Mary, the Mother of our Lord: Servant, Midwife, Mother.

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Sermon, 24th December, 2017



Readings:
Old Testament - Exodus 1:8-2:4
New Testament - Luke 1:26-56


Today is the last of the four Sundays of Advent. For the past three weeks, we have been meditating on and preparing for the coming of Jesus. Moreover, today being the 24th of December happens to also be the day just before Christmas, in other terms, Christmas Eve. We get a Sunday before Christmas Day only once in 5 to 6 years and that makes this worship service today even more special. Today then is the day just before the Lord Jesus was born, the day of expectation and hope, the day of labour of a mother, a woman who was called Mary.

Let us pray. Dear God, who chose to come into our world in the form of a child and through the pain of a mother, speak to us, for we are listening. Amen.

The New Testament passage from Luke which was read to us today is presented to us in three blocks. The first, from verses 26-38 is ‘the Birth of Jesus foretold’ which is traditionally known as the Annunciation. The second, from verses 39-45, is Mary’s visit to Elizabeth, her relative who was pregnant with John, and the third, from verses 46-56, is Mary’s song of praise, traditionally known as the Magnificat. The passage reveals to us a journey in the life of Mary, a journey that would change her world and our world forever. The Church has always laid a lot of emphasis on the first and third sections of this passage, the Annunciation and the Magnificat. The Magnificat is this classic song which is considered as one of the first Christian hymns. It is also only one of 5 songs attributed to Women in the Bible, the other four being attributed to Miriam (Exodus 15:20, 21), Hannah (I Samuel 2:1-10), Judith (Judith 16), and Deborah (Judges 5). The Magnificat is a shout of praise talking about justice and looking forward to the coming reign of Jesus, the Messiah, what we have come to know as the kingdom of God. The Annunciation, on the other hand, is this long dialogue between the angel Gabriel and Mary. We have seen it in Christmas Plays all our lives. We see Mary perplexed at the greeting of the angel. Next, we find the angel plainly explaining that she would she would bear a son who would be great and would be called the Son of the Most High God. Mary is still not settled as she exclaims that this cannot be because she was a virgin and had not known any man! The angel then gives her the rationale behind it by saying that what would happen to her was not human but divine and that the Holy Spirit would rest upon her for this to come about and that “nothing is impossible with God.” As soon as Mary heard this, she uttered those ever famous words, “Let it be with me (Be it unto me) according to your word!”


While I read this passage over and over again, I was met with a very subtle thought. Now, in everyday life, people introduce themselves in various ways like “Hi, I am so and so and I am a doctor/student/teacher/engineer” and so on and so forth. Nobody says, “Hi, I am so and so and I am a billionaire/I own five cars/I am the richest/poorest person in town”. There is a sense of being polite in the way one introduces oneself. It is understood that shouldn’t be too prideful and at the same time, too humble. However, I am sure most of us have come across some people introducing themselves this way: “Hi, I am so and so and I am a servant of the Lord.” As soon as that happens, they fall prey to human judgement and in case there is someone who really knows that person, then, the story is completely different! “I know this person, I’m not quite sure if the person’s claims and actions go together!” Mary, here in verse 38, introduces herself as “Here am I, the servant of the Lord.” Now, this is definitely in response to God’s calling in her life, but it is still her claim. For this and few other reasons, I would like us to draw our focus on verses 39-45, on the encounter between Mary and Elizabeth to try and unpack what Luke has to say about Mary and what it may mean for us today.

The Gospel of Luke mentions Mary the most number of times. Moreover, the name Elizabeth appears only in Luke and only in this particular chapter in the entire Bible. Who, then, is Elizabeth? And why does Luke have a special regard for Elizabeth? What is the significance of this encounter between Elizabeth and Mary?


First, we must understand that Luke has a special regard for the poor and the neglected sections of society. According to Luke, Jesus’s mission was for the poor as we see this explicitly in the Nazareth Manifesto in Luke 4:18, and 19. Naturally then, Luke included two women in the very first chapter of the book, one woman who was barren and the other who was a virgin and blessed both of them with children.

