  
 |
|
BLESSED
Sermon
for November 29, 2009
Scripture:
Luke 1:26-38
I
have given a number of sermons on Mary over the years, sermons
based primarily on the two advent scriptures most famously connected
to Mary: the words we heard this morning commonly referred to
as the Annunciation, and the passage known as the Magnificat,
which I will quote from in just a moment. One of those previous
sermons on Mary was just last year, and I remember beginning that
sermon by commenting on how in spite of Mary's prominence in the
scriptures leading up to Jesus' birth, in spite of Mary having
this central part in the story and playing a central role in the
devotional life of many Christians, nevertheless she is generally
portrayed in an essentially passive manner. She is not the one
who acts but the one who is acted upon. Her significance in the
annunciation is simply that she receives the news of
her pregnancy: “And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear
a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great and will
be called the Son of the Most High…The Holy Spirit will come upon
you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you…”
Mary
here is the mere vehicle, the receptacle of God's favor. The power
is not hers. The power belongs to God and to the Holy Spirit,
which will overshadow, overwhelm her. Her greatness is only because
of the greatness of the one to whom she will give birth. And her
virtue is the passive virtue of submission to the will of God,
of being willing to be used by God in whatever way God wills.
“Here am I,” she says, “the servant of the Lord; let it be to
me according to your will.” It is not even that she will do whatever
God wants, go wherever God calls. It is more that she will let
herself be acted upon by God. Mary, this central female figure
in the gospels and the devotional life of many Christians, this
ideal of Christian womanhood, is not a figure of strength, action,
initiative, boldness but of willing obedience. I not only made
that comment in my sermon of a year ago. I objected. I said—this
is a direct quote and I am a little embarrassed about quoting
myself, but you will indulge me, I hope—I said, “I want to protest
the passivity of Mary.”
I
have also noted in other sermons that Mary doesn't just speak
words of acceptance, obedience, and praise. Her passivity, as
it were, is more a product of how we have portrayed her, more
than how the scriptures have portrayed her. People tend to overlook
or not take very seriously, for instance, the words she spoke
about a new social order that she knew she was to be involved
in bringing about. “For the Mighty One has done great things for
me and holy is his name…He has shown strength with his arm; he
has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. 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 empty away.” Not the words of a meek and mild Mary. Not
the words of some unearthly Madonna sanctified by a halo and removed
from the cares of the earth. Not that I want to make Mary out
to be some kind of revolutionary, but she does need to be rescued
from many of the paintings of her and many of the impressions
we have created of her. I have protested against the passivity
and the saccharine, angelic images of Mary on more than one occasion
in the past.
Today
I want to praise the passivity of Mary. It's not that I've changed
my mind. I'm not taking back what I've said before, just adding
to it. I suppose I could have saved myself the need to explain
why I am unapologetically contradicting myself by just not mentioning
what I'd said before, but I wanted to say it again, if only briefly,
because not only am I not taking it back but I want to emphasize
what I said before especially in light of what I have in mind
to say this morning. Besides, whether I mentioned what I have
said about Mary in other sermons or not, I suspect that just saying
that I intend to praise the passivity of Mary would mean that
for many of you in this crowd I would have some explaining to
do anyway. So let me explain myself…or try.
I
think it is safe to say that passivity is not a character trait
that is particularly admired in our culture. And so when, because
of gender stereotypes, we imagine women to be less capable of
the more active virtues, when we think of it as unfeminine or
unwomanly to be aggressive, adventurous, ambitious, strong, actively
intelligent in the sense of having ideas that one is willing to
state forcefully, argue for, and defend, when we as a culture,
men and women, restrict women to the more passive virtues, we
not only restrict the social roles they are likely to fill, we
restrict the fullness of their humanity. This was a large part
of the context for my wanting to protest the passivity of Mary.
I don't want her being used to reinforce passive stereotypes of
women, and I don't want those stereotypes determining the way
we read the Bible.
At
the same time, I don't want our culture's bias toward what I am
calling those more active virtues to go unexamined or unquestioned.
Aggression and ambition are not necessarily bad things, but they
are not necessarily good things either, and what makes them good
is, of course, decidedly not whether they are practiced by men.
