Mary, The Mother Of Jesus
Sermon
Shining Through The Darkness
Sermons For The Winter Season
Object:
And Mary said, "My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior."
-- Luke 1:46-47
It is not unusual to encounter media news articles reporting, with a smile, an alleged appearance of Mary occurring usually in some economically depressed location. Perhaps Mary was sighted at a small, ramshackle farm in Convers, Georgia, for example, her image miraculously appearing on a red-stained side of a barn, or perhaps in the night sky above a trailer park outside of Denver. Traffic jams may occur for a day or so as the faithful or curious flock to see the alleged phenomenon.
What is unusual though, is how rarely Mary actually appears in the pages of our Bible. The apostle Paul never mentions Mary's name. Mark's gospel skips the birth of Jesus and, later, along with the gospel of John, portrays Mary as a person who really doesn't understand the mission of her son. But in the gospel of Luke, Mary sings a poem that focuses not on herself but on her God. Here we clearly find blessed Mary full of grace, the holy mother of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
"My soul magnifies the Lord ..." Mary's song, later named the "Magnificat" from its opening word in the Latin Vulgate, God is magnified -- it is easier now to see the divine. Mary's song tells of a God who has "looked with favor on [her] lowliness" (Luke 1:48), the Greek pointing not just to her humility, but to her economic position, her low status in her culture, her material poverty like many pregnant teenagers in our own urban and rural areas today. Mary was a member of the Palestinian underclass, and yet a woman who knows God and is therefore blessed. "My spirit rejoices in God my savior...." It is Mary who sings the "freedom song" on behalf of all those who have their priorities tied to the agenda of God, many of whom are very poor.
Martin Luther was nurtured in a spiritual environment that included the cult of Mary in both personal piety and liturgical expression. Because of the Magnificat, Luther considered Mary a primary symbol of the embodiment of God's unmerited grace. In Mary, Luther saw true reverence as opposed to the arrogance of worldly power. He saw Mary as the prototype of how God is to be magnified by Christians, not praised for distant, unchangeable majesty but for the unconditional, graceful, and loving pursuit of all the earth's sacred life. Mary magnifies God for what God does rather than magnifying herself or what God has done for her alone. The only Lutheran-reformational warning concerning Mary was that we should never confuse Mary for Mary's God.
I firmly believe Mary has much to teach us today about the nature of God. I will offer one sermon illustration this morning. It is a true story about an alleged appearance of the Virgin Mary -- an appearance story that, I believe, nicely exposes the very nature of God.
The story takes place in Mexico in the early 1500s. It begins on the top of a hill that just a few years before was a pilgrimage center of the Aztec religion. It was the location of a temple to an awesome and greatly feared Aztec goddess dressed in her "star skirt" representing power over the whole universe. The temple had recently been destroyed by the Spanish Conquistadors. It was precisely on that hill during this time of year in December, according to tradition, that Mary appeared to an American Indian peasant with the baptismal name of Juan Diego. The year was 1531. Mary appeared to Juan Diego and told him that a church should be built on that site and that he was to convince the Spanish Bishop of Mexico to build it.
The Indian was instructed by Mary to pick roses of Castile, which he would find growing in the December desert nearby and carry them in his tilma, his rough, native cloak, to the bishop in Mexico City.
Juan Diego followed Mary's instructions, but when the Indian knelt before the skeptical bishop and opened his poncho to offer the roses, the flowers were gone. On his robe was a painting of Mary, painted right on the course, indigenous cloth woven of local plant fibers -- the cloth of the Aztec. This painting of Mary, a gift from Mary, as many believe, has been named Our Lady of Guadalupe, and it has been the focus of Mexican religious life for over 400 years.
But this story is not just about an alleged miracle. It is about human beings encountering God through an understanding of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Come deeper with me into this tradition, beginning with the Conquistadors. I am certainly not trying to make excuses for much of what they did, which was often brutal injustice stemming from pure cultural and racial prejudice and misunderstanding, but I want to first attempt to understand their perception of Mary. Remember that most of these soldiers were from the poorest levels of Spanish society, desperately entering the military, and, for the most part, they were genuinely religious people.