Second, Luke also adds much emphasis on the work of the Holy Spirit throughout his writings. We see the Holy Spirit mentioned 4 times in the first chapter itself. Verse 15 speaking about John says, “he will be filled with the Holy Spirit” and verse 35 speaking about Mary says, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you”, but quite interestingly verse 41, speaking about Elizabeth says, “And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit.” Elizabeth, in Luke, is the first person to have been filled with the Holy Spirit!

Third, in ancient Jewish culture, a person’s name more often than not was associated with the character of that person or with some situation closely related to any life event of that person. For example, from the OT we know that “Adam” basically meant ‘man’ or ‘human’ and “Eve” means ‘mother of all living’. Fast forward to the patriarchs, “Abraham” means ‘father of many’ and “Sarah” means ‘lady/princess’. From the NT we would then see names and related meanings in John, in the very next chapter of Luke which is ‘God is gracious’ and Jesus himself who was called “Immanuel” which translates to ‘God with us’. In this line of tradition, therefore, Mary’s name has to mean something. Mary was a very popular name in those days and its original form was “Miriam” or “Maria” drawing a line of connection back to the Old Testament Miriam who was the sister of Moses and Aaron. Now, we read in verse 5 that Elizabeth was a descendant of Aaron. If Mary has this legacy of Miriam, then we are looking at a powerful dynamic here which leads us to the Old Testament passage itself.


The Exodus is one of the greatest redemption stories of all time. In the first chapter of Exodus, we see the great role of the Hebrew midwives in Egypt. They were employed by the king of Egypt to be midwives to the Hebrew slave women and the order was that if a boy was born, the boy should be put to death and if a girl was born, she may live. The midwives mentioned here, Shiphrah and Puah, are the only ones named in these first verses of the book of Exodus (much like Elizabeth and Mary in Luke). As the story goes, they stood up to Pharaoh, defied his decree, and honoured God by safely delivering both the Hebrew boys and girls. In response to this great act of the midwives, God gives them a promise as we read in verses 20-21. “So God dealt well with the midwives; and the people multiplied and became very strong. And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families.” Soon after this, we read the birth story of Moses, the great deliverer of the Hebrews and in Exodus 2:4 we read, “His sister stood at a distance, to see what would happen to him.” Biblical scholarship identifies this as Moses’ sister Miriam, who was only about 6 years old at that time. Another insight from this passage is again from the meaning of the names, this time of Shiphrah and Puah. Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki; (1040-1105; foremost commentator on the Torah and Talmud; leader of the Jewish community in Alsace-Lorraine) explains that the names of the midwives mentioned here are the professional names of Yocheved and Miriam. Yocheved (Miriam’s mother) was called Shiphrah because she was an expert in beautifying (from the root shafar) and cleansing the newborn. Miriam, though still a child, was expert in cooing (from the root pa’ah) to the newborn, calming a crying infant with her soothing voice.

Now, as we come back to the text in Luke with this background in mind, the encounter between Elizabeth and Mary comes alive. The context here is still very similar to that of the Exodus.

At this juncture, I would like to quote a few lines from an article I came across titled, “Birth in the time of Jesus”.

The women, who gave birth in the area of Judea, were part of small Jewish communities who were under the rule of the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire was vast and each part of the Empire was governed by a local administrator. The Jewish community was guided by rabbis and the temple in Jerusalem. They were warm, coastal communities nested into the dry, rocky shores of the Mediterranean Sea. The women were born, grew up, and celebrated the coming of adulthood, marriage and birth within the laws of their faith. A young woman, giving birth, would be part of a strong community made up of family, friends and neighbours. She would have known since early childhood, the activities surrounding birth and the care of the newborn. Her own first menarche would have been celebrated and a husband carefully selected by her family and the community. Perhaps she had helped with the birth of a sister, a mother or a cousin; the way women naturally gather to support a woman and family having a baby. 

