Advent 4A: Micah 5:2-5a, Luke 1:30-45 (untitled) (Mary)
Rev. Dr. Ann Bolson
I heard a Christmas carol last week that I had not heard before. It was a Negro spiritual, called “Poor Mary.” It was sung at the Mormon Tabernacle Choir’s annual televised Christmas concert.
You will notice that there is no title for today’s message. I sensed that a storm was coming and pulled the bulletins for this morning and this evening together early in the week in order to have them in hand before the storm hit. The only problem was, I had no idea what I was going to say about Mary early in the week. Now that I have had a chance to study and reflect about her, I think the title of this sermon started out in my mind as “Poor Mary.”
Poor Mary seems to be at the mercy of whatever generation is beholding her. Poor Mary seems to be the collective projection of the larger culture at any given time. We will never know who she really was, but it is interesting to trace who WE really were as Christians over the centuries as we look at who we painted her to be.
In her book Her Story: Women in Christian Tradition, author Barbara J. MacHaffie shares an interesting role given to Mary after the first few centuries of Christianity. During that time, “it became increasingly common to see Jesus as a terrifying judge who was far removed from humanity in his heavenly domain. He was concerned more with punishment for sin rather than with mercy and love. Mary therefore began to assume the role of mediator, speaking on behalf of Christians before God. It was believed that since she had been a human mother, she would not turn away even the most wicked child. She would plead for grace on behalf of all who came to her and God and Jesus would hear her petitions. As mediator of grace, Mary became the adored figure in the religious life of ordinary people. They flocked to her shrines, built chapels in her honor, and celebrated the special events in her life with festivals and processions.” (p.53)
Poor Mary - the object of history’s projections. I had opportunity to learn from my niece, a graduate student in musicology, that a particular sacred aria that I favored was actually written about Mary. It sounds more to me like the score to an operetta, but lo and behold, “Cujus animam” from Rossini’s Stabat Mater is one of many pieces of music dedicated to the notion of Mary standing by the cross where Jesus died. Thus, for Rossini and many other composers, Mary became the embodiment of perpetual sorrow. “Through her weeping soul, compassionate and grieving, a sword passed. O how sad and afflicted was the blessed Mother of the Only-begotten son! Who mourned and grieved, the pious Mother, with seeing the torment of her glorious son.”
Poor Mary, who were you? And which of our projections might we best resurrect for the betterment of ourselves and of culture today? One of the most interesting readings I encountered last week in my study of Mary was found in a book called Mary Through the Centuries by Jaroslav Pelikan, a Professor of History Emeritus from Yale University. Through his studies of Mary, Pelikan discovered that “one of the most profound and most persistent roles of Mary in history has been her function as a bridge builder to other traditions, other cultures and other religions.” From the Latin word for “bridge builder” comes the term “pontifex,” which would much later be used for the Pope. But, says Pelikan, the concept of “pontifex” has far wider implications. “Ultimately it applied to all those concepts and personalities whose fundamental message and significance could be expressed better by saying both/and than by saying either/or.”
How delighted I was to discover through Pelikan’s writings, that Mary may be such a bridge to Islam in light of today’s perilous strife involving Muslims. Pelikan speaks of the urgent need for bridge builders in this arena. He states that the “fundamental ignorance of otherwise well-educated Westerners (concerning Islam) is not only abysmal but frightening.”
Let us recall the story of Abraham as we begin to think about where Mary fits into the Koran, and she is well-represented there. You will recall that in “our” version of the story, Abraham, said to be the founder of the Hebrew people, was married to Sarah, a woman who had not been able to produce a child for him. In her old age, Sarah was able to bear Isaac, but not before Abraham fathered a son, Ishmael, by his servant woman Hagar. After the birth of Isaac, Ishmael and Hagar were cast out of the household of Abraham. Ishmael would go on to be the founding figure of Islam many centuries later, when following a “series of incandescent divine self-disclosures,” beginning in about the year 610, the prophet (known to us as Muhammad) would receive the messages of his God. Muhammad memorized many of the sayings, as did his followers. The collecting of the Koran is attributed to Abu Bakr, the first caliph and to Uthman, the third caliph.
“For Western readers first coming to the Qur’an, one of the most surprising sections has often been the surah numbered 19 in the canonical collection, which bore the title, ‘Miryam: Mary.’” This is one of the longest chapters in the Koran, and the only one to bear a woman’s name. There is no chapter named for Eve (who was, for Islam, Christianity and Judaism “the mother of all living”), nor one named for Hagar, the mother of Ishmael by Abraham “and therefore in a real sense the founding mother of Islam.”
One scholar noted that “There is nothing else in all the Qur’an to parallel the warmth with which Christ and his mother are spoken of. Christ is presented as a unique being, but his mother’s personality appears more vividly. The Qur’an inspires a devotion to Mary of which Muslims might have made more.”
Pelikan relates that “the two principal objections of Islam to the Christian attitude toward Mary were to the concept and title Theotokos (God-bearer) and to her portrayal in icons.” Islam found the title of “God-bearer” to be offensive, as the Koran states “It does not behoove God to have a son. Too immaculate is he!” And of course, any pictures of holy people are strictly forbidden in Islam, as evidenced by the massive world-wide demonstrations following a Swedish cartoonist’s portrayal of Muhammad just last year.
Thus, for Muslims, Jesus was a prophet not unlike Muhammad some 600 years later. The thought of this rankles a lot of Christians. And the thought of Jesus being viewed as God rankles Muslims. Who might build a bridge between these cultures? Says Pelikan, “the urgent need to find symbols and concepts in our several cultural traditions that can perform the function of a pontifex, the function of priestly mediation and bridge-building, suggests that there has probably been no symbol or concept in Christendom that has carried out this “pontifical” vocation or mediation with more success and amplitude than Mary.” (p. 78)
I am grateful to have discovered this marvelous chapter that taught me a new face of Mary. Whether it carries any truth about who she really was, we need her now to be a bridge builder. When I first began my study of Buddhism, I saw a film about the present Dalai Lama. I recall distinctly that when he fled Tibet following the Chinese invasion in the last century, his mantra while running for his life was “I am a bridge, I am a boat.” We desperately need bridge builders. And I thank God for all of them. Amen
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