The soldiers' theology tended toward apocalyptic. They envisioned themselves on the edge of chaos, facing death each day in a land they knew nothing about. In fact, just a few years before, it was a land not even believed to exist. They were in alien territory and the Aztecs were radically different. The Spanish soldiers, who were appalled by the ritual blood-letting, self-mutilation, and human sacrifice of the Aztec religion, wondered if the native peoples might be devils. "Will they kill me? Will I ever get home to Spain again? The odds are all against my survival!" these soldiers assumed.
But for them, Mary was also there with them. The Spanish soldiers all carried images of Mary wherever they went. She was a symbol to them that God would not forget them or abandon them even in this new, bizarre, and hostile world. Even if they would die a violent death so far from home, they would die in the arms of Mary, and would not be Godforsaken. Mary was like their own mother, or the mother they wished they would have had, a mother who knew their suffering and would never forget them. It was, I believe, a valid image of God -- the mother's caring love and long memory. But the soldiers often grossly missed the other primary component of the Magnificat -- the part about justice and loving your neighbor as yourself.
But what about the Aztecs?
At first, for both those who allied themselves with or battled against the Spaniards in 1519 through 1521, the so-called "years of the conquest," images of Mary were associated with terror and pain. During that time, Cortes and his troops conspicuously carried pictures and banners of Mary everywhere, even into battle. According to Spanish records, they placed statues of Mary in the native temples after they were cleansed of their "pagan idols" (the words used in the journals of the Spanish officers). After the battle of Tabasco, for example, the conquered Aztec chiefs who were still alive were instructed in the basic beliefs of Christianity while seated before an image of Mary holding the Christ Child. So for the Aztecs, Mary, at first, must have been viewed as the harbinger of death, destruction, and humiliation.
The pre-Columbian Aztec religion was, at its core, apocalyptic -- a delicate balance of life and death. Human sacrifice, that so horrified the Spaniards, was a part of that perceived balance -- sacrifice was necessary -- for life demands death so that more could live. There must be death if there is to be life -- and so there were ornate ceremonies and rules to keep to maintain the balance; if not they would be punished by angry gods. The Spanish conquest upset this delicate balance and tipped the Aztec perception of meaning into chaos. Many Indians died in battles, and most -- millions -- died in the epidemics of the mid-1500s and later. The destruction of their temples also lead Indians to despair ... the old gods that maintained the balance were swept away, and the native people believed they were observing the death of the world. Right after the conquest (their holocaust) many of the Aztec survivors refused to have children -- why bring children into a dead world? Many Aztecs committed suicide. Their culture was in its death throes. Then there was a miracle, they believed. Mary came to them in an image on their own woven, Aztec cloth -- Our Lady of Guadalupe.
In that painting, Mary wore a dress that seemed to be covered with stars (a blue dress with white dotted highlights was common in many European paintings of Mary at the time) -- but in Mexico it was, for the Indians, the "star-skirt" previously worn by Aztec goddesses who watched over the daily routine of birth, life, and death. This Mary knew their story -- their beliefs; this woman was one of them ... they believed. And she was the mother of Jesus.
This added a new insight into the divine nature of things -- the tenuous balance between life and ravenous death that had demanded fear and a hierarchy of power from kings to slaves. It added a new insight into the necessity to spill blood in mutilation, sacrifice, and war to sustain life -- causing death! This cosmology was altered when they viewed life through the eyes of Mary and her song, the Magnificat.
Rather than death holding the final word, life in compassionate community was now perceived to be the ultimate victor through the gift of God's love -- an engaging love that also called for justice in regard to the Spanish occupation, which reminded them of the Roman occupation in the Bible. The suffering of war, death, and disease was real and horrible but not what God intended. And the God of Mary did know their suffering -- her own, beloved son was unjustly brutalized and killed. Mary could cry with them ... yet also gently assist them into the realization that these injustices of life need not lead to despair, nor are they God's will, nor are they the final word. "You are sacred," Mary told them. "You are highly valued by God who wills life -- your life ... and compassionate life in all its wholeness."
