Mary as the figure of the Church

All of books of the prophets in the Old Testament begin with a statement of time and place and circumstance. Thus, for example, Ezekiel begins:

In the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, on the fifth day of the month, as I was among the exiles by the river Chebar, the heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God. (Exekiel 1:1 RSV)

It is no surprise that in the New Testament this form continues. In the gospel of Luke we find the annunciation of the birth of Jesus:

In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin's name was Mary. (Luke 1:26,27 RSV)

It is a crucial aspect of biblical writing that the authors place so much emphasis on times and places and people. Behind this insistence there is the need to anchor particular events in real time with real people in real places. It seems that the authors want to exclude the idea that they are writing a mythology even when they introduce mythological figures such as the angel Gabriel.

It is the long held conviction of Israel that the knowledge of the truth of God is to be found in the events of the past. While we in the modern age, together with Henry Ford, believe that “history is bunk” the biblical writers believed that a future was only possible in the light of the lessons of history. This gives biblical texts an air of the empirical, that experience is at the root of all truth. This is important because truth is always anchored in the event and can never float free into unsustained speculation or wishful thinking. It also means that God has the attributes of the verb, of event.

Such was Israel’s wariness of idolatry that no image of God could be pictured, even in the mind. This meant that God was pure event, an event without a cause, an act without an actor, because to think in terms of a cause or an actor was idolatry.

This tradition of anchoring biblical texts in history does not stand the test of “did it actually happen” such as we modern day historians would insist. The appearance of the angel Gabriel in the gospel of Luke is a case in point. His appearance is a sign that we are here in the realm of legend dressed up as history. There are many such instances in the Bible, the creation stories being a prime example. This has been the discovery of the historical critical analysis of biblical texts and has been around since Spinoza in the 17th century.

The problem is that, with the modern insistence on history as actual recordable event, such analysis has brought with it the temptation to reduce the significance of such texts and enhance those texts that seem to fit with modern historiography.

Such an attitude, particularly in Protestant Churches, has robbed us of much rich tradition. This is no more evident than in the Protestant reception of the figure of Mary. But if we Protestants are serious about the Bible we cannot escape the conclusion that Mary is a figure to be reckoned with, even if her prominence varies in the gospels and the earliest known New Testament writer, Paul, never mentions her. It is unfortunate that many Protestants are so reactive to what they conceive of as an idolatry of Mary in the Roman church that she is almost written out of Protestantism.

Mary is an important figure because she is not only theotokos, God bearer, she is pre-eminently the icon of the Church. This is set out beautifully in the gospel of Luke. The angel Gabriel greets her with the words “Greetings favoured one!” The Greek translated into “favoured” is from charis, grace. Mary is the one who is full of grace. She is full of grace because, although wondering what sort of greeting this might be, on hearing that she will bear a son, although still a virgin, she acquiesces in the news with the famous words, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” (Luke 1:38 RSV)

This is what the Church does. It ponders the word that is revealed to it. It declares it is the servant of the Lord from whence the word comes and it does not determine to be that which it autonomously desires, but only to be that which is according to the word. Thus Mary is not only the figure of the Church but the figure to whom all believers look as a model of faith.

Every time we pray the Lord’s prayer we pray that the Father’s will be done. This mimics the words of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane so that whenever we pray the Lord’s prayer we are aware that the Father’s will may be terrible. Perhaps this is why in any epiphany of God the words “fear not” are central as they are for Mary in the annunciation.

Mary does not make her statement of self forgetfulness alone. It is not a supreme act of individuality. For the introduction that names the places and times and names of the recipients connect her to the whole history of Israel. She has faith because she has been born into a community of faith who count the father of faith, Abraham, as their ancestor. Faith and grace a mutually supporting aspects of Christian belief.

Augustine remarks that if Mary had not believed then the Son could not have become incarnate in her. She had to accept the Word of God into her heart before she could conceive him in her womb. To understand the birth of Jesus from a virgin’s womb as a nature miracle is to miss the point. A medieval painting portrays Mary being impregnated by the Word through her ear. Not the usual orifice that we connect with procreation. The point is made for all believers, that the Christ may be born in them through faith and that this engenders grace.

Likewise, on the level of the church, the Christ is born into the community because of the faith of that community.

Belief here is everything. The detractors of Christianity may see it as superstition and foolishness but to believe first is crucial. Without that nothing can happen for us. Mary says yes to the message of the angel Gabriel and because of this yes God became a man “and dwelt among us full of grace and truth”.

By contrast, that other woman in the Bible, Eve, says yes to the serpent and brings the whole human race down to death. Again on the individual level, we are all called to say yes or no to the Christ, to go with Mary and pour our lives out in discipleship or travel some other path. It is part of the economy of the human soul that we will say yes to something. Neutrality is not within our power.

Here the lines are drawn very sharply and I do not apologise to those who will be offended. When we say yes to something other than the Christ we are immediately in the company of demons who will imprison us and destroy our lives, no matter how we dress them up in the clothes of goodness and sincerity.

I am aware of the scandal of this, particularly in our time in which the human paths seem so convincing and promise such triumphant outcomes. But the evidence from history is before us, as it was for Israel. All of the utopias, all of the paths of nations anchored in the triumph of the self, or of the community, or of the nation, or of the myth of endless progress, have failed.

The millennium goals have become a joke. Our political systems simply do not have the power to eradicate poverty while men and women continue to seek their own security and aggrandisement. The only solution is Mary’s declaration. This is the only act, repeated over and over again by believers, that has the power to bring about the time of justice and grace and peace.

At Christmas we celebrate the birth into the world of a man who is the pure Word of God, into the church and into the hearts of individual believers in the full knowledge that he is indeed the light of the world, the only light that can overcome our darkness.