted in art, in statues, paintings or icons, looking serene, submissive, passive even. Is that what she was like?

Mary, as venerated in Catholicism, prayed to, perfect, Is that what she was like?

Mary, the mother, agonised by seeing her son tortured and killed on a cross, depicted very graphically in the film The Passion of the Christ. Is that what she was like?!

This morning, I’d like us to look at what the Bible actually says about Mary. In fact we’ll take a whistlestop tour of ALL the events where she is featured. There aren’t many of them, only 6 occasions, or events, in all.

Six. First is when Mary appears at Jesus’ birth story, obviously.

Second is at a scene when Jesus was aged 12.

Third, Mary plays a part at the wedding at Cana, when adult Jesus turned water into wine.

Then there are accounts of when Mary and other members of the family went to see Jesus, busy in public ministry, and he talked about who really is what he called his true family.

The fifth occasion is when Mary was present at the cross when Jesus died.

Finally Mary is specifically named as being present with the disciples after Jesus’ death, resurrection and ascension, as they waited for the Holy Spirit.

So that’s the Mary of the Bible. It’s not very much is it, for someone with such an important task as bearing and bringing up the baby and child Jesus, from birth to adulthood.

6 different contexts to learn about Mary, and to learn from Mary. Let’s look at each in turn.

First, the most we hear about Mary, is of course in the gospel passages about Jesus’ birth.

In chapter 1 of Matthew, Mary is introduced like this:

“This is how the birth of JC took place: his mother Mary was engaged to Joseph, but before they were married, she found out that she was going to have a baby by the Holy Spirit.”

and so on into the nativity story, through to when the magi visited the baby Jesus.

The other gospel with the birth or nativity story, is Luke’s, where we have a fuller story starting with the angel appearance to Mary to tell her she would have God’s son. We’ll look at that encounter in a bit more detail in a moment. Luke tells us about Mary’s visit to Elizabeth, the trip to Bethlehem, the birth and the subsequent visit from shepherds.

Then Luke describes Mary and Joseph taking Jesus to the temple at 8 days old, and what Simeon and Anna prophesied about baby Jesus there. This included Simeon’s words to Mary that her son would be rejected and a figure of controversy, and that Mary would suffer deeply, as he said:

“sorrow will break your own heart.”

I wonder what Mary made of that, with Jesus just 8 days old.

……………………………………

It’s perhaps easier to imagine what Mary might have made

of what the angel Gabriel said to her, back at the beginning of the story.

It seems the angel’s visit came out of the blue:

God sent the angel Gabriel to a town in Galilee to a girl promised in marriage to a man named Joseph, who was a descendant of King David. The angel said, “Peace be with you! The Lord is with you and has greatly blessed you!”

Gabriel went on to tell Mary

“God has been gracious to you. You will become pregnant and give birth to a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High God. The Lord God will make him a king, as his ancestor David was, and he will be king of the descendants of Jacob for ever; his kingdom will never end!”

Wow! This message from Gabriel was perhaps the news that every woman in Israel hoped to hear, that her child would be the long promised Saviour-king. But that she’d have a baby before she was married to Joseph, before she was sleeping with him?! No wonder she asked, how can this be, since I am a virgin?

Gabriel’s answer was simply that God’s Holy Spirit & his power will come upon her – for “there is nothing that God cannot do. “

In order to understand what might have been going through Mary’s thoughts at that point, we need to know how marriage worked in those days.

Mary was probably about 13 years old, young, but a normal age to be engaged in those days. At that time, engagement meant that the man and woman were legally husband and wife, in all aspects apart from having sexual relations. So Joseph and Mary were considered husband and wife. But they weren’t sleeping together - and Gabriel told her she’s going to have a baby!

How would it look? Imagine what it would have been like for Mary to tell Joseph, her family, her friends and the village, her version of how she got pregnant: there was no man, it was God. ??!!

There would be scandal, gossip, wagging tongues. Everyone would assume the baby was Joseph’s; but of course Joseph knew for a fact that it wasn’t. So it would seem there must have been another man, hence the accusation of adultery.

