Readings: Micah 5: 2 – 5a; Hebrews 10: 5 – 10; Luke 1: 39 – 55
At St Beuno’s retreat centre in North Wales, over the mantelpiece in the sitting room, there’s a picture of a domestic scene. A woman in modern dress stands at her kitchen table behind a mixing bowl. She’s looking up, suddenly distracted in the middle of making a cake. The back door to the house is open, and through it is coming a younger woman, dressed in blue. She seems to be in a hurry and looks as if she’s about to say something. This scene seems very ordinary, and I’d seen it several times before I realised that it’s a picture of the visitation. Here is Mary, rushing in to see Elizabeth, to give her the news that she too is expecting a baby. What looks on the surface so ordinary is in fact quite extraordinary; and somehow the artist has captured this too.
Luke doesn’t give us any of the domestic details of Mary’s visit to Elizabeth, but he places it between two other episodes where Mary is central – the Annunciation and Mary’s song of praise to God, which we know as the Magnificat. For thirty consecutive verses then Mary takes centre stage.
There are many ways in which people have thought about Mary; at one extreme is the image of motherly female perfection; Mary as venerated in her own right; the one who prays to Jesus on our behalf. At the other, the writer Colm Toibin portrayed her in his book Testament of Mary, published in 2012 as a desperate and grief-stricken old woman who cannot believe the Church’s version of the story about her Son’s life and death.
For Luke, Mary is neither of these, but she is the first and arguably the most perfect disciple, and hence a model for us all to follow. Listen to what Pope Paul VI said about Mary:
“The Virgin Mary has always been proposed to the faithful by the church as an example to be imitated, not precisely in the type of life she led and much less for the sociocultural background in which she lived and which scarcely today exists anywhere. Rather she is held up as an example to the faithful for the way in which in her own particular life she fully and responsibly accepted the will of God, because she heard the word of God and acted on it, and because charity and the spirit of service were the driving force of her actions. She is worthy of imitation because she was the first and most perfect of Christ’s disciples.”1
So – in the light of this, and, given that only one Mary will ever be needed, what does Luke tells us about her discipleship which we might usefully emulate?
From the Annunciation onwards, Mary hears, accepts and obeys almost without question the word of God. Her only question to the angel of the annunciation is as to how it will be possible for her to bear a child. The angel tells her of Elizabeth’s pregnancy; Mary’s haste to visit her, which is where today’s Gospel begins, reflects her obedience and her desire to carry out God’s will. Elizabeth’s prophetic greeting emphasises Mary’s status as the mother of her Lord and parallels the way in which, according to the Gospels of Matthew (Matthew 3: 13f) and John (John 1:29f), Elizabeth’s son John will later greet Jesus. The key verse here for understanding Mary as a disciple is v 45 where Elizabeth says ‘blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.’ Mary demonstrates faith in what she perceives that God has said to her; and she doesn’t hesitate in putting that faith into action as she hurries off to visit Elizabeth.
Elizabeth blesses Mary as the one who is to be the mother of Jesus. But Mary then goes on to bless God in the familiar words of the Magnificat. Luke makes a deliberate parallel here with the words of Hannah after she has left the infant Samuel in the Temple (1 Samuel 2: 1 -10). However, Mary does more than praise God for sending Jesus. Her words also interpret the significance of what is to happen, not only for her personally (she will be called blessed), but for future generations, for the powerful and the powerless, the rich and the poor and for the nation of Israel. It is the calling of the disciple not only to accept and believe, not only to live out what we think that God is calling us to do, but also to share our faith with others, interpreting it to them in ways which will make sense to them.
It’s not easy to live lives of selflessness and service to others – even when those others happen to be people we love. It’s perhaps particularly hard for us to give up our precious leisure time to serve the church. But I suspect that, for most of us, more difficult than either of these things is managing ever to say anything to anyone about what truly motivates us. To convey that we’re not just ‘nice people;’ that, in fact, left to our own devices we wouldn’t be anything other than completely selfish. How often, I wonder, do we manage to tell anyone that what we do is done for love of Jesus, because we are His disciples? How can we even begin to find the words without sounding impossibly pious, – or just plain odd?
In the Magnificat, Luke has given Mary the words to express appropriately the depths of her experience and understanding of God. Those words still resonate today. They may not have been a spontaneous outpouring but the fruit of much thought. How much thought do we give to how we might speak to others about our faith so that what we say is authentic to who we are and appropriate to the situation? As one scholar puts it:
“As we look forward in Advent to the coming of Christ, let us ask ourselves how this year we are going to interpret for others what we believe happens at Christmas, so that they will be able to appreciate what the angel announced at the first Christmas. “I announce to you good news of a great joy which will be for the whole people: To you this day there is born in the city of David a saviour who is Messiah and Lord.”” 2
This is not just a job for the clergy. It’s for all of us disciples. And it’s not just for Christmas, it’s for life.
Amen
1. Quoted in A Coming Christ in Advent, Raymond E Brown, p71
2. From A Coming Christ in Advent, Raymond E Brown, p70