Mary was given two blessings on that night in Nazareth:
The blessing of being the mother of Christ Jesus
But also the blessing of becoming a powerful symbol: the Virgin Mary.
The Virgin Mary has been a symbol for 2,000 years of faithful discipleship. In Mary, people see devotion, deep trust in God, perseverance, and strength.
And in some traditions of Christianity, that example of sainthood is so rich and deep that she literally becomes an image, an access way, an icon for the Divine feminine in Christianity.
This is indeed a blessing.
You don’t have to be Catholic to consider Mary an icon. You don’t even need to necessarily believe in the virgin birth.
An icon in the broadest sense, is anything that you take in through your 5 senses that reveals to you God’s Holy Love.
An icon is something that when you deeply engage with it, the icon takes you deeper into the mystery of God.
Icons reveal God…they do not necessarily teach you anything about God…but they somehow communicate God’s presence, God’s love, and God’s mystery to you.
And Mary certainly does those things.
I am going to invite you to join me this morning in contemplating,
in engaging with,
the icon of Mary.
There won’t be any literal icons or images…but I am going to share some particular ways of engaging with Mary that will hopefully show you something about God…communicate in some way God’s presence with you.
Let’s begin with what is most universal about Mary: motherhood.
Now of course, we are not all mothers…nor are we all parents.
But we’ve all had a mother or a father…whether biological or otherwise.
God, the infinite and creative source for all of creation, chooses…desires….to take on flesh and reveal God’s self by being born of a woman.
God desires that the incarnation begin in the thrills and pains of pregnancy. The tiredness, the exhaustion, the anticipation, the joy, and the warm love…all of it is where the incarnation begins.
But as any mother can tell you, caring for Jesus didn’t stop when he was born. It intensified.
Mary breastfed Jesus with all the problems and joys that comes with that.
She managed his unpleasant bowl movements.
She cared for him when he was sick.
She patiently endured his temper tantrums.
She was up at all hours of the night caring for him when he wouldn’t sleep.
She joyously played with him. She experienced wonder through his new baby eyes. She scolded him when he didn’t play nice.
It is precisely in this nearly universal experience of mother-child relationship that God chooses to first incarnate, to begin to take on flesh and reveal God’s self.
Mary is the icon of God’s motherhood.
And since we don’t know much about Joseph, Mary also seems to be the icon of God’s fatherhood as well.
Maybe we should say Mary is the icon of God’s parenthood. That in Mary we see those qualities of God we associate with good parenthood: self-sacrifice, patience, and love.
Let us now move from what is most universal about Mary to what is very particular about her.
When Gabriel comes to tell Mary that she will have a child, Mary is a teenage girl, maybe 14 or 15 years old, born and raised and living in 1st century Galilee.
This young woman had been betrothed. Her father and the father of Joseph have come to an agreement over a suitable dowry and arrangements have been made for Mary and Joseph to be married in a year.
And then…Mary discovers that she is pregnant. This is a crisis. The customs and laws of her time and place see this as a great disgrace.
If Joseph and his family were different people, it could have meant Mary’s death.
Even with following through on the marriage, the full year of waiting till marriage would have continued, and Mary certainly would have shown.
Mary would have certainly become socially ostracized for this pregnancy out of wedlock.
Mary would suddenly find herself as socially disgraced.
And all of this is happening on land that is occupied and controlled by Rome. Rome is the ultimate military superpower of the day. Mary’s people are an oppressed people, living under Roman violence and taxation.
Mary finds herself in the position of being on the margins within a larger cultural group that was already marginalized.
And despite all this,
or because of all this,
God chooses to be born here, in her.
God chooses to be most present and revealed through the oppressed and marginalized.
Mary gives a face to a God who is humble…who does not grandstand or put God’s self in the center of the power.
But more than that…God chooses to take on flesh amongst the lives of the socially disgraced, the outcast, and the oppressed.
Which also means, that God places God’s self in the midst of heart ache…death…despair and hopelessness.
God is fully present with us in the places of fear, pain, and anguish.
What does that do to our image of God?
And if you continue pondering that question…you begin to see that Mary also reveals something else about God.
She also reveals that God seeks liberation and freedom for all those who are in bondage.
Mary, with the anointed Word of God in her womb, sings forth the mighty Magnificat:
My soul magnifies the Lord…
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly;
He has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.
Mary also reveals a God who is passionate about the freedom of God’s people (which is everyone).
Mary has been a symbol for many who are struggling for freedom and liberation from systems of oppression and violence.
She is also a symbol for those who desire equity and fair treatment.
She is also a symbol for those who simply wish for more compassion for the difficulties and sufferings that come with life.
Mary reveals in all this a loving God who is not merely sentimental, but also acts.
A God whose love is not passive, but actively seeks to turn the world upside down…which is right side up.
This is a love that seeks peace through justices and forgiveness.
This is a love that binds up the broken hearted, and rebuilds community.
A God who hears the cry of the oppressed and those in distress,
and responds.
My hope is that in moving through this exploration of Mary, something in it…some part of this contemplation connected with you, showed you something of God in your own life.
Because you see…we gaze upon icons, but their true power is the fact that they gaze back upon us.
The icon reflects back to us our own desires, longings, yearnings, pains, joys, and love.
They do this as a way of helping us see where God is showing up in our own lives.
As the icon gazes and contemplates you…as the icon engages you…it pushes you to ask: where is God showing up in my life?
And so let us conclude by allowing the icon of Mary to gaze upon you:
Where is God revealing Herself as a caring mother…giving sacrificially, loving tenderly, and patiently holding?
How is God revealing God’s presence among the disgraced and oppressed, in the places of fear and despair?
And where is God working towards your freedom?
