To Magnify and Rejoice
Luke 1:39-56
December 16, 2007
Leslie A. Klingensmith

(Pietro Perugino
Madonna and Child, c. 1500)

Who is Mary, really? She has been idealized and placed upon a pedestal for more than 2,000 years now, but when we think about it we really know very little about her. She was a Galilean woman, from a poor village called Nazareth. Some believe she was literally, physically a virgin but the ancient language leaves that question open. It is possible that she was just a young woman. Roman Catholic doctrine maintains that she remained a virgin throughout her life, while Protestants generally believe that if she was in fact a virgin she remained so only until the birth of Jesus. Mary has been the subject of countless paintings and other works of art. She is usually beautiful and shines with a kind of holy light. A few years ago, there was a vocal minority in the Roman Catholic church who wanted to elevate Mary almost to the level of Jesus in the theological hierarchy. They wanted to call her a "Co-Redemptrix" with Christ. In spite of Pope John Paul II's devotion to Mary, that change did not happen. The fact that such a radical shift in thought was even proposed, however, shows the reverence that many millions of people across the world still hold for this mysterious woman.

Since 40 AD, when she appeared to James the Apostle in Spain, there have been reported sightings of Mary all over the world. Some of the places where these supposed sightings occur have become shrines themselves, to which people make pilgrimages hoping to catch a glimpse of her face. Probably the most famous of these sites is Lourdes, France, where in 1858 Mary appeared to a fourteen-year-old girl named Bernadette. Over a six-month-period, Mary appeared several times to Bernadette and instructed her to dig a deep hole, then to drink the water from it and bathe in it. This spring became known for its healing powers, and thousands of people flock to it each year, hoping to be cured of physical, mental, and spiritual illnesses.

Here in the United States, for many years people flocked to the Mojave desert in California on the 13^{th of every month for many years looking for images of Mary in the clouds that allegedly occurred at that time.
Mary and her fiancé Joseph are featured heavily in the biblical birth narratives, but not much after that. We read that they (presumably married by then) scold Jesus when he is twelve years old for separating from them at a religious festival to go teach in the temple. In John's gospel, Mary appears at the wedding at Cana, where Jesus performs his first miracle of turning water into wine. We read later that she stands at the foot of Jesus' cross when he meets his tragic destiny of crucifixion. Considering all the poetry written about her, the songs sung about her, and the academic papers written about her, we do not have a lot to go on as we seek to form a picture about her. Again, the Roman Catholic church has been much more proactive than the Protestants when trying to develop a theology of Mary and a theory of who she is and how she came to be chosen for her unique task. The Catholics have the Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception which, contrary to popular belief, is not the same thing as the Virgin Birth. The Immaculate Conception is the doctrine that Mary was somehow, by God's power, conceived and borne by her parents without the burden of original sin that weighs down the rest of us. On the opposite end of her life, there is the Doctrine of the Assumption - the belief that when the time came for her to leave this world, she was simply whisked away to heaven to be in the presence of God and spared the pain and indignities that accompany physical death.
We will never have the full picture of who Mary is or was, but it seems fair to say that society has always placed on her the qualities that we find most important in our women. Harvey Cox, in his book When Jesus Came to Harvard writes how the fourth century theologian Athanasius taught that Mary "was not only a pure virgin, she also had a harmonious disposition and did not want to be seen by men. She always remained at home, worked like a honeybee, cared for the poor, and prayed to God not to let a bad thought take root in her heart." Cox writes that Athanasius is clearly projecting his own image of the good (perhaps even perfect) woman on this young girl from Nazareth, but he is only one of thousands to have done so over the years. "Mary," he says, "like Christ himself, has become a kind of Rorschach inkblot in which countless people have discovered their own mothers, wives, sweethearts, and other women they have admired (p. 63)." Because of the passage that we are looking at today, Cox believes that a Latin American priest that he once heard preach on the doctrine of the Assumption may have the description that comes closest to the truth. According to Cox, this radical liberationist priest said that if Mary is now "with God," as the doctrine states, then she must be with the poor people of the world struggling against their oppressors, because we all know that that is where God is to be found.}

^{One could make the argument that to put forth a theory that Mary identifies with and walks alongside people who are poor is just one more example of people projecting their image of the ideal woman onto Mary. To a certain extent, that may be true. It is impossible to entirely escape our context and avoid such projections. However, Harvey Cox states, and I agree with him, that the passage of scripture that we have read today, known as the "Magnificat" builds a much stronger case for the unnamed Latin American theologian than it does for Athanasius. This has always been one of my favorite passages, for in addition to being beautifully expressed Mary's obedience and this glimpse of a certain revolutionary spirit on Mary's part give us an idea of God's intentions for humanity and the new age that God is ushering in with the birth of Jesus.}