I don't think the Spanish or their organized church in Mexico at the time knew exactly what was happening, but I do believe that the image of Mary in that situation enabled the Advent of Christ. That image revealed the actuality and the love of God, as defined by Jesus, offering a healing, restorative word to the suffering remnant of the Aztec civilization. Mary returned dignity without the fear, and defined a call for freedom and equality. That voice of God, through Mary, still wishes to speak to us.
Martin Luther preached the following in a Christmas sermon.
"For unto you is born this day." For our sakes he has taken flesh and blood from a woman, that his birth might become our birth. I, too, may boast that I am a son of Mary. This is the way to observe this feast -- that Christ be formed in us. It is not enough that we should hear his story if the heart be closed. I must listen, not to a history, but to a gift. If you hear that this Child is yours, and that takes root, you will become suddenly so strong that to you death and life are the same.
In other words, Mary makes clear the feminine aspect of God -- of God aware of our suffering -- of absolutely knowing our pain and inner desires -- a loving mother -- Mary as caretaker and comforter, and a clear call for liberation and peace.
In the Magnificat, Mary sings of the distinction between wisdom and might, between selfish use of riches and power on the one side and kindness, justice, and righteousness on the other. One must wonder what influence this woman had on her son -- a son who later reached out to touch and heal lepers, who defended and lifted up the poor, who called the wealthy to accountability and responsibility, and who challenged all authorities concerning their use and abuse of power. She was a servant of God. Blessed Mary, full of grace, the mother of our Lord, who sang, "My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior."
And Mary remained with Elizabeth about three months, and then returned to her home in Galilee. And at that time, a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled. This was the first registration, in the days when Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem ... He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child....
-- Luke 1:56; 2:1-5 cf
Come, Lord Jesus ... into our homes and hearts, "Come, oh, come, Emmanuel" -- God with us.
Sermon delivered December 21, 1997
First Lutheran Church
Duluth, Minnesota
-- Luke 1:46-47
It is not unusual to encounter media news articles reporting, with a smile, an alleged appearance of Mary occurring usually in some economically depressed location. Perhaps Mary was sighted at a small, ramshackle farm in Convers, Georgia, for example, her image miraculously appearing on a red-stained side of a barn, or perhaps in the night sky above a trailer park outside of Denver. Traffic jams may occur for a day or so as the faithful or curious flock to see the alleged phenomenon.
What is unusual though, is how rarely Mary actually appears in the pages of our Bible. The apostle Paul never mentions Mary's name. Mark's gospel skips the birth of Jesus and, later, along with the gospel of John, portrays Mary as a person who really doesn't understand the mission of her son. But in the gospel of Luke, Mary sings a poem that focuses not on herself but on her God. Here we clearly find blessed Mary full of grace, the holy mother of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
"My soul magnifies the Lord ..." Mary's song, later named the "Magnificat" from its opening word in the Latin Vulgate, God is magnified -- it is easier now to see the divine. Mary's song tells of a God who has "looked with favor on [her] lowliness" (Luke 1:48), the Greek pointing not just to her humility, but to her economic position, her low status in her culture, her material poverty like many pregnant teenagers in our own urban and rural areas today. Mary was a member of the Palestinian underclass, and yet a woman who knows God and is therefore blessed. "My spirit rejoices in God my savior...." It is Mary who sings the "freedom song" on behalf of all those who have their priorities tied to the agenda of God, many of whom are very poor.
Martin Luther was nurtured in a spiritual environment that included the cult of Mary in both personal piety and liturgical expression. Because of the Magnificat, Luther considered Mary a primary symbol of the embodiment of God's unmerited grace. In Mary, Luther saw true reverence as opposed to the arrogance of worldly power. He saw Mary as the prototype of how God is to be magnified by Christians, not praised for distant, unchangeable majesty but for the unconditional, graceful, and loving pursuit of all the earth's sacred life. Mary magnifies God for what God does rather than magnifying herself or what God has done for her alone. The only Lutheran-reformational warning concerning Mary was that we should never confuse Mary for Mary's God.
