Scandals of the Flesh
“And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and she exclaimed with a loud cry, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!’”
December 19, 1982
The rough and rowdy Herdman kids are central in Barbara Robinson's book The Best Christmas
Pageant Ever. She tells about when she was a child and her mother was organizing the yearly Christmas play at church. As her mother went through the Christmas story the children were to enact, she read the phrase about "Mary...being great with child." With an instant interpretation of "great with child", Ralph Herdman yelled: "Pregnant!" This, of course, brought blushes and giggles to the other children. Barbara's friend Alice Wendleken said she had better go home because her mother did not approve of that word. Barbara Robinson says about Alice's mother: "Mrs. Wendleken didn't want cats to have kittens or birds to lay eggs, and she wouldn't let Alice play with anybody who had two rabbits."
But here we have it in Luke. Elizabeth, Mary's aunt, and Mary, both "great with child." Both in such condition under strange circumstances. Elizabeth, on up in the years, expecting a child, who would be John the Baptizer. Mary, a young woman, engaged but not married, expecting a child, who would be Jesus. Mary goes to stay with Elizabeth for a while. And when Elizabeth saw Mary, the infant inside her leaped with joy. Elizabeth proclaims that God is acting in a wonderful way through Mary. Mary exults in joy with what has been called the Magnificat, praising God for using her in his activity to rescue this world and the People therein.
From the beginning, there has always been a bit of scandal involved with the matter of Jesus born of Mary. Not so much because of the questions surrounding Mary's pregnancy, but something a little different. Many in the ancient world were scandalized by the suggestion that God would make a move in life through any human being, Mary or anyone else, because of the weak and wayward ways of the flesh. Just the opposite, in the modern world many have been put off by the idea that Jesus and his birth were anything more than human events. In short, the ancients were offended by Jesus' humanity through Mary. Moderns are suspicious of the alleged divinity of Jesus through Mary. And neither are quite right.
The good news of Christmas is that in Jesus God brought the divine and the human together. That mystery we call God who is the source of life, love, and power has made his presence known in the human Mary and the human Jesus. And all of this is to point us to the reality that God can make his moves even in humans like you and me. The birth of Jesus, Christmas, is about the incarnation – the enfleshment. God makes his moves in the world through humans. That's a bit shocking, a bit scandalous. That offends those who want to keep God in a sacred and spiritual never-never land That offends those who see God as just so much superstition for a sophisticated secular world. And both are not quite right.
Richard Rohr, a Catholic pastor and theologian, has written: "We must begin...with a firm act of trust in what God has done in Jesus.... God has forever made human flesh the privileged place of the divine encounter. We must reclaim the incarnation as the beginning point of the Christian experience of God....We have no other beginning point, we have no other receiver station-except this body person God has created and apparently trusted…”
Early in the life of the ancient church, Mary became known as the THEOTOKOS. In Greek, that means 'the God bearer' or 'the God carrier'. Mary carried Jesus into the world. Jesus carried God into the world. And both give us the hint and hope that God can get into and out of the human lives of people like you and me. We need the love, the strength, the guidance, the forgiveness, the help of this mystery we call God. We need to learn more about the ways God can use others to be Theotokos – God bearers – to us and how God uses even you and me to be a Theotokos - a God carrier – to others. It's a little shocking, a bit scandalous to get God mixed up with humans like you and me. But it just happens to be the Gospel.
Some learnings about the God bearer Mary and Jesus for potential God carriers like you and
me:
1. BEING A GOD-BEARER IN LIFE CAN BE PAINFUL. Flannery O'Connor's short story "Parker's Back" depicts an uneducated, rural man named O. E. Parker. He is married to a stern and stark woman whose only joy in life is spouting Bible verses, chiefly intended to make Parker aware that he does not meet its standards. Parker's point of pride in himself is the vast number of tattoos he has all over his body, all sorts of designs decorate his legs, arms, stomach and chest. For some reason he kept his back clear. Yet one day, in a tattoo parlor, he comes across a strange picture of Jesus with piercing eyes. He demands for the artist to put that picture of Jesus on his back. At last, he feels he has found something his wife will approve of, a picture of Jesus. With Jesus on his back, maybe she will feel more inclined to love him.
He goes home and proudly shows his super religious wife his back. She goes into a rage. She calls him an idolater for trying to picture the pictureless God. She even whacks him across the back with her broom which was in her hand. The story ends with his wife looking out the window to see Parker with his arms extended, Jesus tattooed back exposed, leaning against a tree crying like a baby. Parker's back and tree remind the reader of another man and another tree cross who felt pain at trying to bring God and love closer than people wanted.
Hopefully, Mary lived long enough to know the joy of being Jesus' mother. It is pretty certain she lived long enough to know the pain of it. When Joseph and Mary took the infant Jesus to the temple for dedication, old Simeon predicted that what would happen to Jesus would be like a sword thrust through his parents' heart. For Mary would witness the people rushing to Jesus, turning on him, and then killing him.
