Mary as Disciple and Midwife
Welcome!
You can watch the sermon here
Thank you for having me, it’s good to be back here as a part of your community. I’m especially honored and excited to be here to set the stage for the coming Advent season. I did not grow up celebrating Advent. I think I picked up my first devotional Advent book about five years ago. My brother recently finished seminary and is about to be ordained as a priest in the Episcopal church. We have had some great conversations through the years about liturgy. In those he has revealed to me to me the beauty of advent.
At first glance, the idea felt stuffy to me. Reading the same scriptures, candles with a solemn atmosphere but as I dug, I discovered a season of hope. Advent has taught me to sit in the waiting. We see in Scripture a weary world longing for a savior, and we can connect that too to the here and now while we wait for him to come again. There’s an ache in my heart this time of year that can only be described as a longing for restoration.
My family had the opportunity to be in Italy last Christmas before a seminary class I had there. We went to Christmas Eve mass at a local catholic church, and I found myself moved by the worship and candles more than anything. Probably because I don’t speak Italian! I did recognize the worship songs though and could sing along in English but what was really great was the lighting of the candles. Many churches start with one candle and build as the weeks of advent come. On Christmas Eve at midnight the Church is absolutely lit up with candles proclaiming that the king has come. I don’t think I’ll ever forget hearing the sound of worship echo off those marble floors and seeing the flicker of hope reflected in the mosaic walls depicting the lives of the faithful who also waited and worshiped in advent.
On that same trip, I stayed in Italy for a seminary class, and it was there that I learned about how Mary offers a glimpse into the hope of this season found in Jesus. So as a precursor to your Advent season here at the Vine, today we are going to dig into one of the main characters, Mary, the mother of Jesus. Let’s start by looking at the beginning of Luke. Luke starts in chapter one with an angel visiting the priest Zechariah and telling him, that in their old age, his wife was going to have a baby named John who would be filled with the Holy Spirit, turning hearts back to God and preparing the way for the Lord. Zechariah doesn’t believe and tells the angel he is too old. For his unbelief he becomes mute until the day John is born.
Then in the next scene, an angel then comes to Mary, a young woman betrothed to a man named Joseph. The angel tells her she will become pregnant by the Holy Spirit and that her child will become the Son of the Most High and he will reign forever. Similar scenes,—one man told his wife would bear a son who would prepare the way for the Messiah, and one woman told she would bear a son and he would be the Messiah.
Mary responds with “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” She goes to visit her relative Elizabeth, Zechariah’s wife, and when she greets her, the baby inside Elizabeth leaped in her womb. Then Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit proclaims that Jesus is the Messiah when she says, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.” Mary then responds with a song of praise. In what we call the Magnificat, she says,
My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowly state of his servant. Surely from now on all generations will call me blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name; indeed, his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the imagination 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. He has come to the aid of his child Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer calls this “the most passionate, the wildest, one might even say the most revolutionary advent hymn ever sung. This is not the gentle, tender, dreamy Mary whom we sometimes see in paintings; this is the passionate, surrendered, proud, enthusiastic Mary who speaks out here.”
If this story is familiar to you—or even if it’s not—I want you to sit in it for a bit. Use your imagination to paint the scene. There’s an elderly woman, whose husband was told by an angel that she would birth a son who would make way for the Messiah. Then a young woman, Mary, who also was told by an angel that she herself was going to birth the Messiah by what we call the Virgin Birth. Can you imagine the joy in their hearts at this moment of meeting!? I can just see them laughing through tears at what I’m sure felt like absurdity and yet a confidence that it was all God. How else could it be? The Spirit so thick in that room that babies jump for joy in utero and songs literally burst forth. Baby John is giving his first prophetic announcement, he knew the Messiah was in his presence even then.
I’m a creative person, I like to paint, play the guitar, and a few other things. Sometimes I’ll get a picture in my brain, or a melody, or line for a song that seems to come out of nowhere. I trust that they are the Spirit, and I’ve learned to, at the very least, write it down before I forget it. How much more was Mary incapsulating this kind of creativity there? We’re not sure exactly when she wrote it, perhaps on her way to Elizabeth’s house, but she was overcome by the Spirit’s movement and presence, she wrote the Magnificat.
Mary Gives us Hope in Jesus Through Her Faith
I think Mary is also a model disciple. One way she does that is through her hope in Jesus. Luke’s gospel is unique in the way he often pairs a man and a woman in stories. This is seen in Mary and Zechariah, Simeon and Anna, Joseph of Arimathea at the tomb with the women, as well as several healings and parables that mirror genders. One of the things I want us to see this morning is how Mary gives us hope in Jesus through her song. Now at first glance it seems that in chapter one of Luke that Zechariah and Mary ask the same question of the angel, “how?”
