Mary’s Christmas

December 15, 1996

Alida M. DeCoster

Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church

Bethesda, Maryland

When I learned that the choir would perform sections of Bach’s Magnificat this morning, I was immediately inspired to build a service around that wonderful song from Luke’s Gospel, sung by Mary to her cousin Elizabeth, mother of John the Baptist. I, a lifelong Unitarian Universalist, am fascinated by the figure of Mary, and am delighted to have an opportunity to reflect on her role in a service here at Cedar Lane. And for those of you who may have any discomfort with what seems like such a Christian or Catholic subject, just remember that Mary was a good Jewish girl, engaged to a nice Jewish man who both got a big surprise.

A beautiful poem mingling triumph and humility, the Magnificat from Luke’s Gospel is based largely on Hannah’s prayer in the Old Testament first book of Samuel chapter 2. The Old Testament promise is finally coming to fruition in Mary’s willing reception of it. She recognizes the full import of what has happened to her, and is awed and grateful as well as courageous in her willingness. Thus she sings.

My reading was a section from Norah Loft’s novel about the nativity of Jesus titled How Far to Bethlehem? It is the scene of the encounter between Mary and Elizabeth, when Mary comes to visit. Both are pregnant miraculously, a common motif in religious stories and myths. Great teachers and prophets are often born under unusual circumstances. Elizabeth is 57, long after childbearing years and a lifetime of barrenness. Mary, as we know, is a virgin, yet with child.

To the divine within and though out all life we pray....

May we be the sons and daughters of hope

May the great mystery be a beam drawn through the lenses of our lives.

May we be magnified....enlarged

in spirit, in courage, in love

In a time of waiting,

may we ponder all those things stirring in our hearts

May we reflect in this time of winter on the miracle hidden in the seed of spring.

In this Advent time of anticipation, may we pause, quietly joyful

contemplating all that is yet to be born in our lives and in our world.

May we know a pregnant woman as a symbol of divinity

May we know every birth of love as divine

And in this time of waiting may we hold in the light of love

all those among us and in the world whose lives are broken. For the poor and the

homeless we pray, as we open our doors for the congregation based shelter tonight.

May hunger of both body and soul be filled.

May our souls be magnified. Amen.

Inspired by Magnificat by W.F. Wooden

The Bible study group I am leading recently worked with a passage from Exodus referred to as “Miriam’s song.” It is the triumphant song of Miriam who is the sister of Moses and Aaron. She leads the women in singing and dancing after Pharaoh’s army has been drowned in the Red Sea.“Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously,” they sing. The God of Israel over and over again, acts in history to save his people. The Exodus is an eternal image for all those liberated from any form of bondage.

As I began to think about Mary for today, I wondered to myself, how does the name “Mary” translate into Hebrew? Surprise! Miriam. Of course. Time after time, the New Testament repeats, reflects, explains, justifies its narratives with references to the Torah, and Jewish tradition. Back and forth between Old Testament and New, we are bounced from prophecy to fulfillment and back again. Of course. Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong’s new book, Liberating the Gospels: Reading the Bible with Jewish Eyes, is an exploration of this very topic. He shows how the New Testament itself was composed like a Jewish midrash, suited for the Jewish ceremonial calendar, and designed to persuade Jews that Jesus, Yeshua, was indeed the long-awaited messiah. Thus, Mary’s triumphant song, the Magnificat, in Luke’s Gospel, besides being based on Hannah’s prayer, is also an echo of Miriam’s triumphant song, rejoicing in God’s blessing.

There is ever-growing interest among liberals in the Bible. How many new books and translations of Genesis are on the market? I have lost count! Books on Mary are selling, too. Jaroslav Pelikan, Yale scholar, has published the companion book of his Jesus Through the Centuries, titled, you guessed it, Mary Through the Centuries. In his bibliography he notes that the volume of material on the Virgin Mary is “truly enormous,” with over 2,400 titles catalogued in the Yale University Library. He looks at all the different interpretations there have been of the figure of Mary over time. What rich imagery, and how the many stories intertwine! Jesus and Mary have been interpreted by many theologians over time to be the “New Adam” and “New Eve,” redeeming the sin of the earlier figures: Jesus through his death on the cross and Mary through her virginity. Unlike Adam and Eve, Mary, Jesus and, also Joseph, obeyed God’s will, rather than disobeying it, opening a new age for humanity, according to Christianity.

In a surprising connection, Mary is seen by some to be the sensuous, dark, comely woman in theopening of Song of Solomon. This interpretation allowed the development of the tradition of the Black Madonna, which has created a bridge to many other cultures, one of Mary’s most “profound and persistent roles in history” according to Pelikan (p. 67).

The multiplicity of images, the various strands of Marian theology and devotion make me declare “Mary, Mary, quite contrary!” This is the feminine face of divinity provided by the Christian tradition. In some ways she is seen as too good, too pure to be believed, yet that very goodness and purity add to her attraction for many. It is her role as divine mother that has the strongest pull for all of us who feel at times like motherless children. This image has never ceased to grow in strength and appeal across the centuries.

I love religious art, myths, stories...the whole mystery of it. But I am solidly a Unitarian Universalist. A humanist in my youth, I took what I called an “anthropological” perspective on religion early on. I love the work of Joseph Campbell who studied all the worlds religions, following Carl Jung, looking for commonalities in the unconscious of all human beings and their cultures. He called dreams private myths and myths public dreams.

