Mary Christmas ~ Luke 1:46-48 (Where did your Christ come from? Advent series)

 

The story of Christmas is a powerful story. Believers and non-believers alike are fascinated by its claims. We sing its songs about baby Jesus, bewildered shepherds, fluffy mangers, and terrifying angels but many of us forget that one of the most striking features of the story is the woman at its center. The woman who said to the angel Gabriel, “May it be so” when told of God’s plan that she would bear the long awaited messiah, God’s own son. A bit later, after the encounter, Mary will sing:

"My soul glorifies the Lord and rejoices in God my Savior, for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant. From now on all generations will call me blessed . . ." 

Well, I hope Mary isn't too disappointed. Because, truth be told, I've been in many churches that neither called her "blessed" nor gave her any mind. No - we said - we focus on Jesus and then somehow ignored the woman who raised him, who fed him, and who taught him to follow God with courage and strength. Well, it's time to right the wrong and call her "blessed." In fact, when we place Mary back into her first-century world and take seriously what was being asked of her we would probably respond as Martin Luther suggests:
 
"How many came in contact with her, talked, and ate and drank with her, who perhaps despised her and counted her but a common, poor, and simple village maiden, and who, had they known, would have fled from her in terror?"

Last week we looked carefully and unflinchingly at the four women mentioned in Jesus’ own genealogy marveling at their courage and character and influence on Mary and Jesus. Today we are going to look at the woman at the very center – Mary – and the extraordinary agreement between the God of the universe and a young woman who had the guts to say “yes.” I wonder if Gabriel thought, “Really? You’re willing to say “yes?” Do you know what could happen? And here is where we must go back in time to Mary’s world. It’s important to recontextualize the world in which Mary said “yes” to God. We need to unfairytale the story and breathe historical life into it. What was life like for women who became pregnant in first-century Judea? Last week we talked about the women who preceded Mary and their own hutzpah. This week we look at the woman herself in her own context and discover a woman who changed the world. In Mary’s world, what does she look like?

Mary is contextualized courage.

In Mary’s world, Daughters were often considered shameful things. Don’t believe me? Just ask Jesus! Okay, not that Jesus, Jesus of Nazareth, but Jesus ben Sirach, who wrote a book of proverbs popular in first century Judaism and part of what is called the Apocrypha, existing in some Christian versions of the Bible. In a section on daughters, Jesus ben Sirach writes:

A daughter is a hidden source of sleeplessness for her father, and anxiety about her deprives him of sleep: in her youth, that she doesn't pass her prime, and when she's married, that she not be hated; 10 while she's a virgin, that she not be seduced and become pregnant while still living at home; when she's married, that she not go straying; or having married, that she not be infertile. 11 Keep a strict watch over an unruly daughter so that she doesn't make you an object of ridicule to your enemies, a topic of talk in the city and the assembly of the people, and she shame you before the crowd. 12 Don't consider the beauty of any person, and don't spend time among women. 13 Moths come out of clothes, and a woman's wickedness comes from a woman. 14 A man's wickedness is better than a woman who does good and a disgraced woman who brings shame. (Sirach 42:9-14)

The message is clear – watch out – your daughters are dangerous to your reputation, and a potential source of great shame. Daughters, Jesus ben Sirach says, are never considered as good as men, even wicked ones, and have wickedness come out of them like moths come out of clothes. In fact, in 22:3, Jesus Ben Sirach says, “It is a disgrace to be the father of an undisciplined son, and the birth of a daughter is a loss.” It is important to recognize that Mary could have said “no” and kept her reputation, even appeared to have been following God’s will but that would not have been the case. She would have looked good to Torah, looked right to her community, emerged as a good wife but would have missed out on an incredible blessing. Mary said “yes” despite being told she was less-than and despite becoming a potential object of shame. But it went farther than that.

She could be charged with adultery and sentenced to death. – Mary’s world was regulated by the Torah, the law given to Moses, which stated that anyone committing adultery was to be stoned. Deut. 22:23-24: “If there is a young woman, a virgin already engaged to be married, and a man meets her in the town and lies with her, ²⁴you shall bring both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death, the young woman because she did not cry for help in the town and the man because he violated his neighbor’s wife. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.”

Even further, if Mary was charged with adultery and disputed it with the truth about the angel and the promise, she could have been forced to experience the law of “bitter waters,” an elaborate trial-by-ordeal which came from the fifth chapter of Numbers. Accordingly, a suspected adultress was brought before the priest, required to let her hair hang down and under oath asked to drink a mixture of dust, holy water, and the ink of the priest’s written curse, which stated in part: “may the Lord cause you to become a curse among your people when he makes your womb to miscarry and your abdomen swell.” If the woman was guilty, she would supposedly become sick. If she didn’t become sick, she was acquitted. By the time of Mary, this ordeal became a public display of justice often at a gate to the city where women would be forced to drink the mixture and her clothes torn. Mary said “yes” despite the threat of that.