In Matthew’s gospel, it says an angel appeared to Joseph in a dream to reassure him that the baby really was from God, from the Holy Spirit.

Phew! But Mary didn’t know that’s what would happen, when she heard what Gabriel said about her becoming pregnant.

The Old Testament Law, in Deuteronomy 22, gave the punishment for adultery: stoning to death.

But before such a stoning, they had to be sure of the woman’s guilt. She might claim to have been raped, or that it was her engaged husband’s baby and it was he who was lying. So there was a procedure for determining whether or not a woman was guilty of adultery. It’s given in Numbers chapter 5; it’s the Law of Bitter Waters. The woman accused of adultery is brought before the priest in the temple, and under oath she drinks bitter waters, a mix of dust, holy water and the ink of the priest’s written curse. If the woman was guilty, she would become very sick. If she didn’t get sick, she was acquitted.

So when Mary heard the angel Gabriel say you’re going to have a baby, she would have known straight away, the private and public humiliation, the bitter waters test, and the possibility of being stoned to death. How terrifying!

What would Joseph say? And do? Would she be stranded with her baby with no father and no means of support?

When Gabriel spoke those words, Mary would have known that her life would never be the same again.

How extraordinary then, that Mary’s response was

“I am the Lord’s servant. May it happen to me as you have said.”

How could she have said that?

“I am the Lord’s servant. May it happen to me as you have said.”

These words must have been borne out of a long standing, deep faith and trust in God. Mary must have known what God was like, known the old faith stories of her people’s history and how God was faithful. She would have known the stories of other women who were threatened in Jewish history who had been protected by God, like Ruth and Esther. Mary was able to say “may it happen to me as you have said” because she knew God, and trusted him.

Truly Mary is a hero/heroine of faith! She didn’t know what the future held, apart from most likely some very scary and painful prospects, but nevertheless she consented to God’s plan, in faith.

Saying “may it happen to me as you have said”, saying yes to God, is a huge important lesson we can learn from Mary.

………………………………………………………….

After the angel’s visit, Luke tells us, Mary hurries off to visit her cousin Elizabeth who’s also unexpectedly pregnant. And with her, Mary bursts into a song of praise, that Bible reading we just heard. Some of us may be familiar with this song as the choral piece, the Magnificat, so called because of the Latin translation, as it starts My soul magnifies the Lord.

But it’s actually quite a revolutionary, political song, as it’s all about the downfall of the rich, proud and mighty, of kings and rulers, and the lifting up of the poor, the hungry and the humble.

It is said that the Magnificat was banned from being sung in India under British rule, and banned in Guatemala in the 1980s, as it was too politically subversive. It might encourage the poor to try and rise up!

Mary’s words, “he has brought down mighty kings from their thrones” would have made people think of Herod and Rome, and their tyrannical occupation of Israel.

When she said “he has sent the rich away with empty hands” they would have thought of Herod benefiting from unjust crippling taxation.

And he has lifted up the lowly and filled the hungry with good things - well surely that was ordinary, poor people like Mary herself?!

This protest against unjust rulers was very brave! If made public, it would certainly be heard as a tirade against Herod and Rome, and would get Mary into (more) big trouble!

So why did Mary bubble up with such a strong, brave, radical song?!

Because Gabriel had told her that the miracle son growing inside her, would become king and establish a new Davidic dynasty in Jerusalem that would last forever. Mary’s exclamations in the Magnificat are saying how wonderful, that God has already begun to do this! The time has come!

The Magnificat is full of ideas and phrases from the Old Testament, from prophets like Isaiah, and from Hannah’s song of praise in 1 Samuel 2.

So, what we might learn from Mary’s words in the Magnificat is that she was brave, she was passionate about justice, and she knew her Scriptures.

…………………………………………………..

The narratives of Jesus birth in Matthew and Luke, then, are where we learn most about Mary.

Much more briefly then, the other 5 occasions:

The second is only in Luke’s gospel, and he fast forwards 12 years. To the time when Jesus stayed in Jerusalem and taught in the temple after his parents had started their journey home to Nazareth. They thought they’d lost Jesus, and Luke describes Mary’s concern when they couldn’t find him. And then: “Jesus was obedient to [his parents]. But his mother treasured all these things in her heart.”

