This is the time of the year when it is my sacred obligation to remind us all that Mary, Mother Mary, was not at all meek and mild. Jesus, we know, was not meek and mild. For how much he was a person of peace and an embodiment of God’s love, he was bold and brash in how he ignited a blazing transformation of the world. And for as awesome as Jesus was, he didn’t raise himself, and he certainly didn’t give birth to himself. And the woman who did give birth to him and raise him up, when we look at what the gospel stories actually recount about her, it’s clear the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. Mary was the kind of saint who was a force to be reckoned with. 

If we hear Mary’s famous Magnificat, and we let her words speak on their own terms, fresh without the assumptions we receive from our culture, what confronts us seems to be nothing less than a vision of spiritual insurrection: “Cast down the mighty.” “Scatter the proud.” “Send the rich away.” “Fill the hungry.” “Uplift the lowly.” The character of Mary here seems to be more like the depiction by the artist Ben Wildflower, which you can see above.

The British Empire banned the reading of Mary’s Magnificat in Advent church services at times of unrest in British occupied India. The military junta in Guatemala in the 1980s banned the reading of Mary’s Magnificat in Advent church services when the compasinos were getting fed up with the regimes’ repression.

Mary’s voice was clearly a threat to them. 

As the saying goes, the gospel “afflicts the comfortable and comforts the afflicted.” That’s what Mary’s Magnificat does. 

And, each of us can be honest with ourselves before God about when we hear this, how do we respond? Are we comforted? Are we confronted? Are we challenged by Mary’s vision of a profound leveling of human relations before our Creator?

Mary has often been taken as a kind of archetype for ideal womanhood. That ideal – Mary meek & mild – erases the vivid details of what the gospel stories actually tell us about Mary’s character, and prevents us all from actually learning from her. 

I’ve explored some the last part of Mary’s Magnificat. But moving to the first part, one of the powerful things about her speech is that it’s clear that her sense of self has evolved far beyond the bounds of ego. “My soul magnifies the Supreme One.” Her experience of connection with God, her experience of awe before her Creator has opened her in such a way that her very soul reflects out the radiance of the Divine. 

In this experience, Mary’s words express such joy – and more than that: ecstasy. Her soul overruns the boundaries of herself in this experience of Holy Presence. She then becomes a channel for a power much greater than herself. The movement of this power leads her into this vision of what will be possible through the Christhood she is nurturing. 

So, Mary’s posture of humility and gratitude before God does not mean meekness, does not mean erasure of her self, but rather empowerment. God uplifts the lowly. Mary’s voice overruns with tremendous, transformative power.

And her words have filled tyrants with dread through the ages. 

The first tyrant was the tyrant at the time, ruling over Judea and Galilee at the time, King Herod. After Jesus was born King Herod wanted him killed because the rabble was singing songs about how the Messiah would tear tyrants from their thrones. Mary and Joseph were forced to become refugees: they took Jesus and fled in Egypt, where they survived until it was safe for them to return. Mary clearly was a strong woman.

Then remember Jesus’ first miracle, turning water into wine at a wedding. That was Mary’s doing. Sure, Jesus performed the miracle, but it wouldn’t’ve happened without his mother. 

It was Mary who went up to Jesus during the wedding party and said, “Jesus, they’ve run out of wine for the party. Why don’t you help them out?”

Jesus said, basically, “Mom, why do I care? Plus, I can’t do anything about it anyway. I’m not ready.” In Bible talk it’s “Woman, what concern is that to us? My hour has not yet come.”

But his mother knows better, and she doesn’t put up with his dismissive attitude. She knows that he’s ready to give of the gifts he has to give the world; and she knows that he should. So, she doesn’t let him wriggle out of it. 

What does she do? She goes to the servants who are taking care of the food and drink for the party. 

She says, “Sooo, you’re out of wine, huh? Well you see that guy over there? His name is Jesus. He’ll take care of it. Just do what he tells you to do.” 

I can just imagine how it goes from there. 

The servants head right over to Jesus and say, “Hey! Thanks for hooking us up with more booze. Where do we go to get it?”

And Jesus looks over the party at his mom and is like, “Mom! I told you I didn’t want to do this!”

That’s Mother Mary, for you. 

She set Jesus up … to step up, already.    

And he does.

And the rest is history. 

So, what would it be like if we let Mary take her rightful place in the center of the gospel stories, and allow her voice and her wisdom and her revolutionary love to ring out and hit home?

I am so grateful that in our Christmas Pageant this year, Emily Asmus had the idea to break out of the weird ways that Mary gets idealized in the pageant. We just so happened to hear about this idealization and the way it impacts young psyches last week, in one of the beautiful stories that Connie Loomer shared about her childhood, a story that centered around, who gets picked to be Mary in the school Christmas pageant. Which was always for some reason the girl who has perfect blonde hair and blue eyes. Every years there’s always all this drama and anxiety and pride and dejection around which girl meets our culture’s arbitrary ideals and gets to be picked to be Mary. This is directly counter to the whole point of the gospel of Jesus, and counter to everything we know about Mary – not only what she actually looked like, which was certainly not blonde haired and blue eyed, but more important, what we know about what her values where, which she makes clear in the Magnificat. 

So, Emily in planning the pageant this year, said, Enough of that! We’ll have as many Marys as we have kids who want to be Mary. And we’ll ask each of them to share about the miracles that theybear, the gifts they have to give the world. 

And thank God for that. This is truly in the spirit of Mary’s Magnificat. 

May we all allow Mary to speak to us, and challenge us, and invite us into her revolution of love.Thanks be to God.

(Image by Ben Wildflower)

(Delivered as a sermon during worship at First Congregational church of Walla Walla, by Rev. Nathaniel Mahlberg. You may view video of the service here.)