Scripture: Luke 1:46-55
Back in the 1960’s there was a sermon that achieved a fair amount of fame or notoriety among the small subculture of people who pay attention to printed sermons. The sermon itself I thought was quite thoughtful and worth paying attention to, not at all extreme or offensive, but the title was a bit irreverent and was probably the reason the sermon became somewhat well known, the ‘60’s being a time when it came to be that irreverence took several giant steps forward in our culture. The title of the sermon was: “Away With the Manger”.
You can probably guess the gist of at least some of what this sermon said. The preacher of the sermon was a man named David Woodyard. He was at the time the chaplain of Denison University in Ohio. He described the Christmas story as “charming”, and he said he meant it sincerely. There was a part of him, he said, that never got tired of hearing the story. Shepherds and magi, animals and angels, barn and feeding trough, mother and child—all conspire to cast a spell over us. But whether one truly is charmed—or comforted or even momentarily inspired—by the story, or whether that charm has begun, or perhaps has long since begun, to wear thin,–as it surely has for some—we should, David Woodyard said, beware of charm.
Charm can get in the way of the gospel. Charm, even in the best sense, does not encourage depth. Charm can lead us in the direction of fantasy rather than faith. Charm can lead down the road to sentimentality rather than to spirituality. Charm offers, at its best, a temporary respite not bread for the journey. Beware of charm. And because it’s important to beware of charm, it may be good every so often—and this is really all David Woodyard said—it may be good every so often to do away with the manger.
I begin with that memory because my words this morning are very much in that same spirit. In the same spirit in which David Woodyard suggested that we every so often do away with the manger, I want to suggest that it would be good for us every so often to do away with the Virgin Mary. Not Mary herself you understand. Just the Virgin Mary. Icon Virgin Mary. Stained glass Virgin Mary. Christmas Card Virgin Mary. Postage Stamp Virgin Mary. Holier-than-human, yet somehow less than human, Virgin Mary. That Virgin Mary is the one I would suggest that it would be better on occasion to do away with. Or, if you prefer a softer way of saying it, I could say that it would be better sometimes to do without that Virgin Mary (rather than doing away with her), or I could say we often need to get beyond this official, artificial Virgin Mary. That would be softer still.
In any case, since I am going to be referring to Mary quite a bit this morning, and in order to emphasize the difference between the figure I have in my mind as I speak and the one that is so often presented to us, I will be speaking often this morning not of Mary, but of Miriam, which is the more Jewish, more historically accurate, form of the name.
One reason I want to do away with, or get beyond, the Virgin Mary is so that we can hear better the words Miriam speaks in the gospel reading this morning. We hear some of those words o.k. “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my savior. For God has looked with favor on the low station of his servant girl and from now on all generations will call me blessed…”
We hear the words that describe the humble, holy, and grateful Mary. They fit our image of her. But we—meaning people in general, not necessarily present company—we hear selectively. And so when she goes on to say that God has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly, it is often glossed over and maybe just interpreted to mean just what she has basically already said, pointing out that God has passed over those who have great resumes or pedigrees and has settled on poor, little, humble, obedient, unworthy, ordinary, nobody Mary to be the mother of Jesus.
But what about if we liberate Miriam from Mary. What about if we liberate Miriam from the images we have inherited of Mary. What about if we liberate her words from those images as well. “God’s name is holy. And the Holy One has with strength scattered those who were proud in their hearts. God has toppled monarchs from their thrones and raised the poor to their feet. God has filled the hungry with good foods and sent the rich away empty.” These are not the words, I would suggest, of a poor, little, humble, meek and mild Mary who knows and accepts her place, her lowly station, and who is just grateful as all get out to God for choosing her anyway. They are the words of a woman with a strong prophetic voice who speaks of some of the themes that will be part of the story that is to follow.
What God has done is not only to choose Mary for this privilege of bearing Jesus in her body. It is also to empower a teenager, or someone who was surely not much older than that and therefore as both young and female not likely to be listened to—God has empowered this person and filled her with words that dare not be ignored.
Miriam does not simply proclaim the wonders of a God who made an exception to the usual ways of doing things, and chose her in spite of the fact that she’s of low station. She proclaims a God who intends to make this the way things are done all the time, a God who liberates kings from their thrones, the high and the mighty from their high-and-mightiness, the poor from their poverty, and the nobodies from their nobody-ness. These words are words not of niceness and sweetness but of the coming of a new order, maybe even the reign of God. And
we need to hear Miriam’s words for what they are: not only words of praise—they are that—but also words that are revolutionary. So yes, away with the manger, away with the Virgin Mary, away with all the rest of it, if it means that we can’t hear the Christmas story as a sign and a summons to the dawning of a new age.
This scripture is among the appointed scriptures for the day. I could have chosen something else, but then again actually I couldn’t. Not when I knew that we were going to be lifting up “the Americas” today and when I knew that Latin America has been the seedbed, the soil out of which grew the movement often referred to as “liberation theology”. Liberation theology seemed an important thing to reflect on today, and Miriam’s words fit right in with the theme.
