Strong Like A Woman
A Sermon for the Beloveds of First Austin: a baptist community of faith
by Griff Martin
On 1 Samuel 2:1-10 / Luke 1:26-38, 46-55
The Fourth Sunday in Advent
December 20, 2020
*This document comes from an oral manuscript.
Incarnate and Coming God, we ask that you once again take the Word and transform it into a living and breathing reality we can all together experience. Make us attended to your presence here in this space and in these words God, for if we are aware of your being here then nothing else will matter, but if we are not aware of your being here then nothing else will matter. In the name of the Creator, the Christ and the Comforter.
Madeline Miller is an extraordinary writer, taking classics like Odyssey and Iliad and reinventing them with modern language and highlighting characters who have served the part of supporting roles in previous tellings. It’s a brilliant method, her books are some of my favorites, she creates worlds you can get lost in all while questioning our very nature of storytelling.
In her latest book for example she takes Circe who is a very intriguing character in Odyssey, a goddess who is turning men into pigs on her island, which would seem to make her a villain and yet by the end of the epic she is a most helpful protagonist… and yet very little attention has been paid to her beyond the pig thing.
In interviews about the book Miller often talked about how frustrating it is that female characters like Circe are read through the lens of being way too simple or overly complex, thus unknowable. She says in this epic and much art still today, “unknowable is an adjective often applied to women. This is so frustrating to me because I feel like it casts women as this completely alien, bizarre, nonperson.”
I think this critique can fairly be used to evaluate Scripture or at least our interpretation and theology of Scripture all too often. Exhibit A this morning: Mary.
So Miller said she looked at Circe throughout the whole poem, everything written about her, to make her more than just the goddess who turns men to pigs, to look at everything written and create a fuller picture of this character.
I think we need to do the same thing with Mary.
Protestants are almost religious in our beliefs that we don’t worship Mary, ‘that’s for Catholics’ we say, and then we put Mary as a supporting actress who has a very brief scene at the beginning of the epic story of Jesus. When the truth is that Mary is the one character who is there at the beginning of the story, nine months before Jesus arrives to be exact, and then is there at the end with the disciples in the upper room planning the beginning of organized Jesus following. She is the only one who makes the full journey.
Or this: we take away all her lines, think about how often you have seen a Christmas pageant where Mary has any more to say beyond “let it be.” And yet if you were to count the actual lines from the story, she utters and sings more lines and words than anyone else in the story. Beyond that, the fullest account of the birth of Jesus is found in Luke’s gospel and I feel certain that is because Luke went to Mary and said "tell me the story." Luke’s Gospel begins with Mary’s Gospel.
Or just look at the way we talk about Mary, when we are brave enough to talk about her in baptist circles (those of us who love Mary so intensely are almost like members of Fight Club: the first rule, don’t talk about this in public). Often in Advent, Mary is spoken of as the one whom God gave Jesus, like this, ‘and God gave Mary Jesus.’ My suggestion this morning as we continue our study of these characters is this: change the language: What if instead of God giving Mary Jesus, it was just the opposite and God gave Jesus, Mary?
Maybe we would look at her anew. There is a lot of evidence to build a case for Mary.
To start with, maybe we would give her the right name -- Miriam, not Mary. Sure Mary is a variation of Miriam, like going by Griff when your full name is Griffin. But shortening Mary to Miriam robs her of a richness she deserves. Miriam means “obstinacy” or “rebellious,” which I very much prefer to Mild Mother, it has a ring that feels truer to it, Obstinate Mother, Rebellious Mother.
Miriam also has a rich heritage from which we need to view Mother Mary. Remember our first Miriam? The older teenage sister of Moses, the one who was brave enough to hide her brother and find a safe place for him, the courageous girl who was willing to let him go to save his very life, the one willing to enter enemy territory to help raise him. The same sister who followed Moses across the Red Sea and then sang a song of rebellious joy at the freeing of the Hebrew people. The same sister who was just feisty enough later on in the story to question Moses’ leadership by saying in front of a crowd of people “Has the Lord spoken only through Moses? Has the Lord not spoken through us also?”
God gave Jesus, Miriam. God gave Jesus Mary because Jesus was going to need to build on a heritage like that. That is royal lineage.
Or maybe we need to hear her song again, to look at her song, which is the True Song of Christmas, the Magnificat. It’s as radical as it gets, in fact it’s so radical that when the government of Guatemala was in the midst of a revolution in the 1980s, the Magnificat’s power to interrupt was seen as so subversive and dangerous that its public reading was forbidden.
Spend some time this afternoon reading the song to see how radical and truthful this song of prophetic imagination really is, it’s the foundation of Power With not Power Over. It’s disruptive in all the right ways: a new social order that is truly a community where everyone belongs, a new politics in which no one is in power over anyone and we all work together for the greater good of all and a new economic order where no one is hungry or lacks anything but celebrates abundance and sharing. Mary’s song is a great summary of the entire Torah and prophets. It’s not a case of "Mary did you know," Mary knew.
