Mary, the mother of Jesus, is not only the meek, mild, obedient woman the Christian tradition has turned her into, but also, a strong, morally autonomous, independent woman who does her own thinking, her own questioning, her own discerning and her own deciding.
For many of us, it’s a very different way of thinking about her. It’s different from the portrayal of her in Christmas pageants that I saw growing up, where she’s in the picture, wearing her traditional blue, and, being silent.
I attended Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena – it was predominantly a protestant seminary, but there were a few Catholics there. I befriended Sherry, thinking I was expanding my worldview!
Sherry had diabetes that was destroying the blood vessels behind her eyes, causing her to go blind. I remember when she told me she was going to go to Lourdes, a revered place in France where there was an apparition of the Virgin Mary and people who touched the water there were healed and cured of diseases.
She believed in God who could heal – and I told her I’d be praying for her on her trip. I couldn’t wait for her to get back – and when I saw her, she said it was a very moving experience.
After her next doctor’s appointment, the doctor shook his head and said, “I don’t understand it, your symptoms are reversing!” She was elated – I was thrilled! I asked her, “Sherry, who do you attribute your healing to?” “To God,” was her answer.
Mary was the conduit for God to work; was a faith connection to God for her.
I share this with you because my world view widened at that point. And I’m not asking you to believe one way or another, but to just widen your lens. Be open.
I want to add another dimension to that portrait of Mary as a liberated woman. This new dimension comes from the passage from Luke 2. That passage is known as the Magnificat – because its first word in Latin is magnificat. Translated to English, that word is magnify (to be held in greater esteem or respect).
The new dimension I want to add is the dimension of Mary as prophet. The Magnificat begins with lines that can be seen as reinforcing the image of Mary as lowly, humble and obedient: “My soul magnifies God, for God has looked with favor on the lowliness of God’s servant.”
The traditional interpretation of Mary sees these words as emphasizing Mary’s “lowliness,” a status in which Christian patriarchy has always wanted to keep her. (Remember, when these Gospels were written, it was during a time of a strong male-dominated Greek and Jewish culture).
Those lines are there, of course, but it seems to me that we can see the Magnificat as a hymn to Mary’s lowliness only if we ignore everything that comes after them.
Mary’s next lines are: “Surely from now on all generations will call me blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things for me.” These lines fit with the interpretation of the Annunciation that I suggested we think about last week – that in saying yes to God, Mary was reaching for this awesome opportunity, claiming her chance for something great with God, her chance really to be somebody.
Could it be that God doing great things for her was exactly what Mary was counting on?
According to the theologian, Rev. Tom Sorenson, these lines, like the Annunciation itself, are ambiguous. They don’t necessarily indicate a Mary meek and mild.
Now we come to the part of the Magnificat that really shows a Mary different from the traditional silent, meek and mild view of her and shows her as a prophet. She says, “God has shown strength with God’s arm; God has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts and lifted up the lowly; God has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.”
Now, to understand how these lines make Mary a prophet, we have to understand what a Biblical prophet actually is. The common understanding is that a prophet is someone who foresees the future. A much better understanding of the Biblical prophets is that they are people who proclaim God’s truth.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, a man by the name of Keith Green rose to prominence in the Christian community circles in my life. I was in college, seeking God’s will for my life and his music and words touched a chord in my heart. I remember saying out loud, if there ever was a modern day prophet, it was Keith Green. He grew up Jewish and Christian Scientist – and had a powerful experience with God after a bad trip on drugs. One of the quotes from him that has stuck with me is, “It’s time to quit playing church and start being the Church!”
Prophets affect people in a powerful way. We have one of our own too in the LGBT community – what about Troy Perry! The prophetic vision and call on his life birthed MCC worldwide! Prophets call for deeper commitment, challenge the status quo and they are people like the great writing prophets Amos, Hosea and Micah who proclaim God’s demand for justice; who say that what God wants from us is not empty worship, but lives devoted to justice for the poor and the vulnerable among us.
That’s the kind of prophet Mary is, although the way Luke puts it may not make that fact as clear as it might be. The words Luke puts in Mary’s mouth are in the past tense. According to theologian Sorenson, the verses I just quoted consist of three parallel statements, each of which begins by saying, “God has.”
The past tense of the verbs makes it sound like Mary is talking about things God did in the past. Yet, it’s pretty clear that the things Mary mentions God has not done in the past. The proud still have pride in their hearts. The powerful still sit on their thrones; even if those thrones look more like government offices and corporate board rooms than royal palaces. The lowly are still lowly. The rich are still full and the hungry are still hungry.
So how are we to understand Mary’s words?
What about looking at them as prophecy? Mary here isn’t talking about things God has literally done in the past, but about God’s will, God’s desire, God’s dream for the earth. It’s a dream of overturned hierarchical structures and justice for the least, the last and the lost.
When we understand Mary’s words this way, we see her as a prophet in the ancient tradition of Amos, Hosea and Micah. And of her son Jesus, whose proclamation of the realm of God her words foreshadow.
So, is Mary humble? Yes. She attributes all that is happening in her life to God – not to herself. Is Mary meek and mild? Hardly. She’s giving new voice to the prophetic thundering of Amos, with his, “Let justice roll down like waters.” Of Micah with his, “What does God require of you, but to do justice, and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” And of her son, Jesus, with his, “In as much as you have done it to one of the least of these, you have done it to me.”
I was recently honored to give the Invocation at the Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice of San Diego County’s annual breakfast.
“God of many names, God of the laborer,
God of the migrant and the ensnared,
The voice of the misused echoes across the land,
Overworked and undervalued in the name of profit.
Source of abundance and grace,
You call us to stand in the name of justice and fairness,
To witness against the abuse of economic power,
To speak out against exploitation.
Who will speak if we don’t!
Bless those who speak out for the voiceless and the forgotten
Give them courage and determination.
Give them wisdom and skill.
Bless those in financial need,
Release them from want.
May we all use our voice for justice and good.
Thank you, loving God, for all of your blessings.
Amen.”
Tradition doesn’t call Mary a prophet. Maybe it should. In the Magnificat, the humble young woman of low estate rises up and joins her voice, loud and strong, to the great prophetic tradition of Israel. With the ancient prophets, and with Jesus himself, she calls us to lives of justice and of peace, to work for the coming of the realm and the realization of God’s dream on earth. Amen.
Rev. Dan Koeshall is the senior pastor at The Metropolitan Community Church (The Met), 2633 Denver Street, San Diego, California, themetchurch.org. Services every Sunday at 9 and 11 a.m.