First century Palestine was under the clutches of Roman hegemony and there was oppression at the social, political, and economic levels. We are also aware, from the birth narrative in Matthew 1 and 2 of how King Herod, who is also mentioned in Luke, ordered the killing of all the Jewish male children. Amidst all this, a promise comes to two women, Elizabeth and Mary. While Elizabeth’s story is like many other birth stories in the Bible, a barren woman being blessed by God and then conceiving, Mary’s story is different. Mary was not barren, she never asked for a child, and yet she was blessed with the greatest child the human race has ever seen and the question is, “Why may this be so?”

I like to draw our attention to what Mary does as soon as she is blessed by the angel. We read in verse 39: “she went with haste to…the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth.” Moreover, we come to know from verse 56 that Mary remained with Elizabeth for three months. If one were to do the math when Mary went to visit Elizabeth, Elizabeth was around 6 months pregnant and she remained with her three months since then. This period in all probability may have been the first three months of Mary’s own pregnancy! I wonder if there could be anyone on earth who could serve “others” in a better way than Mary! No wonder that the child in Elizabeth’s womb leapt with joy because Mary was the one who was God’s handmaiden who would bring Christ to this world. The child’s leaping is in gratitude to the greatness of her service which also echoes the soothing voice of Pu-ah or Miriam in the Exodus narrative. 

Now, the name Miriam/Mary has several meanings in the original language depending on the way the word is broken. I would like to present two of them. One is “bitter” from the root “Mara” and the other “rebellion” from the root “Meri”. It is quite fascinating how this word represents a community that lived during a time of bitterness and oppression and how God transformed that situation of bitterness into joy, almost always resulting in song, through a rebellion, a rebellion against the evil and unjust power structures, a rebellion through women who were mothers. Mary is the new Miriam and as Miriam, who was hailed as one of the greatest leaders of Israel, Mary becomes the God-bearer herself and her surpassing servanthood earns her the title, “the mother of my Lord” in verse 42. Mary was a part of this community, a community in which women helped each other, and helped others and the Lord Jesus Christ, our Lord, was born of such a personality in Mary. God chose the one who was always in the service of others to bring Christ into the world.


Tomorrow is Christmas Day. If we were to remove all the festive elements from the day, we are left with the event of the birth of a child. God could’ve come in many ways to this world, but God chose the most natural way of birth through a woman, through a mother. As we prepare to celebrate the birth of our Lord, may we be reminded that motherhood is one of the greatest blessings of our created nature. There are biological mothers as well as those mothers who raise children. May we be reminded that, as we celebrate the birth of Jesus, there are also mothers who are weeping over barrenness or over the loss of a baby. There are mothers who are just expecting a baby, mothers who are praying for a baby. May we be reminded that none of us could be present here today if it were not for the pain of a mother! Mary stands between a broken world and a saviour for the broken world. We all, like Mary, are called to be Servants of the Lord. But it doesn’t stop there. We are also called to be “mothers of the Lord” and to always be in the service of others, to put others before ourselves, to be midwives to people who are in need and to bring Christ into this world. We are called to actively participate in bringing hope to a world of bitterness through a rebellion that is holy and pleasing in the sight of God. And that hope is Jesus Christ himself! It is now left to us, how we present Christ to the world. When we do so, the Lord will bless us. May we also understand that we are not known by our own claims but by what others make and tell of us and by our identity in Christ. This is the story of Mary, the mother of our Lord.

Let us pray:
Dear God, we thank you for mothers, those who have brought us into this world. We thank you for mothers who are and for mothers-to-be. Dear Jesus, we adore you for choosing to be born of a mother just like all of us. Help us to be more like you. Dear Holy Spirit, come rest upon us as we prepare to receive you in our midst and help us to make you known to this world of brokenness and suffering. Come, Lord Jesus, Come. Amen.

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