I firmly believe Mary has much to teach us today about the nature of God. I will offer one sermon illustration this morning. It is a true story about an alleged appearance of the Virgin Mary -- an appearance story that, I believe, nicely exposes the very nature of God.
The story takes place in Mexico in the early 1500s. It begins on the top of a hill that just a few years before was a pilgrimage center of the Aztec religion. It was the location of a temple to an awesome and greatly feared Aztec goddess dressed in her "star skirt" representing power over the whole universe. The temple had recently been destroyed by the Spanish Conquistadors. It was precisely on that hill during this time of year in December, according to tradition, that Mary appeared to an American Indian peasant with the baptismal name of Juan Diego. The year was 1531. Mary appeared to Juan Diego and told him that a church should be built on that site and that he was to convince the Spanish Bishop of Mexico to build it.
The Indian was instructed by Mary to pick roses of Castile, which he would find growing in the December desert nearby and carry them in his tilma, his rough, native cloak, to the bishop in Mexico City.
Juan Diego followed Mary's instructions, but when the Indian knelt before the skeptical bishop and opened his poncho to offer the roses, the flowers were gone. On his robe was a painting of Mary, painted right on the course, indigenous cloth woven of local plant fibers -- the cloth of the Aztec. This painting of Mary, a gift from Mary, as many believe, has been named Our Lady of Guadalupe, and it has been the focus of Mexican religious life for over 400 years.
But this story is not just about an alleged miracle. It is about human beings encountering God through an understanding of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Come deeper with me into this tradition, beginning with the Conquistadors. I am certainly not trying to make excuses for much of what they did, which was often brutal injustice stemming from pure cultural and racial prejudice and misunderstanding, but I want to first attempt to understand their perception of Mary. Remember that most of these soldiers were from the poorest levels of Spanish society, desperately entering the military, and, for the most part, they were genuinely religious people.
The soldiers' theology tended toward apocalyptic. They envisioned themselves on the edge of chaos, facing death each day in a land they knew nothing about. In fact, just a few years before, it was a land not even believed to exist. They were in alien territory and the Aztecs were radically different. The Spanish soldiers, who were appalled by the ritual blood-letting, self-mutilation, and human sacrifice of the Aztec religion, wondered if the native peoples might be devils. "Will they kill me? Will I ever get home to Spain again? The odds are all against my survival!" these soldiers assumed.
But for them, Mary was also there with them. The Spanish soldiers all carried images of Mary wherever they went. She was a symbol to them that God would not forget them or abandon them even in this new, bizarre, and hostile world. Even if they would die a violent death so far from home, they would die in the arms of Mary, and would not be Godforsaken. Mary was like their own mother, or the mother they wished they would have had, a mother who knew their suffering and would never forget them. It was, I believe, a valid image of God -- the mother's caring love and long memory. But the soldiers often grossly missed the other primary component of the Magnificat -- the part about justice and loving your neighbor as yourself.
But what about the Aztecs?
At first, for both those who allied themselves with or battled against the Spaniards in 1519 through 1521, the so-called "years of the conquest," images of Mary were associated with terror and pain. During that time, Cortes and his troops conspicuously carried pictures and banners of Mary everywhere, even into battle. According to Spanish records, they placed statues of Mary in the native temples after they were cleansed of their "pagan idols" (the words used in the journals of the Spanish officers). After the battle of Tabasco, for example, the conquered Aztec chiefs who were still alive were instructed in the basic beliefs of Christianity while seated before an image of Mary holding the Christ Child. So for the Aztecs, Mary, at first, must have been viewed as the harbinger of death, destruction, and humiliation.