Mary is a contextualized beatitude (and the first!). It’s easy to imagine Mary as a faithful vessel for God’s divine plan but Scripture says something different. She was a contextualized beatitude – a faithful follower of God.

When we think of the beatitudes, we often think of the sermon on the mount in the Gospel of Matthew. Jesus’ manifesto recategorizing who was actually blessed, a reorientation of the world. So its interesting that the first beatitude in Luke’s Gospel comes not from Jesus but from Elizabeth blessing Mary’s faith (Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her!” 1:45). Blessed is one who believes in God’s promise despite all the obstacles.

 Later in Luke’s Gospel, however, someone tries to reassert a beatitude for women not in the way Elizabeth gave it but as merely a vessel. In Luke 11:27 a woman shouts to Jesus, “Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts that nursed you!” This sounds nice, but it seeks to fit women back into the old paradigm of saying that only as a “wife and mother” are women blessed, as if all Mary gave was her body. It’s a reassertion of Jesus ben Sirach, that women are blessed only by their connections to male husbands and their biological roles as mothers. But Jesus knowing the story and knowing his mother corrects the person in a shocking way, given the thoughts about women at the time. In response, he says, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it!” How did Jesus come to this conclusion? Is it not because he heard stories about Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheeba, and his mother – their power, their courage, their faith. Could it be because he knew that a womb wasn’t what made Mary special but her faithfulness and obedience to God? This beatitude is the seed that flowers into the belief that women can be full participants in God’s story, in the sharing of the gospel, and the declaration found in the Christmas song that the world will be made right “far as the curse is found.” The rupture of sin in human relationships between men and woman is now being overturned and women are equal partners in all things. Like men, they can hear the Word of God and do it!

That’s Mary – she wasn’t blessed because she had female parts or even because she was some supposed vessel for the divine. No, God’s plan was birthed because this young, powerless woman – courageously, thoughtfully, prayerfully heard the Word of God and said “yes.” This was the point of Elizabeth’s beatitude that Mary is blessed because she believed. She was a blessings because she had faith. And faith is gender neutral, unisex!

Mary’s courage and diehard faithfulness offer a different picture from the syrupy Hallmark, Disneyfied image we’ve been given. Perhaps that’s why the Apostle John who knew her best, the one whom Jesus asked to take care of her, described her and the story of the Nativity in this apocalyptic way (remember "apocalyptic" literally means "unveiling" and aims to describe things as they truly are in poetic and imaginative language):

A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. ² She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. ³ Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on its heads. ⁴ Its tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that it might devour her child the moment he was born. ⁵ She gave birth to a son, a male child, who “will rule all the nations with an iron scepter.” And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne. ⁶ The woman fled into the wilderness to a place prepared for her by God . . . (Revelation 12:1-6a)

This teenage girl said, “No!” to shame and worthlessness, “No!” to fears of death or male injustice, “No!” to evil and no to anyone who might suggest that, “A man’s wickedness is better than a woman who does good.” This woman said “yes” and shown forth like the sun with stars in her hair. This woman said “yes” and faced off against a dragon. This woman said “yes” and fulfilled the first prophecy spoken about the messiah at the very beginning in Genesis 3 when God told the serpent: And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head . . .” This woman said “yes” and the world, Mary’s and our own, was forever changed and she will be forever “blessed.”

These women: the Radical, Kingdom Genealogy of Jesus ~ Matthew 1:3a, 5-6 (Where did your Christ come from? Advent series)

 

Matthew begins his Gospel with “An account of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham” (Matt. 1:1). His aim is to support the claim that Jesus is a descendant of King David. Ancient Jews regarded the ancestral line as passing through men, not women, so it’s interesting that Matthew intentionally names four women from the Hebrew Bible that many church-goers know little about.

Forty generations are recorded from Abraham to Joseph, but Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and “Uriah’s wife” (Bathsheba) are the only Old Testament women mentioned. Why these women? Why not Sarah, Rebekah, who are often highlighted in Jewish writings and who were also Jesus’ ancestors? Do these four women have anything in common? How do they connect with Mary, Jesus’ mother? Where did Jesus come from?

1. These women were all outsiders.

Perhaps the most prominent feature connecting these women was that none of them were Jewish.