What I am getting at is that sometimes we think that if we can just get God into our lives, then all our problems will be solved. And Christ in our lives does bring joy. But it is not a painless joy. It is strength to love and stay in impossible situations and care about exasperating people. Trying to bring God's love into a world that relishes building crosses and bombs will not win you any popularity contests. Trying to carry God's will for humans to be faithful in their relationships in a world that encourages people to use each other like disposable paper cups will not be the easiest task imaginable. Jesus carried the news that God accepts us and loves us without strings attached. It is hard to bear that kind of love in a world that is always looking for ways to write people off who do not meet our standards and require more help than we want to give.
Mary and Jesus learned that there are pain consequences to being God carriers. They must have learned however that the pain of taking love risks was worth living for and dying for, that pain brings a joy which self, stuff, and success worship will never bring. So do not conclude God is necessarily absent because of the presence of pain in your life.
2. GOD BEARING ALWAYS HAPPENS IN THE PARTICULAR. What are some of the hopes and convictions we have because of Jesus? That God is real after all... That the God who made us is out to love us not zap us...That this is his world despite appearances to the contrary...That God not death is in the end also despite appearances to the contrary. Where did all this good
news get started? The answer is expressed in the children's song: "Mary had a baby." I have some hope for my living and trust for my dying because in a particular place and in a concrete situation, Mary had a baby, and the consequences unfolded from that time and place to this time and place.
If you and I are ever going to discover God in our lives, if we are ever going to have a bit of happiness in our lives, then we are going to have to bear God for others and let others bring God to us in the nitty-gritty of our own particular, concrete, messy-crazy life situations. It can't happen anywhere else for you and me in a way that makes any difference except in the right here and right now present.
Think about it. Have you ever played "the-anywhere-but-here" game with yourself? It goes something like: "I could be happy if I were somewhere else, had certain somethings else, and was with someone else other than the folks I am having to put up with?"
Some of you have seen the poster which reads: "It's hard to soar like an eagle when you are surrounded by turkeys." It is a bit shocking, scandalous, but if you and I are going to carry any of God's love into the world or receive some of God's love which almost always comes through others to us, it will not be in the "everywhere but nowhere" of our dreams but in the right here and now situations with the problems and people we wrestle with each day. I can imagine what it would be like to be Mother Teresa, pretend what I would do if president, and fantasize what it would be like to be loved by a glamorous moviestar. But if I really want to be any good for God or anyone else, if I want to receive some for real love and purpose in life, it will have to START although it might not END with those three or four people in my life who need me the most and who I need the most.
Theologian Stanley Hauerwas has written about what I have called the pain and particularity of being a Theotokos, a God carrier: "Marriage and family require time and energy that could be used to make the world better. To take the time to love one person rather than helping the many, to have these children rather than help the many in need, requires patience and a sense of the tragic....such activities remind us of how limited we are, but...we in the Christian tradition claim that it is only through such limits that we learn what it means to be free."
Mary had a baby and look at the consequences she set in motion. I wonder what consequences you and I could set in motion if we simply dug in with the relationships and situations in our lives in which God just might use a you and me.
3. WE NEED TO REALIZE THAT BEING A THEOTOKOS – A GOD CARRIER – IS NOT BEING GOD. Mary had a baby and set much in motion. Yet, most of what happened in Jesus' life was out of Mary's control. She did not do it all. She did her part. If she had turned her motherhood into smotherhood and tried to live her life through Jesus she would have ruined it for her, him, and indeed us.
Sometimes we get mad because we can't be God. Because we can't control every situation and every person, we get angry and withdraw. I can't have my job, my spouse, my child, my community, my health, my finances, you name it, the exact way I want, so I will cut out, turn off, pout and stick my thumb in my mouth. And so what God and good we might carry into a situation or relationship in their painful particularity doesn't get done.
I am a little more than a hundred pages into Hamilton Jordan's book Crisis: The Last Year of the Carter Presidency. So far, I have read about the initial months of the Iranian hostage crisis. It has amazed me at all the details, all the complications, all of the delicate international balancing that went on that year to ultimately free the hostages. Even the president of the United States did not have a magic wand, could not play God and push a problem resolving button. Mistakes were made. Sidewalk critics and Monday morning quarterbacks had a field day. But certain men and women, inch by painful inch, day by day, had to work the problem.
That's the way our children will get raised, our marriages will mature, our hungry fed, our war threat defused, our out of work employed. Because the you's and me's day by day, inch by inch, bring a bit of God and good into the situation. We would like to be God but we can't. We either decide to be his Theotokos in our own particular ways and places or we are just one more dimension of the problem.
There are some volunteers in our congregation and community who work with the CASA program that tries to help homebound people stay at home without having to be institutionalized. These volunteers don't do much: run errands, make visits, do some transportation, cook some meals. Not much, but it will be hard to convince someone who can stay in their own home because of them it is not much. There is a quotation from Edward Hale in the CASA handbook: "I am only one but still I am one. I cannot do everything; but still I can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.”
Mary had a baby. And for Ralph Herdman, Alice's mother, and others in various ways, it has been a scandal ever since. God gets his way and love into the world through the painful particular predicaments in which someone is willing to simply be there not as God but as Theotokos. Two questions for your homework-lifework today: Who has been a Theotokos for you? Who, what situation, awaits you to be Theotokos, God carrier? Let us not sell ourselves short.