The pre-Columbian Aztec religion was, at its core, apocalyptic -- a delicate balance of life and death. Human sacrifice, that so horrified the Spaniards, was a part of that perceived balance -- sacrifice was necessary -- for life demands death so that more could live. There must be death if there is to be life -- and so there were ornate ceremonies and rules to keep to maintain the balance; if not they would be punished by angry gods. The Spanish conquest upset this delicate balance and tipped the Aztec perception of meaning into chaos. Many Indians died in battles, and most -- millions -- died in the epidemics of the mid-1500s and later. The destruction of their temples also lead Indians to despair ... the old gods that maintained the balance were swept away, and the native people believed they were observing the death of the world. Right after the conquest (their holocaust) many of the Aztec survivors refused to have children -- why bring children into a dead world? Many Aztecs committed suicide. Their culture was in its death throes. Then there was a miracle, they believed. Mary came to them in an image on their own woven, Aztec cloth -- Our Lady of Guadalupe.
In that painting, Mary wore a dress that seemed to be covered with stars (a blue dress with white dotted highlights was common in many European paintings of Mary at the time) -- but in Mexico it was, for the Indians, the "star-skirt" previously worn by Aztec goddesses who watched over the daily routine of birth, life, and death. This Mary knew their story -- their beliefs; this woman was one of them ... they believed. And she was the mother of Jesus.
This added a new insight into the divine nature of things -- the tenuous balance between life and ravenous death that had demanded fear and a hierarchy of power from kings to slaves. It added a new insight into the necessity to spill blood in mutilation, sacrifice, and war to sustain life -- causing death! This cosmology was altered when they viewed life through the eyes of Mary and her song, the Magnificat.
Rather than death holding the final word, life in compassionate community was now perceived to be the ultimate victor through the gift of God's love -- an engaging love that also called for justice in regard to the Spanish occupation, which reminded them of the Roman occupation in the Bible. The suffering of war, death, and disease was real and horrible but not what God intended. And the God of Mary did know their suffering -- her own, beloved son was unjustly brutalized and killed. Mary could cry with them ... yet also gently assist them into the realization that these injustices of life need not lead to despair, nor are they God's will, nor are they the final word. "You are sacred," Mary told them. "You are highly valued by God who wills life -- your life ... and compassionate life in all its wholeness."
I don't think the Spanish or their organized church in Mexico at the time knew exactly what was happening, but I do believe that the image of Mary in that situation enabled the Advent of Christ. That image revealed the actuality and the love of God, as defined by Jesus, offering a healing, restorative word to the suffering remnant of the Aztec civilization. Mary returned dignity without the fear, and defined a call for freedom and equality. That voice of God, through Mary, still wishes to speak to us.
Martin Luther preached the following in a Christmas sermon.
"For unto you is born this day." For our sakes he has taken flesh and blood from a woman, that his birth might become our birth. I, too, may boast that I am a son of Mary. This is the way to observe this feast -- that Christ be formed in us. It is not enough that we should hear his story if the heart be closed. I must listen, not to a history, but to a gift. If you hear that this Child is yours, and that takes root, you will become suddenly so strong that to you death and life are the same.
In other words, Mary makes clear the feminine aspect of God -- of God aware of our suffering -- of absolutely knowing our pain and inner desires -- a loving mother -- Mary as caretaker and comforter, and a clear call for liberation and peace.
In the Magnificat, Mary sings of the distinction between wisdom and might, between selfish use of riches and power on the one side and kindness, justice, and righteousness on the other. One must wonder what influence this woman had on her son -- a son who later reached out to touch and heal lepers, who defended and lifted up the poor, who called the wealthy to accountability and responsibility, and who challenged all authorities concerning their use and abuse of power. She was a servant of God. Blessed Mary, full of grace, the mother of our Lord, who sang, "My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior."
And Mary remained with Elizabeth about three months, and then returned to her home in Galilee. And at that time, a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled. This was the first registration, in the days when Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem ... He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child....
-- Luke 1:56; 2:1-5 cf
Come, Lord Jesus ... into our homes and hearts, "Come, oh, come, Emmanuel" -- God with us.
Sermon delivered December 21, 1997
First Lutheran Church
Duluth, Minnesota