~ Tamar’s unusual story is told in Genesis chapter 38. She was not related by blood to Jacob’s family. She was a local Canaanite.

~ Rahab was a Canaanite living in the city of Jericho. Her story is told in Joshua 2 and 6:17-25.

~ Ruth was from Moab and Moabites were expressly prohibited from joining the Israelite community (Deut. 23:3).  So her acceptance by the Israelites in Bethlehem and her inclusion in Jesus’ genealogy was especially noteworthy.

~ Bathsheba was the daughter of Eliam, a Gilonite (2 Sam. 23:34; cf. 1 Chron. 3:5). Giloh was a town in the Judean hills. This doesn’t exactly tell us about her ethnicity, but perhaps information about her husband does. Before she was assaulted by King David, she had been married to Uriah who was a Hittite.

Now, Mary was Jewish. But many significant and faithful women that preceded her were not. Whatever we might make of chosenness, always remember that that is determined by the gracious God who chooses and includes. Is it any wonder that Jesus had a habit of including those that made others bristle? Is it any wonder that he would highlight the faithfulness of a Roman soldier or a Canaanite woman? Or tell a story where the hero is a non-Jew? No – Jesus learned from his parents – that outsiders, even ones that some Scriptures condemn, are faithful family. Belonging and inclusion were family traditions.

2. These women were all daring and courageous.

Another feature of these four women is that they all took courageous risks in a patriarchal and dangerous world. They didn’t sit idly by waiting to be rescued.

~ Tamar went to extraordinary lengths to disguise herself as a prostitute, putting herself in danger of death, to have a child with her father-in-law Judah. The story is complicated, totally Rated-R, and I don’t have time to give it justice. In effect, she was calling in a legitimate debt that Judah owed her and her legal right under Levirate law. Having a son was Tamar’s best chance for a secure future and she risked everything for it.

~ Rahab was a prostitute who committed treason against her own people in Jericho when she helped their enemy Israel. At great peril to herself, she hid two Jewish scouts from the King of Jericho, helped them escape, and cut a deal with them in order to save herself and her entire family. She was a principle architect of Israelite military success in the Promised Land and became a member of the community of God’s people.

~ Ruth voluntarily left her homeland of Moab to help her mother-in-law Naomi―and they settled in Bethlehem, among a people whose own religious text denied her inclusion. Then, in another daring move, she effectively proposed marriage to Boaz in a clandestine meeting. Her aim was to save herself and Naomi from destitution. Israelites were forbidden from marrying Moabites, but Boaz recognized Ruth’s virtue and married her anyway (cf. Ezra 9:10-12).

~ Bathsheba was essentially sexually assaulted by King David (1 Chron. 3:1-5). When David was old and nearing death, she was encouraged by the prophet Nathan to make the bold move to ask for her son to become king. She did this knowing that palace politics could be dangerous, even deadly. She secured the throne for her son Solomon instead of David’s oldest son, Adonijah.

All of these women were outsiders, politically and ethnically. They had little personal power and made seemingly deadly choices in order to secure a better future for others as well as themselves. When Jesus stood silent and powerless before Pilate – did he think of these women? When Jesus included women as a critical part of his discipleship cohort did he do so intentionally, remembering his own ancestral line of female faithfulness (BTW Do you remember that it was only women who pretty much watched him on the cross?)

Did these women’s stories steel Mary’s own courage? Did she agree to Gabriel’s risky plan which placed her in real jeopardy because Joseph had recounted a matrilineal line of which she was becoming a part? Her willingness to take the risk made it possible for all humans to be rescued: to have a better, more abundant, life in her son Jesus, as well as a wonderful hope and future. Her life-altering “yes” in the face of danger was a family tradition.

3. These were righteous women in a broken world.

Some say these four women in Matthew’s genealogy were immoral in some way, or that they each suffered disgrace because of the role of sex, which says more about us than them. Because “immoral” is not how the Bible describes them. In fact, you will not find one negative thing said about any of these women.

~ Tamar was forced to deceive and through trickery have a child because Judah was wrongfully harming her. When Judah discovered the truth of Tamar’s actions which led to her pregnancy, he declared her more righteous than himself (Genesis 38:26). She is spoken of positively in a blessing to Ruth ( Ruth 4:12).

~ Rahab, despite continuing to be identified as a prostitute, is commended in both Old and New Testaments. The Bible only says good things about her. A quick aside – prostitution was hardly an element of choice for women in the Bronze age but one foisted upon them by men. Her plight, in other words, was a male choice not a female one. James writes that Rahab is an example of someone who practiced faith and deeds (Jas. 2:24-25), and she is included in the list of faith heroes in Hebrews 11:31.

