Gratia Plena sculpture - artist, Steven Heilmer. Seattle University.
Karen Hollis | December 17, 202
Advent 4: Maryam
Ode of Solomon 36
I rested on the Spirit of the Lord,
And she raised me up to the high place
And she caused me to stand on my feet in the high place of the Lord
Before his fullness and splendor,
While I was proclaiming in the preparation of his odes.
She gave birth to me before the face of the Lord.
And while I was the Child of Humanity
I was called the Light, the Child of God,
Because I was glorified among the glorious,
And first among the great ones.
For she made me according to the greatness of the Most High
And he renewed me according to his renewal,
And anointed me from his fullness.
I became one of those who are near him
And my mouth was opened like a cloud of dew
And my heart gushed forth a fountain of justice.
And my access was through peace,
And I was set up in the Spirit of Instruction.
Halleluiah.
Luke 1:26-38 In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, ‘Greetings, favoured one! The Lord is with you.’ But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. The angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob for ever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.’ Mary said to the angel, ‘How can this be, since I am a virgin?’ The angel said to her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.’ Then Mary said, ‘Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.’ Then the angel departed from her.
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be reflections of your word to us today, in Christ’s name we pray. Amen
Oh, I love Mary. She’s such an important person in the Christian story and we know so little about her. Still, there are things we can know . . . so I’m going to do a little unpacking this morning of Mary, the mother of Jesus and take us on a little exploration of the Christian tradition, the historical context of the time in which Mary lived, and the possibilities we find there.
As we begin, I invite you to bring Mary to mind. In your imagination, is she young or old? Is she at a wedding, telling Jesus to sit down and eat, greeting her cousin Elizabeth, on the road to Bethlehem, or grieving at the foot of the cross? In your imagination, is she depicted in art, or iconography, or a statue in a Roman Catholic church?
In the gospels we only get a few snapshots of Mary. Without a lot of scriptural information and very little historical information about who she was, two centuries of imagination and tradition have developed around her memory.
Over time, the tradition imbued Mary with the qualities of fertility goddess that had long been worshiped in the Mediterranean. In fact, as Christianity gained traction, statues of virgin goddesses, like Isis and Diana were eventually rededicated to Mary.[1] She is now the archetypical mother with child. A friend of mine has images of the Madonna and Child in her home and when her son was preschool age he used to point to them and say, “mamma, that’s me and you.” She would reply: “Yes, honey, that’s right.”
The mother with child is the giver of life. One of my favourite depictions of her in a Roman Catholic church is at Seattle University where I went to seminary. In their chapel of St. Ignatius is a 10 ft high column of white marble with a bowl carved out at the top pouring milk out of the bowl and down the face of the stone. Moving off to the side of the sculpture and looking at the profile of the flowing milk, one can almost see the profile of a woman . . . a giver of life . . . who birthed God’s love into the world. When I look at the sculpture, I see so much more than the quietly prayerful, passively obedient, young virgin portrait of her that we’re used to seeing.
Let’s unpack for a moment this piece about her being a virgin. Why is that important to name specifically? In the Hebrew and Christian scriptures there are several stories of miraculous births: Sarah with Isaac, Hannah with Samuel, Elizabeth with John the Baptist. These women were either barren or past childbearing years . . . and still they conceived. The other contemporary influence was the Roman tradition, which tells of divine conception. To tell the story of the Son of God, Luke does something unique to top them all, especially Caesar Augustus, who referred to himself as the Son of God . . . Luke gives Jesus a divine and virginal conception.[2] With this story Luke communicates Jesus is important, above all others, and the context of his birth proves it.
At the same time, our modern understanding of virginity is different from the ancient world. According to Lesley Hazleton, author of Mary: A Flesh-and-blood Biography of the Virgin Mother, “she was a virgin in the same way we still talk of virgin forest or virgin territory. She teemed with life. Untamed, untouchable, uncontrollable, she was the wild, fecund source of creation. Soil, rain, sun; seed, harvest, sustenance; man, woman, child – every form of life began with her.”[3] Like the earth, our mother, she nourishes life . . . even God in human form . . . with everything needed for new life to thrive.
Underneath the labels and archetypes, there must be a real person . . . if we can search for the historical Jesus, there must indeed be a historical Mary . . . or Maryam, as she most certainly was called. What can we know about her? What can we imagine about her? My aunt gave me Lesley Hazleton’s book over a decade ago and I find it endlessly inspiring and energizing. She uses history and anthropology, among other things to boldly imagine Maryam in her context . . . first century Nazareth . . . a poor village near the Sea of Galilee.
According to Hazleton, in Maryam’s day, there was a healer in every village, and these women were the authority at the time on medicine and healing. What if Maryam had a grandmother who was a healer, who taught her about herbs, how to set broken bones, and assist in childbirth. What if Maryam, from the time she was very young, accompanied her grandmother to house calls and learned how to harvest, dry and prepare her own herbs. Indeed, Maryam was a poor peasant girl, but that doesn’t necessarily mean she was lacking in wisdom. Hazleton proposes that “Maryam has to have been far more than just another peasant girl out with the flocks. She would raise a child who would become a revered healer in his time . . . [and] a divine being after his death.”[4] How could he have come by such knowledge and done such deep development of himself at such a young age? Perhaps in the tiny village of Nazareth, it was Maryam’s family line that passed down the knowledge of herbal and manual medicine . . . the ‘wise women,’ who served as “the midwives and pharmacists, the bone-setters and bandagers, the family practitioners and emergency-room physicians of the time.”[5] Perhaps she was the one who steeped Jesus in the art of healing at a young age.
Maryam would have brought into pregnancy and parenthood more than youth; by the age of 13, she would have extensive knowledge and experience of health, healing, and childbirth, as well as the perspective and grounding that comes with education and walking with the women of her village through the stuff of life and death.
Maryam would have participated in many births and seen with her own eyes the huge risks of pregnancy and childbirth; in her culture there is no celebration of new life until 40 days after delivery, when the child has survived those first few weeks of life. Because of the vulnerability associated with bringing life into the world, in those days it was woven with mystery and divine participation. Hazleton writes: “Maryam knew there was no explaining why conception occurred at one time and not another, or why one delivery might be easy and another difficult. And she knew that beyond these was a greater mystery: the sense of awe and wonder she felt anew each time a child emerged into the light.”[6]
If Maryam’s own journey to pregnancy was anything like the story Luke tells, perhaps it was with the same feeling of awe and wonder that she experiences the visitation from one of God’s own messengers. Is it a voice she hears or a light she sees? Is it a presence or an unmistakable knowing? . . . knowing that she is blessed, that the holy love of God surrounds and supports her, a deep and profound knowing that she is called to give life to a strong and healthy baby . . . a baby she gets to nurture and raise and teach . . . for Maryam and any mother, this would have truly been a miraculous and incredible gift.
Let us give thanks this morning for the Maryam of our imaginations, some mixture of characteristics we draw from archetype, scripture, tradition, art . . . and most certainly the human. Let us give thanks for her yes, for receiving love’s mysterious presence in her womb and offering it in return the love and nurture only her body can provide. Thanks be to God.
[1] Hazleton 115
[2] The First Christmas, Crossan and Borg p. 122-3
[3] Hazleton, 116
[4] Hazleton 80
[5] Hazleton 81
[6] Hazleton 129