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            In Church traditions about Mary, the mother of Jesus, great emphasis has been placed on Mary’s purity. She was a virgin when Jesus was conceived and born, and the Catholic Church still teaches that she herself had been “immaculately” conceived. Her stature has sometimes approached that of goddess in the church. Jung thought that was a good thing, elevating the under-valued feminine aspects of the deity. This emphasis on purity and divinity has sometimes been called a “Mariology from Above.” But in recent years, a different view of Mary has been emerging, thanks to the influence of third-world and womanist theologians. It could be called a “Mariology from Below.” This understanding of Mary stresses that she was a member of the peasant class in an oppressed and impoverished country. This understanding suggests that the important issue is not so much her purity and divinity as her faithfulness. Here Mary is seen not so much as the “Holy Mother of God,” but as Jesus’ first and foremost disciple. Indeed she was there when he taught the elders in the Temple, throughout his ministry, most likely at the Last Supper, at the foot of the cross, at the empty tomb, and in the Upper Room after his ascension. What does Mary teach us about faithfulness and motherhood this Mother’s Day?

            Most of our national holidays get hijacked by our commercial culture. On Mother’s Day the more the goodness and purity of our mothers is exploited, the guiltier we may feel, and the more we try and make it up to them by cards and gifts and flowers. That’s fine, but it can get pretty sentimental. But I think what can get rescued in all this is the re-affirmation of mothers as primary teachers and models of faithfulness, of discipleship. Even in our age of two-income families, we mostly learn what’s important at our mother’s knee (if not at some other joint, as the joke goes). What Mary models for me is really an understanding of motherhood in a deeper sense, one that goes beyond family, tribe, and culture. Jesus’ interactions with his mother become the occasions of some of his so-called “hard sayings” about family and kinship. In the Gospel from Mark we find this story of Jesus sitting around with some people he is teaching and he is told his mother and his brothers are looking for him. He answers, “Who are my mother and my brothers? These are my mother and my brothers. Whoever does the will of God is brother and sister and mother to me.” On another occasion someone shouts from a crowd, “Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursed you.” And Jesus answers, “Rather, blessed are they who hear the word of God and keep it.” We should not infer from this that Jesus ever stopped loving and honoring his mother. There is no evidence of that. But he is saying, I believe, that faithful discipleship may come into conflict with family ties. The “family values” Christians of the radical right never quite get around to addressing these words of Jesus. In fact Jesus never talks about family values at all, except in appearing to reject them in a conventional sense.

            I believe that Jesus’ words do not so much reject traditional notions of motherhood and family as they transform and deepen them. We know that the early Christians saw the church as a new family, the head of which was Jesus himself. I think Jesus re-defined motherhood as less a physical connection, and more as a relationship of deep teaching and nurture of faith – as a profound covenant. Understood this way, yes, our mothers who gave us birth engage in this deepest sort of teaching. But so do our adopted mothers. So do our adopted fathers. So do aunts and uncles and cousins. And so do our brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers of the Christian family of the church. Anyone engaged in deep nurture and teaching about and modeling God’s love is mother to us - which is exactly what Jesus said.

            I mentioned the Mbare Church in Harare, Zimbabwe, earlier and referred to it as the “Mother Church” of the United Church of Christ in Zimbabwe. It was the community that gave birth in a physical and spiritual sense to our sister Christian community in that oppressed country. So it is fitting we remember it and ask you to pray for the folks of that church and explore ways of supporting and nurturing them.

            The Motherhood of Mary as a model of faithful discipleship is captured beautifully in the famous Magnificat that we associate with Advent. Her response to the appearance of God through the Angel Gabriel is “let it be done unto me according to your word.” In this sense, it is not just her empty and waiting womb that symbolizes her readiness, but the genuine self-emptying nature of herself as a human being. She represents utter and complete obedience to God - not to cultural or religious rules and norms per se (indeed she was being led beyond these norms), but in her total attentiveness to what God was saying to her in that very moment.

            But it should be added that what Mary models for us a kind of mindful surrender that is not the same as mindless submission. Hers is not a wan passivity but a total wakefulness. Mary’s Magnificat goes on to spell out in some detail what faithfulness is about. It is about faithfulness to a God who is in the process of turning society upside down and inside out. It is about a God who has something to say about tax-cuts for the rich and powerful and nothing for the poor. It is a God who has something to say about the swagger and arrogance of the mighty and the humiliation of the powerless. It is about a God who says that the great ones will soon be knocked from their omnipotent perches and brought low. It is about those of low regard who will be lifted up.

            And how will this happen? Through the mystery that those who are empty hear and see the world differently from those who are full – full of wealth and food and power and full of themselves. Those who are empty of wealth and food and power and even empty of themselves are ready to listen and respond. Ready to follow Jesus. 

AMEN

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