~ Ruth will take the upper hand by meeting with Boaz in a clandestine way, at night, alone, and offering all of herself to him. And he has this to say about her: “All the people of my town know that you are a woman of noble character.” (Ruth 3:11, 13-14).

~ Bathsheeba may be the one caveat in all of this for her connection is clearly because of sexual wrongdoing but not her own but by David. In 2 Samuel chapters 11 and 12, David is held fully responsible for the actions surrounding Bathsheba’s wretched entrance into palace life (cf. 1 Kings 15:5). And friends, that wretchedness is sexual assault. Interestingly, she is nameless in the Greek text of Matthew 1 and is identified only as “Uriah’s wife.” Some interpreters have argued that this was to distance Bathsheba from David’s crimes. Well, our culture is different – say her name.

These four women and Mary were righteous even if they don’t appear that way to the casual or narrow-minded observer. All four, as well as Mary, could have been accused of sexual immorality. Judah initially ordered Tamar to be burnt to death because he first thought she had acted immorally (Gen. 38:24). Mary could have been stoned to death for being pregnant by someone other than Joseph. Some of these women, especially Bathsheba, continue to be maligned yet each of them were shrewd responders to a patriarchal culture which sought to deny their dignity and harm them.

The women in Matthew’s genealogy all have difficult stories about how they came to be mothers of children (Tamar, Mary) and wise women in the community of Israel (Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba). The stories all have the potential to scandalize, but each woman was considered righteous.

The title for our Advent series comes from the famous 19^th century Women’s Rights advocate and evangelical Christian Sojourner Truth. In a famous speech titled, “Ain’t I a Woman” in 1851, she said: “Then that little man in black there, he says ‘Women can't have as much rights as men, 'cause Christ wasn't a woman!' Where did your Christ come from?,” she asked. “Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.”

And today we we’ve seen in a broader sense how Jesus’ own origins and the foundations for his ministry echo way back to brave and courageous women who followed God amidst incredibly trying circumstances. Where did Jesus come from? From women who refused to be marginalized. And men we’re going to need to confess all of the ways that we have been that “little man in black.” So in order to best live into the Kingdom genealogy of Joseph, Mary, and Jesus, I invite the women to stand for a blessing and the men to join me in this blessing and confession:

Receive this blessing: Women of faith – of Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheeba and Mary. Go forth into the world as gospel agents of redemption, blessing and good news. Bring in the outsiders. Be courageous, and forgive us for the ways that we have through effort and neglect hampered your faith, harmed your pursuits, and sinned against you. We will seek to repair the damage and be faithful and equal partners you with for the sake of Jesus, his mother, and God’s Kingdom. Amen.

 

Better Together: a Missional Value of Trinity Covenant Church ~ Psalm 133; John 17:20-23

 

Ø Better together, we seek to cross barriers, celebrate diversity, and practice unity (Psalm 133; John 17:20-23).

In Psalm 133, full harmony, the love of family, seem so challenging, so elusive, that the Psalmist turns to poetic similes in order to describe them. However, despite this challenge, both similes emphasize the surprising, gracious abundance that fuels and fills this vision of togetherness. First, unity is like oil, we’re told. It is not just any oil, but precious and holy oil. The Hebrew word for “precious” is the same word translated as “good” in verse one and the same word for “good” used repeatedly in Genesis 1, hearkening to the purposes of God in creation. The oil also referenced the work of the priests on behalf of the people – connecting them to God, praying for them, offering forgiveness to them.

We are not talking here about the little dab of oil on the finger of a pastor making the sign of the cross on the forehead of someone sick or someone being baptized. No, this anointing is extravagant and poured out on all of us. There is so much oil used that it runs down over the beard, down to the hem of Aaron’s robe (the word “collar” can also mean “hem”). That is a lot of oil. It’s extravagant. Messy? Probably. Unity between divided people always is! Generosity always is!

But oil is not the only thing running down. The second simile heightens and expands it by likening unity to the seemingly miniscule dew that runs down from Mt. Hermon in order to quench the thirsty land. Extravagantly, once again, the dew runs down from Mt. Hermon, the highest peak, all the way to Jerusalem. That’s approximately 200 miles (8 days walking with rest). The poetic linking of dew from Mt. Hermon reaching Mt. Zion means that for Israel, no distance is too far, no little spritz of water too insignificant.

The abundant and extravagant movement outward, is not to be missed. Unity is on the move in two ways. First, this is a song of ascent depicting people on the move going up to the temple to praise God. Second, while the people go up, God’s gifts pour down. The words describing the path of oil and water highlight descending movement. “Running down” in verse 2 and “falling down” in verse 3 are from the same participle (yored). Yored appears three times in this short Psalm signaling the actions of God who brings “life forevermore.”

