Mary, Mother of Our Lord August 15, 2004

Isaiah 61:7-11

Psalm 45:11-16

Galatians 4:4-7

Luke 1:46-55

Can Protestants actually celebrate the feast day of Mary, the Mother of Our Lord? Yes, indeed, we can, for we are thereby giving praise and thanks to God for the Incarnation. Can there be a more central, more pervasive, more vital proclamation of the Christian faith than that the Infinite assumed a finite form and in that way made plain to us the preciousness of life itself and the promise of eternity? Mary is the one through whom the Infinite is made visible for us. Surely this is worthy of celebration!

The feast of Mary, however, is not about whether her mother was herself immaculately conceived, whether the Holy Spirit entered Mary's physical form when a dove flew into her ear (as in some famous paintings), or any number of other later folk renditions of her story. Paying too much attention to pinning down how exactly the Mary of the Bible could deserve such an honor or how she could come to sing such a beautiful song in response to the angel's announcement or whether she was really poor and young, had faith, before the visit, and other such minutiae lead us away from the central importance of the incarnate God. To that God the hymns of praise in Isaiah and Luke are sung.

The lectionary for this feast day reveals deeply liturgical texts. Isaiah 61 sings, "I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my whole being shall exult in my God." In Luke 1 Mary sings, "My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior." Each continues with more detailed descriptions of what the Lord has done. While Mary says that "he has looked with favor on ... his servant," Isaiah rejoices that "he has clothed me with the garments of salvation ... covered me with ... righteousness." These texts express a common praise to the One who has utterly changed the state of the singer. The joy runs completely through the singers, body and soul.

Other parallels can be traced. Both hymns refer to the lowly being brought to a high place and the mighty brought low. Mary specifically says these words (vv. 51-53), and in the Isaiah passage the context of the hymn makes clear that the people Israel who had been shamed and dishonored by their oppressors shall receive special privilege, "a double portion" (v. 7). Their exile is over. Third Isaiah announces and promises a new life of rejoicing rather than pain.

These reversals occur because, as YHWH announces in Isaiah, "I the Lord love justice, I hate robbery and wrongdoing; I will faithfully give them their recompense" (v. 8). For Luke, the judgment of the Lord is owing to the fact that "his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation" (v. 50). Because the Lord hates violence and shaming and, in response, works against the forces that create hunger and feed human pride, Israel is made to be a seed for righteousness (vv. 9b, 11). Likewise, Mary is blessed so that even her very soul can magnify--i.e., make visible--the works of God. Said another way, Israel is seed in the same way Mary is the location of the Incarnate One. Through Israel and through Mary, we are given to see the Lord.

If we look, then, at the reading from Galatians, we find a vision of the church: the body that has come to fruition as a result of these seeds planted by God. In the "fullness of time ... God sent his Son ... so that we might receive adoption" (vv. 4-5). Then, once we had been made children of God, "God sent the Spirit ... into our hearts" (v. 6). The epistle here recalls a sequence of events, laid out so that we can understand how to conceive the Incarnation in our own minds. God has made it possible for the Spirit, through the Incarnate One, to move into our hearts.

Without the Incarnation, the Pentecost could not occur. The Pentecost is dependent on the Incarnation. And without the person of Mary, we could not grasp the sign of the Infinite being given a human face. Because of the Incarnation, we are enabled to sing with Mary: "my soul magnifies the Lord...." This is no small matter.

It is through the seeding of the earth with the people Israel and the seeding of the Spirit into the hearts of humanity through Mary that the church becomes the visible sign of the Incarnation. The church is fully in the world but not of the world by being born of the Spirit having entered into the realm of the law and, in so doing, subverting the power of the law. This transformation of the world is so magnificent, so intense, that the church sings its thanksgiving. And there is, possibly, no better song than Mary's Magnificat for giving voice to what the church has to say over and over again.

Perhaps we could come to connect our Sunday morning sung responses to the scripture readings as issuing forth from the same joy we hear in these hymns of praise. We often respond to the word of God with the song "Alleluia. Lord to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. Alleluia." This is praise and thanksgiving, just as we find in Isaiah and in Luke.