Annunication

As I begin this evening, I have a confession: I was raised a good Protestant, of the Reformed variety, which meant Mary had a bad name: praying to Mary was one of the evils of the RC church which required the reformation, and we decry those who honour her almost more than Jesus her son. Why go to a mediator when there is one mediator, Jesus Christ our Lord? In this, the reformers were drawing on various passages in the Pauline letters which affirm a direct approach to God in contrast with pre Reformation depictions of Jesus as a remote and terrifying Judge, whose mother was more cuddly and approachable, more “human” and understanding. Growing up in such an environment, Mary was just some chick who had a baby, could’ve been any woman. If she was to be honoured it would be because she said yes to God’s plan for the world. End of story.

So my appreciation of Mary is an adult appreciation, shaped by my own coming of age. We are right to honour Mary and give her a high place amongst the saints and the followers of Jesus. She had a unique vocation, and no one else could have done it – in the same sense that no one else can be a woman and a priest and a composer and singer and harpist and sewer and creative in the same way I can be, and in the same sense the each of us here has a unique set of God-given gifts and abilities that only we can inhabit and express. In Mary’s case, it is not that if she’d said no to the angelic greeting someone else couldn’t have borne the Saviour of the world. God would have found a way. But here’s the rub, Mary cooperated with God’s designs and destiny. And how she fulfilled that incredible vocation is unique and should be honoured. She stands as a strong woman, an icon and symbol especially relevant to our current context where violence against women and sexism continues to permeate our culture from our parliament down.

So much disservice has been done to Mary over the centuries. Narratives which have minimized the place and role of Mary over the last 2000 years are inherently patriarchal; whose interest is it to ensure that Mary is denigrated and made a second class citizen? The male. (As Mary Daly said, if God is male, then the male is God.) Mary has been the preserve of celibate men, who lauded her for being the virgin mother, a mother untainted by sexuality and sexual desire, and put her on a pedestal no living woman can inhabit. The lifting up of Mary in late medieval times was very much to the denigration of flesh and blood women who were either virgins or whores; men perceived women as temptresses embodying their evil mother Eve, whose fault it was that man fell. That attitude to women is inherently misogynist (to say nothing of doing a disservice to human sexuality). The protestant attitude I described earlier is fueled by no less misogyny: at least the RCs and more catholicly minded Anglicans have continued to uphold some notion of the divine feminine, even if subverted by patriarchal agendas. The protestant view of Mary conveniently shoves Mary (and therefore all women) out of view, relegating women to the place of subservient submission and invisibility.

We should decry this violence done to Mary as a woman. On this day we honour her, not because she’s some plaster statue festooned with flowers, some impossible, “safe” and unattainable model of womanhood, but because she is a powerful symbol, and a timely one in our context. Let’s see her as the strong and determined person she was. A young woman who with great courage said yes to participating in God’s purposes, to God’s coming into the world to bring salvation and an upturning of human structures of power. A young woman who in a challenging situation – being pregnant with a child not belonging to her husband in an honour/shame culture – stood firm. That’s no small thing in itself.

Women who have borne children will tell you that pregnancy and childbirth are not insignificant things. Far from it: the vocation of bearing a child, from what I understand as a childless woman, involves saying yes to a whole host of changes which it doesn’t matter how well versed you may be in what happens to a woman’s body during pregnancy, will always be unexpected: the changing shape, the demands on organs and bones, morning sickness, the process of birth which often results in tears and forever-change to continence, and increased risks of all sorts of afflictions (prolapsed bladder, increased cancer risk, fistula, to name a few). These are not insignificant; they are part of the cost of carrying new life to term. And this doesn’t count the countless costs of sleepless nights, never ending nappy cleaning and changing, the slow and patient joy of nurturing and growing a small human, teaching speech, teaching basic survival, meeting both the basic and the more complex in the hierarchy of needs… not just as an infant. Mary as mother would have taught Jesus most of what he knew in those early years. She took to heart Simeon’s words at Jesus’ presentation in the temple that “a sword will pierce your own heart too”, an echo of the violence by which her son would die. Mary said yes to all this, not just to God taking physical human flesh from her, to the whole box and dice of being the God-bearer, Theotokos.

Tied up in this is the marvel of the incarnation. In Mary God embraced this process of change too. Her role is not insignificant, her yes was not a once off to being pregnant, but a yes to being the mother of God-in-flesh, God in a vulnerable human body, God experiencing the raw physicality of mortal mutable fleshiness. This is not nothing; it is not insignificant; it is everything. God became fully human in Jesus, in order that we and all that is may become, like him, divine. Mary had great courage to take up this vocation in saying yes.

Mary stands in solidarity with other strong women. Mary is every mother who has lost a child by systemic violence. Mary is every mother whose child has ended their life in suicide because someone raped them and it was a life sentence while the rapist got off scott free (often sheltered by institutions like the church). Mary is every mother whose precious daughter and grandchildren have been murdered at the hands of an ex or current partner. Mary is every woman who has been cat-called, touched inappropriately, harassed and denigrated. She is also every woman who has in spite of the odds, drawn strength from her deep connection with God’s presence within, stood firm and made a new life from the ashes of what was. Mary would have been at the Treasury Gardens last Monday amongst the 5000 protesting in black, and had she had a chance to lift her voice it would have been to triumphantly shout about how God brings down the mighty from their seats and exalts the humble and meek; how God fulfills God’s promises in amazing and unexpected ways; about blessing God and in turn marveling at how people would call her blessed for generations to come because she stood firm. She would have proclaimed the good news that God’s realm runs entirely counter to the narratives of patriarchy so dear to the hearts of men: there is no first and last, no male and female, no slave and free, no Jew and Greek – in God’s just realm, all are one, equal before God in all ways. And God’s power is not power over, but power for and power with; ultimately human power structures which value one over another are doomed to collapse: she would prophesy a time when there will be an end to violence done to women and children by those who should love and care tenderly for and with them. No more. Enough is enough.

We do well to take from her patterns for ourselves. To say yes to God. But yes with our whole beings, accepting the changes, some of them painful and difficult, that come when we say yes to bearing God for the world. We too are bearers of the Christ insofar as his image is to be formed in us, and we conformed to his likeness. We are light-bearers called to carry the message of the good news of God’s realm come close, closer than our own breath. God’s realm, where there is no first or last, characterized by honouring the weak, the poor, the most fragile. God’s realm, where power is shared so God’s healing and salvation for all can flourish. God can’t grow under our ribs and within us unless we are in communion with, in prayerful, reflective, repentant, awareness of God – our baptismal vocation. Mary’s yes echoes to us as the insistent call to follow Jesus, which includes the call to stand for justice, and ourselves to work for and embody the world we long for, including justice and equality for women and an end to cultures that support violence. May we have grace and courage to stand firm with Mary.

The Lord be with you

            And also with you