Harris, I now want to stop and apologize to you for a theological mistake. I know it’s a bit odd to do this in front of everyone but I owe it to you to set the record straight, own my mistake, and correct it. When we met this week Harris asked me a great question, “What’s the difference between “called to solidarity” and “better together”? And with a flippancy that many a pastor is famous for I quickly said, “Called to solidarity is a passive value while “better together” is active requiring us to practice what Jesus prayed for.” It sounded good, it’s not terribly wrong, but the tone was off and both passages have reminded me that this value, like all our values, come a gifts down to us. Sometimes theology functions like a tonal language in which the subtlety of pitch makes a world of difference. Mandarin, for example, is a tonal language with four main tones and a neutral tone. In Mandarin the word "ma" can mean "mother" with one tone, "horse" with another tone, "scold" with a different tone, and "question" with yet another tone. The wrong tone at any time can spell disaster for your relationship with your mother (or your horse)! Tonally, do we all have things we need to do, to practice, to participate in, in order to be unified – yes. But the tone of this value like all our values, reminds us that the critical action is not done by us – first. This value, like all our values, is first and foremost not a command, instruction, sermon, teaching, or exhortation to rally the troops. This value, like all our values, is poetry and prayer. Our two passages, without any hesitation proclaim that full harmony is possible because the source flows from God and is poured out in prayer by God to God.

“Better together” is not “you must unite or else!” Instead, it’s an invitation to recognize that God is endlessly, extravagantly, prayerfully, passionately, pouring out unity on us like gushing oil, water, and prayer. This is God’s mission. There has been some disagreement over who is being poured upon and prayed about, which feels like a “Who’s my neighbor?-sort-of-dodge.” Is it literally (and only) blood siblings? Extended family? Southern and Northern Kingdoms? Is it only those who profess belief in God? Ultimately, the psalm suggests there are no boundaries to kinship. Water and oil have no bias. They go wherever they want and spread beyond their points of origin and find every little crack. God is the gravity and source that pulls such gifts down upon us and no one is beyond them, not even those who haven’t been born yet or “the world,” Jesus says (John 17:20-21).

By the way, how do you feel when someone prays out loud for you? Maybe one of the reasons it is so easy to turn unity into a “to do” list for ourselves is that such a list is easier to manage than an experience as intimate as being prayed for. We are so obviously not in control as we listen to people talk to God about us. They, not we, are the ones in control with our vulnerabilities, our frailty, our fragility. If Jesus were exhorting his disciples, and by extension us, we could strive to meet his expectations then. If he were exhorting us, we would have a mission and try not to disappoint him. Instead, we overhear a prayer and are humbled in that moment that the Father and the Son spend their time praying for the likes of us. When we come to understand that all of these values are gifts of poetry and prayer, by God, from God, we actually learn that we can’t disappoint him and that "better together" is God’s destiny for us and not our design for ourselves.

And that's because at the center of the prayer is the relationship of love that God has within God’s self and the divine mission of love that the Father sent the son to draw everyone into that relationship.  Jesus intercedes not only for his own but also for the world. He asks for unity and love between those given to him and the Father, “so that the world may believe that you have sent me” (John 17:21). Nothing less than the reconciliation of all things is in view. The telos–the goal–of the prayer is that even those who had been hostile to the coming of the Son (a.k.a. “the world”) may believe that the Father sent him and have life in his name (cf. John 20:31).

So, Harris, I’d like to amend my statement. The actions we make are not so much actions that have us shouldering the battering rams of togetherness in order to tear down ramparts of separation and estrangement. The actions we practice are to cross over with God's poetry and prayer, to celebrate our diversity with dinners and care, to practice unity by recognizing that it is falling down, down, down, to us from God through Jesus like dew that gushes down into a 200 mile raging river, like oil that pours down over our heads and down to our feet, like a prayer made by God himself. I struggled so much with how to end this sermon because I’ve not told you really anything to do, not given you a task, not offered you a job. So here goes – in the spirit of Psalm 133 and Jesus’ prayer. Listen, it’s so gorgeous and good to be together with others. It’s like waiting in an airport with family members, holding signs of welcome for someone about to come through the doors. Better together is like hearing our favorite song at a wedding and asking our partner to dance. Better together is like receiving a surprise gift when it isn’t our birthday and ripping into the wrapping. Better together is recognizing that God has prayed for us and the wall is already gone, love and togetherness are pouring down. Better together defines your work like that.