I do not want to bother with the exercise of traditional theologians who seem to care so much about what “really” happened. Was Mary “really” a virgin? Did Moses “really” part the Red Sea? Did Jesus “really” literally rise from the dead? Frankly, I do not understand why this matters so much. Maybe someone can explain it to me. Clearly, for many people of faith, the literal truth of Biblical miracles is the cornerstone of their faith. To me, the power of these events is in their universal symbolism, and the way they are lived out in our lives. They are metaphors. It did not have to “really” happen that way in order for religious imagery to be powerful in our lives. How is the story of the Exodus your story? The story of your people? From what have you been liberated?

How is Jesus’ resurrection a parallel, an image for all the amazing resurrections of spirit and love we experience in our lives? And how is a “virgin birth” story a way of expressing uncomplicated motherhood? Do we not sometimes need an image of perfect loving motherhood? The down side of the Mary myth, as every Catholic girl knows, is the impossible image of purity and perfection that women are supposed to live up to. The feminist critique of the Mary myth is that it divides woman’s nature into two aspects: pure and impure. The pure Mary of Catholicism denies the earthy humanness of the sexual woman. Mary as interpreted by a male-dominated church hierarchy lost the power of her sexuality. Yet, one could argue, she gained the power of her independence. Certainly, among Catholics through time and world wide, Mary is a figure of great power and comfort. She is the ultimate mediator. A high percentage of intercessory prayers are directed to and through her.

Our administrator, Fred Hayes, is also our resident Catholic theologian, and I delight in discussing these things with him. He quoted his own mother on the subject of devotion to Mary. His mother said, “Now just think about it. If you wanted something from a friend, wouldn’t it be a good strategy to go to his or her mother and ask her to put in a good word?” Aren’t mothersoften considered the compassionate ones in our lives? And if our mothers are not especially compassionate, isn’t it nice to have an archetypal mother, a goddess mother, of perfect love, to appeal to?

In her marvelous book, Virgin Time, Patricia Hampl writes of her Catholic girlhood. She writes of the necessity of a withdrawing time. In mid-life, Hampl took a sabbatical to go on a pilgrimage, leaving husband and child behind for a time. They accepted her need to do this. She calls this reflection period her “Virgin Time,” a very important time to rediscover her spiritual path, to reevaluate, to sort and throw out old religious baggage from the past, to determine what was worth keeping and develop it.

A “virgin time” could be a time for doing as Mary does in Luke 2:19: taking all these marvels she has experienced, keeping all these things and “pondering them in her heart.” There are times when things are growing inside of us, apart from others. A time for nurturing the embryo of the new. The embryo of our future, of ourselves. A time for reflection and waiting as we wonder what will become of us. And lo, one day, perhaps a great mystery beams through the lens of our life as we are called to some new challenge. As opportunity opens, our path becomes clear, and our new life comes into being.

Take this time. For it is precious. All of us go through these times of gestation. And then one day, we suddenly find ourselves living more boldly, offering the world a new gift.

Here are some of the many Marys that have emerged through the centuries, as described by Professor Pelikan. Which ones might inspire you? Miriam of Nazareth, Daughter of Zion, Fulfillment of Prophecy, the Second Eve, the Guarantee of Christ’s true humanity, Theotokos, Mother of God, Black Madonna, Handmaid of the Lord, Woman of Valor (Proverbs), Leader of the Heavenly Choir, Paragon of Chastity, Blessed Mother, Mater Dolorosa (mother grieving her child), the Mediatrix (hearer of intercessory prayer), Model of Faith, Mater Gloriosa, Eternal Feminine, The Woman Clothed with the Sun, the Queen of Heaven, Woman for All Seasons and Reasons.

Last month I preached on prayer. Today, I speak of Mary, mother of Jesus, not a common topic among Protestants, much less among us. You may be wondering “What next? The Rosary?” How can we UUs relate to Mary? One way is the way I described in taking “virgin time” as in Patricia Hampl’s memoir...to honor time apart, to reflect on the meaning of virginity in all its senses. Virginity, before sex, or without sex, is not a time to be discarded, avoided, or denied. Our virginity, in an emotional or spiritual sense also, is worthy of serious reflection and of honoring. Being alone unto ourselves for periods of life can be very enriching to the spirit. We can all, men and women, take virgin time.

Finally, I see Mary, like all religious symbols, as a kind of “Rorschach blot,” that is, a blank screen upon which we can project our images of mother, woman, compassion, humbleness, perfect love...a woman for almost all seasons. For we who affirm a healthy sexuality, Mary willprobably never be a complete image for us, but that does not mean that she is without value or interest. Religious symbols, though not a strong part of our UU tradition, can work like poetry in our lives, giving us a place to hang our souls for a time, providing a lens, a guidepost, a stimulus.

The words of Mary’s powerful song can have meaning for us. May the Divine be magnified in us.

Eternal birth takes place in the soul

in the same manner in which it takes place in eternity.

This birth takes place in the being and in the ground and core of the soul.

In this birth you will discover all blessing.

But neglect this birth and you will neglect all blessing

Tend only to this birth in you

and you will find there

all goodness and all consolation

all delight, all being and all truth

Tend to this birth in you. Amen.

Meister Eckhart, adapted by Matthew Fox

Fox, Matthew, Meditations With Meister Eckhart, 1982

Hampl, Patricia, Virgin Time, 1992

Lofts, Norah, How Far to Bethlehem?, 1965

Pelikan, Jaroslav, Mary Through the Centuries, 1996

Spong, John S, Liberating the Gospels: Reading the Bible With Jewish Eyes, 1996

Wooden, W.F., Magnificat, from Singing The Living Tradition #169

Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church
9601 Cedar Lane, Bethesda, Maryland 20814-4099
Tel: 301-493-8300    Fax: 301-897-5713
e-mail: office@CedarLane.org
Sunday Services at 9 and 11 a.m.
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