In fact, I think it’s part of Mary’s incredible wisdom that made God choose Mary. I think a lot of us have been given the image of Mary as this meek teenager slowly and silently going about her day in prayerful contemplation just waiting, and then God breaks in and suggests this radical thing and she says, "let it be." I don’t think that was the case, I don’t think Mary was sitting around praying that God would give her the Son of God, I think Mary was living her life knowing what God wanted and doing her best to bring that about and God noticed her, there is something about Mary, and then this grand idea that God has been working on for some time was finally ready because she was strong enough to bring this to reality.
Martin Luther says this of Mary’s song: “She sang it not for herself, but for all of us, to sing it after her.”
Jesus needed Mary to sing her protest song as a lullaby in his ears as he fell asleep every night so that one day when he was trying to figure out his calling and God’s will and all the big questions of life, this lullaby would be the background music that set the scene for all his life.
God gave Jesus, Miriam. God gave Jesus Mary because Jesus needed someone who knew the heart of God and was working to bring that to a reality. Jesus needed someone wise enough to teach him his mission, what God truly desired for our world, what the Kingdom of God was really about. Mary knew and she sang it.
Or maybe, we just need to think of her as a mother, as a strong mother. Parenthood is the best and the worst. The brilliant teacher Elizabeth Lesser sums it up best: “When you parent you fall in love with a person who is always changing into someone else and who you know will leave you… It’s a never ending journey down a wide river of love and worry.”
Parenting is a nightmare in terms of change, just when you have learned the rhythm of a newborn they sleep through the night, just when you finally have mastered changing a diaper they are potty trained, just when you are good at teaching reading they are onto chapter books, just when you have elementary school somewhat down they are in middle school… and all the way until they leave for college.
Parenting is constant change, complete loss of control, infatuation from the first moment, complete delight and then surrender and letting go…. Which is to say, parenting is love in maybe its truest form. And it takes a strong, good mother to truly parent.
I think God knew this and I think God knew that Mary was strong enough to parent and to mother Jesus like this, but beyond this I think God knew Jesus needed to see and experience love like that because the entire kingdom of God is based on love like that.
God gave Jesus, Miriam. God gave Jesus Mary because Jesus was going to require a parent strong enough to truly mother him with true love, the true love he was going to then use to mother the world into the Kingdom of God.
Or finally, we just need to look at the whole trajectory of her life again. The first one on the scene and the last one on the scene. She is there 9 months before he arrives and she is there the day after he departs. In fact, I think it’s that strength that should make us look at another line in Scripture we might have missed: when on the cross Jesus says to the disciple, here is your mother, mother here is your son. I don’t think Jesus was giving Mary a new son to take care of her, by all accounts she had other children to do that if need be. I think Jesus was giving the disciples someone to look after them…. I think what Jesus was saying is she has been my backbone, she has been my strength, my rock and now let her guide you as well, she knows what to do.
God gave Jesus, Miriam. God gave Jesus Mary because Jesus needed someone strong enough to stand by him his entire life and she was the only one strong enough to do that.
And maybe I am phrasing that wrong, God certainly gave Jesus Mary, but God also gave us Mary. Because we need the same thing….
We need someone who has a royal history of obstinance and rebellion, who reminds us that we come from a long line of women brave enough to demand more. And we need someone who knows the heart of God and will teach us what that looks like and what we have to do to help create it. We need to see love, we need to experience true love so that we can help God mother the world into the kingdom of God. And we need someone strong enough to bring all this to fruition even if it means being broken open.
It takes a woman strong enough to let her heart lead, to let her body birth the very kingdom of God, to carry on a long story of rebellious seekers, to mother us all.
I think today the world needs a whole host of Mary’s, Jesus followers who are strong enough to let out hearts lead us forward, brave enough to be rebellious seekers, letting our very bodies birth the Kingdom of God.
May we sit with Mary this week and look at her life, with awe and gratitude and determination to do the same, may we look at her life and pray, “Let it be,” and then follow her so we can follow him. Amen and Amen.
*artwork: Advent Triptych, by John Swanson
God gave Jesus a Mary (advent poem 4)
By: KB
In this one, I am not a person. Instead, I am a tree;
you nurture me, and I’ll feed you forever. Or maybe I will be
the background. Creating a world where others grow
strong inside & outside of me -- an extra in everyone's
Blockbuster special. This is the work of most women.
Even Mary, who built Jesus from faith and the chance
of being chosen, has the curse of being unknowable
outside of the power of giving birth. When I think of her,
I think of how hard it must be in the afterlife, watching
yourself make a cameo in every rendering of a story
someone else gets to tell. When we think of Jesus, we should also
remember the 9 months it took to carry the rock of many
generations & what we wish to return to. I bet, when the original story
happened, she had a lot to feel. Today, every child-bearing human
carries a piece of greatness in them, too. How awesome it is
to grow flesh and blood from so little. How awesome that God
gifted Jesus, and us all, with a Mary.
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