The difference is that Zechariah wants to know the sign, Mary shows she already believes, she just wants to understand how. Mary is a young girl maybe 15 or 16 and her faith is phenomenal. Now if we see the big picture of the Bible and the story it is telling about Jesus, we can go all the way back to Genesis. In the garden God promised Adam and Eve that the woman’s offspring will strike the serpent’s head. This story was passed down from generation to generation, and just a few chapters after that, when Noah is born his dad Lamech says when he is born, “out of the ground that the Lord has cursed this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the toil of our hands.”
I think that with each birth after Adam and Eve, they were expectant that this would be the one God would send. Surely this one will be it! Then slowly through the Old Testament you get more and more pieces of that puzzle, of where the Messiah will be born and what line he will be in. It slowly gets narrowed down more and more and as it did, I think it’s possible that each time a woman got pregnant who knew the Torah and prophets, she wondered, “Is this the one? Am I going to get to birth the Messiah?”
I think Mary knew that. I think she had an expectant hope and when she was met with the angel, the angel said, “Greetings favored one! The Lord is with you.” It says Mary pondered this in her heart and she wondered how, since she was still a virgin. The angel explains that the Holy Spirit will come, and she responds by saying, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” That is a prayer if we should ever repeat one!
First, Mary gives us a picture of what it means to have faith in Jesus. Luke contrasts her with Zechariah. We hear from Gabriel in chapter 1:20 that because Zechariah did not believe the angel, he went mute until the day John was born. In contrast, Mary showed her knowledge of the word and her faith that it would come to pass. She was given a voice, and that voice began with a song compiled of deep theology of God and his justice to the lowly. This justice would be so threatening that as Scot McKnight notes, “in the 1980s the government of Guatemala banned any public reciting of Mary’s Magnificat because it was deemed politically subversive.” Her subversive politics towards first century rulers still carried a threat two thousand years later. She no doubt had Herod in mind when she said, “He has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly.” Herod was King of Judea and a terrible ruler. He murdered his wife, her mom, his sons and was a complete tyrant who was constantly paranoid. Mary’s courageous theology showed her faith and hope in the one that was going to now come into human life inside her body.
Second, Mary also shows us hope in his Miracles
As we just noted, she believed in the one that was to come and the miracle of the angel coming to her and giving her this news even though she was a virgin. She was likely just 15 or 16 years old. Now remember she wrote this song, but someone had to remember it to tell it to Luke. I think it’s highly likely that she conveyed these parts of the birth narrative that we only see in Luke to Luke himself later. She was a songwriter and storyteller. I also think that means she remembered the words to her own song. Maybe she even sang them over Jesus as a baby and continued that melody throughout his life as she pondered what was to come.
God used a young teenage woman to bring about the life of his son. In the words of Sojourner Truth, “Jesus came from God and a woman; man had nothing to do with it.” It made me chuckle a little to read that, but there is truth in her words. Mary Johnson says, “Luke depicts her as the spokeswoman for God’s redemptive justice, which will be such a part of the gospel.” God constantly flipped tables in scripture, upending our man-made structures of racism, classism, and sexism. Eugene Peterson in The Message calls this “the Great Reversal.” Considering this reversal and women’s lack of power in a patriarchal society, it makes sense that a woman would be who he chose to bring about the life of his son, and that it would also be a woman, a different Mary, that he chose to be the first at his resurrection with the news of his eternal life.
The hope that Mary has from day one carries with her for the rest of her life. She continues to have hope in what Jesus could do. This is seen in the wedding at Cana when she says, “Do whatever he tells you.” She believed that he was capable of miracles. She had faith, but I think it was more than a mom believing in her son, it was faith that the Messiah had come. I’m not convinced she knew how that would all shake out, but I think she had faith that he was able.
Third, Mary is like a Midwife . We see God pictured as midwife throughout Scripture. Psalm 71 says, “it was you who took me from my mother’s womb.” Then again in Psalm 22:9 it says, “It was you who took me from the womb; you kept me safe on my mother’s breast.” We also see imagery of God as midwife in the Exodus, leading a nation to life through a birth of blood and water. Advent is a season of anticipation, much like pregnancy. It is a time of waiting, preparing and hope for new life. I have no doubt, God stayed by Mary’s side from the day the angel came. We see the Spirit move babies in the womb and I think he likely stayed with her in encouragement. The Spirit was with Mary like a midwife, encouraging her when it got hard, reminding her of her own courage as a comforting presence.