The third occasion we hear about Mary, is at the wedding in Cana. The wine has run out at the reception, putting the family’s honour at risk, and Mary seemed to nudge, or nag, Jesus into doing something about it, saying to him, “They have no more wine.” Jesus responded

“you must not tell me what to do. My time has not yet come.”

And then Mary told the servants to do whatever Jesus tells them. He turned huge jars of water into wine. There’s no time to go into this story in detail, but perhaps the most obvious thing here about Mary is that she has to start doing things Jesus’ way, and obeying him, rather than him obeying her, as a boy.

There’s more of this lesson, of learning to be a follower of Jesus even though she’s his mother, in the 4^th setting in which we see Mary.

In Matthew, Mark and Luke’s gospels there are accounts of an occasion when Mary and Jesus’ family went to see Jesus because they were worried about him.

Mark chapter 3. Early in Jesus’ ministry, just after he had chosen the 12 disciples, an enormous crowd gathered around Jesus so that it wasn’t possible for him even to go get food. So Mary and Jesus’ brothers went to see him, worried that “He’s gone mad.”

But they didn’t get near him, and when Jesus was told his mother and brothers were outside asking for him, he replied, looking at those around him, “Who are my mother and brothers? Here are my mother and brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”

This was a very difficult message for Mary to understand: she no longer understood her son better than anyone else did. She had to struggle with what sort of Messiah he was, just as everyone else did. He didn’t seem to be heading for the throne as she expected. Jesus was calling for a different following, a different obedience, and Mary had to become a follower of Jesus, just like everyone else. How difficult for her.

There are just 2 more occasions when Mary features in the Bible. The 5th is at the cross. Of course she was there. What mother would not want to be as close as possible to her son, her own flesh and blood, in his indescribable agony? We have no record of anything Mary might have said, I imagine she was beyond speaking, but John’s gospel tells us that on the cross, Jesus gave Mary into his friend John’s care, so she would be looked after.

The final encounter we have with Mary is when she is named in Acts chapter 1, as being with the disciples and followers of the ascended Jesus, praying together and waiting for the Holy Spirit to come.

So, having skimmed through what the Bible tells us about Mary, what can we learn from her today?

……………………………………………………..

“I am the Lord’s servant. “May it happen to me as you have said.”

Mary said this at the beginning of the story, when Gabriel told her she was going to have God’s baby. But she had to keep the same attitude, or keep coming back to it, over the years. Mary’s understanding of who Jesus was, of what sort of king and saviour he was, of how she had to follow him, changed and grew over time. And ours does too. Our YES to God, needs to be ongoing, repeated, daily!

I keep coming back to that, to Mary saying yes to God. That’s why I chose her as my heroine of faith. I chose her because I think she is sometimes under-recognised in our churches today. I chose her because I relate – a bit - to her painful journey as a mother. But I find her yes to God pulls me in, it’s so attractive – I find I want to say YES to God more than anything else! Even though moment by moment in daily life, I find myself going off on my own way and not God’s!

So, what might saying yes to God mean for you, for me, for us, today?

What might God be calling you to, wanting you to do, or be?

It might be a new job, or task? At work? At home? Here in church?

It might be a change in a relationship, someone you need to forgive, or to ask forgiveness from.

It might be to really get to grips with something you know is wrong in your life, to take responsibility for it, to do something about it.

“I am the Lord’s servant. “May it happen to me as you have said.”

Although I find Mary’s example a tremendous challenge, it’s also a tremendous encouragement. Mary wasn’t anyone special, at the start of the story. She was a young, poor, village girl.

As Cameron said in his introductory sermon on this series of Heroes of Faith, the Bible is full of people with faith in a great God. Not great people with faith. Not people with great faith. But ordinary people with faith in a great God. Mary was one of those for sure, and God took her faith and her trust and accomplished his extraordinary purpose for humanity through her special son.

Mary said yes to God – so will we?