Liberation theology grew out of the unjust social conditions of Latin American. Liberation theology says that theology ought to be concerned about the liberation of oppressed peoples. Liberation theology is also concerned to liberate theology from those who have used it to preserve the status quo, those who have seen theology as being only about religion and otherworldly things and not about the social conditions in which people live. Liberation theology eventually got written down and put into books that students in universities could read and write papers on, but the heart of liberation theology has been in what are often referred to as base communities. The whole point of liberation theology is that it is not just ideas and theories, that it needs to be incarnated in the life of a community, and that it needs to emerge from the effort to bring the Bible into real life situations, and that it is not the business only of people who write books.
I have an example today that relates to Miriam. This is a report of a worship service/Bible study that took place in Chile. I don’t know a lot of the circumstances, and I can’t vouch for its authenticity. I can say that from my very limited experience in Guatemala and Chiapas, it rings true, even though the language is dressed up a little.
A priest says to the people gathered: Today is the anniversary of Allende’s assassination. This is also the feast day of Mary. What does this make you think of?
Someone responds: I don’t think they have much to do with each other.
The priest reads the Magnificat: “God has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts…”, and so on.
But Father, that’s not the Mary we hear about in the cathedral or the Mary we see in pictures.
Tell me about the Mary you see in pictures.
There was one I saw. She was standing on a crescent moon. She wore a gorgeous gown, embroidered with gold. She had a crown with diamonds and rings on her fingers
Do you think that’s the real Mary, or does it betray who Mary was?
The Mary who said that “God has exalted those of low degree” would not have left all her friends so she could stand on the moon.
Why don’t we take her off the moon!
The Mary who said God “has put down the mighty from their thrones” would not be wearing a crown.
Why don’t we take off her crown!
The Mary who said that God “has sent the rich empty away” would not be wearing rings on her fingers.
Why don’t we take off her rings!
The Mary who said that God “has filled the hungry with good things” would not have left people who were still hungry to wear a silk robe with gold on it.
Why don’t we take off her robe! And think what Mary might really look like.
She would not be standing on the moon, but in the dirt here next to us. She would not be wearing a crown but an old hat like the rest of us to keep the sun from making her faint. She would not have a gown, but old and torn clothes like we do. And her hands would be rough like mine. And her feet would be dirty, like mine.
I tell this story because it illustrates so well for me an important point about liberation theology that makes it an approach that is not just appropriate to certain people in certain places at certain times living in certain social conditions. The image of liberation theology generally is that it aims at changing the social conditions of people’s lives. And it does. It makes no apology for that. Liberation theologians would claim very strongly that Christian theology has every right and every need to concern itself with the social conditions within which people live.
But it does something else too, as the story I just told illustrates. It changes the way people think of themselves. It might seem on the surface that what the people were talking about in that gathering was the way people viewed Mary, the mother of Jesus. But it’s not at all hard to see that the conversation was also, and just as much, about how the people viewed themselves. If Mary actually was more like them, then they actually were more like Mary. They could be drawn in to the Biblical story that was really about them as much as about Mary. They could be part of God’s story. They could, like Mary, be chosen by God and blessed by God. And they could, like Mary, be liberated from having to be just humble and sweet and obedient and could also be strong and courageous and prophetic.
I actually don’t like the term liberation theology very much, even though I’ve bandied the term about rather freely the last few minutes. One reason I don’t like it is because it makes it seem like this is some eccentric little movement off by itself on the fringes of Christian theology, and maybe not very Christian. The question that is important for me is not really “what is liberation theology?”. It is, “what is Christian theology?”. What should we Christian theologians—that’s you and me—what should we be speaking about? And if part of the answer to that question is that we should be talking about liberation, that does not place us in some camp over here on the outskirts of town. It simply means that we are considering how we are going to be Christian.
I also confess that sometimes when I hear people speak in the language of what they may be thinking of as liberation theology, including myself, sometimes it begins to sound a bit like jargon. We speak, some of us do, of God having a preferential option for the poor, and we may not be sure what that means but we assume it’s a good thing. We speak of Christ’s ministry among, with, and on behalf of “the poor”, “the powerless”, “the marginalized”, “the disinherited”, “the outcast”, and somehow the people we are supposedly talking about start to sound a little bit less like people and a little bit more like categories.
Nevertheless, Miriam speaks to us in the words we know as the Magnificat and tells us, none too subtly, that God really does care more about relieving the burdens of the poor than about preserving the privileges of the rich. And she tells us, perhaps a little more indirectly, that there is a work of liberation to be done for each of us. After all even Miriam needs to be liberated from Mary. Perhaps all women need to be liberated from Mary, though not from Miriam. And there are many, too many, groups of people, who still wait and long for liberation. And, God knows, there are works of liberation waiting to be done for each one of us. In all of the various categories each of us may fall into, and beyond all the categories we may fall into, there is plenty of liberation work to be done in the lives of each of us.
Miriam’s words call us to that work, if we have ears to hear. May Christmas bring to each of us, in whatever way we need, a liberating word, and may it lead us to seek liberation, liberation flavored with love, for all God’s people. Amen.
Jim Bundy
December 22, 2002