Midwives in the ancient world often trained their successors and I think Mary learned a thing or two about spiritual midwifery from God, how to wait and how to hope. In her work about God as midwife, Juliana Claassens says, “The midwife works ceaselessly to bring life into the world, often in trying and treacherous circumstances. We see this in God, and we see it in Mary. I believe God trained her as midwife to help birth the early church. Claassens goes on to say, “Like a midwife, God acts to bring forth life even in the midst of pain—even when the mother may suffer death.”
If there is one person that was with Jesus from the day he was born, to the day he died, it was Mary. There is a reason the Catholic church calls her the Mother of the Church. But despite how we protestants often see her, her life on earth did not end the day Jesus died. Acts tells us she was there at Pentecost. I wonder if once again she sang her Magnificat in that Upper Room reminding them like a midwife of all the beauty that was coming on the other side of birth.
Acts 2:43-46 says, “Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distributed the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people.” The fellowship they experienced in that moment was the fulfilment of Mary’s song when she said, “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.”
Mary gives us hope as a model disciple
Timothy Ralston says, “Mary is the fourth most described person in the New Testament, after Jesus and the apostles Paul and Peter. To neglect Mary is to ignore a very significant New Testament figure.” Her Magnificat is one of the longest discourses of a woman in Scripture. If we look at the totality of her life and what we know of her, we see deep knowledge of God and faith in him. She prophetically sings about all that was happening and was about to come. She became a refuge, fleeing to another country because of a terrorist king. She likely was a single mother at least at some point as Joseph disappears from the story, and many scholars with statistics in thinking he probably died. She believed in Jesus’ ability to perform miracles as we see at the wedding at Cana, she says yes to him before the world would ever know him.
Mary as Midwife
God asks for her consent, invites her to take part in the great redemption story, and through that teaches her how to act as midwife in the birth of the early church. He equips her through faith and experience. Mary shows us what a model disciple looks like. She has faith, followed Jesus, had courage to believe in what he would and could do, and received the Spirit at Pentecost with the others at the birth of the early church. No doubt, when others were unsure of what to do, many likely looked to Mary as not only mother of Jesus, but as a model disciple.
In the poem called Annunciation, Denise Levertov begins,
We know the scene:
the room, variously furnished, almost always a lectern, a book; always the tall lily.
Arrived on solemn grandeur of great wings, the angelic ambassador, standing or hovering, whom she acknowledges, a guest.
But we are told of meek obedience. No one mentions
courage.
The engendering Spirit
did not enter her without consent.
God waited.
She was free to accept or to refuse, choice integral to humanness.
She was free to accept or refuse. Simply put, God waited for her consent. Her response? “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” May we have the courage to believe/trust in Jesus that Mary had. May her hope in the One who saves, bring you hope this morning. There is a darkness in this Advent season of waiting just like what Mary experienced. She was young, poor, and living in a world filled with injustice. Maybe you feel some of the weight of our weary world this morning yourself.
In the scene where the angel comes, everything is told in the future tense. It says in Luke 1:35, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.” As Amy Peeler says, the same Spirit that hovered over the waters in creation will hover over her, only this time, “Mary’s body will be the source for the creative act of God.” That same Spirit is with us today. It is hovering, creating, waiting with us for the day it will fully take part in the New Creation.
This morning we saw the birth of a Messiah, the birth of the church and we wait again for the birth of the New Jerusalem. Jesus came in the flesh, but we wait again for his return. We live in the tension of the already and the not yet. Mary and this upcoming advent season remind us of the hope that Jesus is coming back. It’s a season of pregnancy pains, longing, hope and expectation of new life. I hope, like Mary, you will see a light is coming, these pregnancy pains will one day disappear, and we will experience the birth of a new Jerusalem where he sits on the throne.
Further Reading:
Claassens, L. Juliana M. “Praying from the Depths of the Deep: Remembering the Image of God as Midwife in Psalm 71.” Review & Expositor 104.4 (2007): 761–75. https://doi.org/10.1177/003463730710400407
Johnson, Elizabeth A. Truly Our Sister: A Theology of Mary in the Communion of Saints. New York: Continuum, 2009.
Levertov, Denise “Annunciation” Sarah Clarkson, https://sarahclarkson.com/thoroughly-alive/2017/11/17/annunciation-a-poem-and-a-holy-provocation.
McKnight, Scot. The Real Mary: Why Evangelical Christians Can Embrace the Mother of Jesus. Brewster: Paraclete Press, 2007.
Peeler, Amy. Women and the Gender of God. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2022.
Ralston, Timothy. "The Virgin Mary: Reclaiming Our Respect," in Vindicating the Vixens, ed. Sandra Glahn. Kregel Academic: Grand Rapids, 2017.
