Setting Mary free to be herself – listening to her song

This is something for the 3rd Sunday of Advent, Gaudete Sunday, in a country church in Warwickshire dedicated to Mary, I have focused on Mary’s Magnificat.

Have any of you been put on a pedestal?

I can imagine it’s hard and you can be brought to earth with a bang. You’re not allowed to be yourself, always having to be what others want you to be.

The church hasn’t done Mary any favours. Above all women she has been put on a pedestal for so long that we’ve forgotten what she was really like. It’s what men have done to her over the centuries.

This morning I want us to listen to her song.

My aim in preparing this sermon is that you and I get a better idea of who Mary was. This, I believe will help us into the Christmas gospel and will help us better understand the son who spent most of his life with her in their village and home of Nazareth.

As a church dedicated to Mary, I suggest we dedicate ourselves to her liberation so that she can be herself, rather than what we have made her over the centuries, whether we have devoted ourselves to her as within the catholic traditions if the church, or whether we have been critical of such devotions, as within the protestant traditions.

When we look at her, what do we see? What we see is what people have made of her over the years. We see all the images laid on top of one another as she has been used for this or that purpose. 

She has become stereotyped. She comes to us well dressed in her blue flowing gown looking like a beauty queen. She usually has pale skin, blue eyes. She looks peaceful. She looks heavenly. She’s usually on her own, surrounded by quiet. She has her hands together, eyes closed, praying. Often her setting is the architecture of a palace. She is often reading. And in all of this there is no sign of trouble. There is no sound of her song and no sign of her joy. There isn’t much sign that she has done anything at all. 

But the gospels give us a very different view of Mary.

She was a woman of history. She was Mary, Mary of Nazareth, a small village of about 300 people off the beaten track to the sophisticated nearby city of Sepphoris. This was the village people scoffed at – “can anything good come out of Nazareth?” 

Archaelogists there have pieced together a picture of rural poverty, with people living in one and two roomed houses clustered around courtyards shared with extended families with shared cooking facilities. They’ve found no signs of any wealth. 

This was a small peasant community. Mary was married to the village carpenter. This wouldn’t have been a small business as we know them. He wouldn’t have had the status we give to small businesses. He would have been an artisan, the class below the peasants, earning less than the peasants and serving their needs. They probably would have had a small plot of land for growing food to eke out a living. They would have made their own clothes from their sheep.

They were poor. They were taxed three times. They paid 10% to the Temple. They paid tribute to the Roman emperor. And then they also had to pay tax to fund the vanity projects of Herod, such as the building of nearby Sepphoris, the equivalent of our HS2.

They would have been very poor, barely scraping a living together. Many of them would have been in debt to the wealthy and would have their land taken off them. Resentments grew and  there were frequent rumblings of revolt. Many days they would have gone hungry.

Life didn’t treat any of them gently.

It takes a village to raise a child. That village raised Mary and Jesus, Jewish babies having to grow up very quickly. Their village meetings would have dwelt on the different ways their people had suffered in Egypt, in persecution, in exile and the way that God had graced these suffering servants. She picks up the song of Hannah and makes it her song.

My soul does magnify the Lord, she sings. “My spirit rejoices in God my Saviour for he has looked with favour on the lowliness of his servant. The Mighty One has done great things for me. His mercy is on those who fear him. He has shown strength with his arm, he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty.”

This isn’t the song of the woman we have put on the pedestal for so long. This is the song of a woman who lives with the day to day challenge of survival. It’s a song Jesus will have heard from his mother and from the scriptures shared in their village meetings. This isn’t a song of the docile, or of those who take things lying down. This is the song of those who rejoice that the proud are scattered, the powerful dethroned and the rich sent away empty. 

This is the song which prompted one artist to portray Mary in the style of Russian communist posters, muscular, all boiler suited and booted.

You are a church dedicated to Mary. Can I suggest that we all try to get to know her better and that we talk about her more? Can you let her be herself rather than forcing her to be somebody she isn’t?

As we get to know her better we will know better where God plants his seed and where the baby Jesus grew, side by side with his mother as he joined her in her prayer, magnifying the Lord and praying for their daily bread and the forgiveness of their debts, joining her and watching her in the household tasks, digging the soil, planting seeds, baking bread – funding his imagination for sharing with those who followed him the images of the kingdom of the one he magnified in the song of his mother.

I am indebted to my Advent reading – to the work of Elizabeth A Johnson, in her book Truly our Sister: a Theology of Mary in the Communion of Saints

Magnificat

My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord,
my spirit rejoices in God mySaviour;
he has looked with favour on his lowly servant.

From this day all generations will call me blessed;
the Almighty has done great things for me
and holy is his name.

He has mercy on those who fear him,
from generation to generation.

He has shown strength with his arm
and has scattered the proud in their conceit,

Casting down the mighty from their thrones
and lifting up the lowly.

He has filled the hungry with good things
and sent the rich away empty.

He has come to the aid of his servant Israel,
to remember his promise of mercy,

The promise made to our ancestors,
to Abraham and his children for ever.