Learning from Mary

Passage for reflection: Luke 1: 26 - 38 

It was fun on Thursday morning to be at the nativity put on by the nursery which meets in our Harrogate Road church. There were a lot of characters dressed up, all the biblical ones in the Christmas story plus a few snowmen, Santas and Christmas puddings. The most excited child in the thing was a little girl playing Mary. She danced about and was loving every minute of being Mary for a while. 

On the fourth Sunday of Advent, the focus is on Mary. Was she as excited as the little girl playing her, or was she frightened or overwhelmed by what was being asked of her? After all, we think she was barely a teenager if even that old. Her life was going along quietly, betrothed to an older man called Joseph, settled in Nazareth and looking forward to settling down with little drama. 

She hadn’t counted on an angel visiting her breaking into her world and causing her to suddenly change her world. We see in the Church, looking back at this meeting between the angel and Mary, her being the supreme example of obedience to God’s will, but imagine this… being told you are going to bear God’s son, no warning, no thinking time, just heaven meeting earth through a message that is urgent and exciting and revolutionary. 

When Mary hears the word of the Lord, we read that she was very perplexed. She was confused, bewildered, mystified and also rather nervous. This young girl, faced with a message from God that she is really special, feels confused; and the confusion rises when she gets the news that she is to be the person to bear the saviour of the world, a child who will be ‘holy... Son of God’. And this, not in the ordinary way children are conceived, but by the action of the living God. No wonder she is confused.

What Mary then hears are words of assurance - ‘Do not be afraid’. Have no fear. Or to put it more positively: Be confident and trusting. Be confident in the Lord who has favoured you, who will look after you, who has entrusted to you the greatest task in the world, to bear the son of God, and who will look after you in that. So Mary is to trust that the good purposes of the living God will be the answer to her confusion.

But there’s another lesson for Christmas 2021 in this meeting I think. The angel reminds us that no matter who we are, God can use us. We don’t need to know how it will work out, it just will, for we are told nothing is impossible with God. I love the passage after the annunciation where Mary visits her cousin Elizabeth. She is also amazingly with child by divine will. The two women reflect on their blessedness and then we hear Mary sing the most radical song of praise naming what God is always up to - including everyone in his party (or gathering or cheese and wine or zoom quiz) ! 

I’d like to quote directly Nadia Bolz Weber from her “ The Corners” blog: 

“When we think about the Annunciation, this scene between the angel Gabriel and Mary, we think of the faith it took for her to believe that she would conceive by the power of the Holy Spirit and that her son, the illegitimate child of an insignificant girl, really would have a throne and a kingdom. But I wonder: If I had been in her place, which would be harder for me to believe: The part about a virgin giving birth to a king? Or the part where the angel said I was favoured? I mean, if an angel came to me and said, “Greetings, favoured one,” I’d be like, you’ve got the wrong girl. 

But here’s where Mary had some real chops. She heard outrageous things from an angel and she didn't say “Let me see if I get any better offers” She didn't say “Let me get back to you” said, she heard outrageous things from an angel and said “Let it be with me according to your word” (Luke 1:38). Mary trusted the word from the angel, telling her that she was favored. And maybe that trust is what made her favoured.

We have no idea what Mary was like before the angel visited her, but here’s what I’m thinking: I seriously doubt that she made herself into a girl whom God could favor because she took the advice of her youth rabbi and lived the way she should. I mean, nowhere does it say that the angel Gabriel just waited and waited until he found a girl who had diligently worked on her virtues hard enough that she had made herself worthy to be the Godbearer. I mean, if the way God seems to favor prostitutes and tax collectors and adulterous kings over the smug, righteous, and powerful is any indication, then I think it’s safe to assume that it is God’s nature to look upon young peasant girls with favour. 

Because God’s just like that. 

So maybe the really outrageous act of faith on Mary’s part was trusting that she had found favor with God.  This, it seems to me, is a vital and overlooked miracle of the Annunciation story. Yet instead, we prefer to focus on what virtues we think Mary must have had so that we can cultivate them in ourselves and maybe make our own selves worthy of God. 

Hail Mary full of virtue, the Lord is with thee?

No. Hail Mary, full of GRACE, the Lord is with thee, the prayer goes.

Grace.  The one thing you simply cannot earn.

I think that this is exactly what Mary understood: That what qualifies us for God’s grace isn’t our goodness – what qualifies us for God’s grace is nothing more than our need for God’s grace. 

I hope so. Because I just can’t manage to muster up a yes to what seems like God’s conditional maybe toward me.

But God’s yes about me, for me, and toward me? That’s different. 

That’s a useful miracle.

So, I won’t say that I hope this season is merry. I won’t say that I hope it is happy and bright. But I will say this: I hope you hear a divine “yes.” this season. 

In other words, may your soul feel its worth.“

You know what, this Christmas we need to know we are worth something. And if we respond even with the same struggle as Mary, then like Elizabeth says to her we will be blessed among people. Won’t we?