And to think of more passive qualities such as compassion—taking
into one's own heart the sorrow or trouble being experienced by
another—or being a good listener—taking in the words and the thoughts
and feelings that go along with them of someone else—to think
of these qualities as being even a touch unmanly restricts the
full humanity of men as much as other stereotypes may restrict
the full humanity of women.
That's
part of the context for my saying this morning that I want to
praise the passivity of Mary. It a kind of extension of thoughts
left over from past sermons. But what really caused me to think
along these lines more were some reflections I was led to have
on the notions of blessing and being blessed. Those notions are
inherent in the act of baptism. They are also part of the Mary
scriptures. In the Magnificat Mary explicitly exclaims, “Henceforth
all generations will call me blessed,” but all through both passages—the
Annunciation and the Magnificat—is this sense of Mary's that she
has been blessed. She has received this anointing, this
gift, this wondrous news, this blessing from an angel sent from
God.
Blessing
also happens to be the title of a chapter in a book I was leafing
through recently for other reasons. The book is called “An Altar
in the World” and is written by a woman named Barbara Brown Taylor,
whose various writings I have benefitted from in the past. This
book is about spiritual practices, something of an unconventional
book about spiritual practices because what Taylor chooses to
write about are in general not what might be thought of as spiritual
practices in any traditional sense: things like prayer, meditation,
keeping of Sabbath, keeping of silence, fasting, scripture reading,
and so forth. Taylor's book, like several others in recent years,
approaches the matter of spiritual practice more as something
that can be embedded in the rhythms of daily life, and that is
as much a way of seeing things from a certain spiritual perspective
as it is a matter of some specific activity that is supposed to
bring you closer to God. She has, for instance, a chapter on “saying
no”, a theme I have come across in other books of this nature
as well—it seems to be a common theme in the times we live in—
the idea being that it is a spiritual discipline to be able to
say no to the varied demands made upon us which may fill lives
up with activity but not necessarily with clear purpose, to be
able to say no for the purpose of simplifying life and leaving
space for the things that really are most important to us.
But
to get back to the theme of blessing, Taylor suggests in her chapter
on the subject making the pronouncing of blessing a spiritual
practice that anyone can do at any time, not just at special blessing
times, and that can be built in to the way we live. There are
all sorts of reasons why the act of pronouncing blessings, the
practice of pronouncing blessings randomly and profusely is a
good thing for anyone who does it and for the world in general.
It nurtures a compassionate approach to people and a reverent
approach to all that is. It reduces the judgmental tendencies
we may carry within us—concentrating on blessing rather than cursing
or criticizing. It encourages forgiveness and takes forgiveness
one step beyond itself. All of this is true enough, but there
was also something just a little bothersome to me about much of
what Taylor was saying. Mostly, it seemed to me, she seemed to
be buying in to a kind of activist mentality that urged on us
the goodness of doing this good thing, this undeniably good thing.
But alongside all the encouragement she was trying to offer us
to be people who would bestow blessings on others, who would bring
blessings and be blessings, almost hidden alongside all that kind
of language were a few quiet statements that I found to be closer
to what we really need to hear, what I really need to hear anyway.
Referring
to a poem by Wendell Barry, who by the way will be speaking at
the university on Thursday, Taylor writes: “Reading him, you come
gradually to understand that the key to blessing things is knowing
that they beat you to it. The key to blessing things is to receive
their blessing.” Which is why I say that I want to praise the
passivity of Mary today. Although—not to cut too fine a point
with what Barbara Brown Taylor has to say—it is not even that
the key to blessing things is to receive their blessing. It is
more that being able to receive blessings, being open, being receptive
to being blessed is an end in itself, not something we do in order
to be able to bestow a blessing, but an end in itself. To put
it in the language I was using earlier, it is a matter of the
fullness of our humanity. To think of ourselves as always in the
active mode, to think that it is somehow our calling to be doers
of good, or doers of the word as scripture says, bestowers of
blessings in word and deed, is a somewhat limited notion of who
we are. It's ok, I suppose, to think of that as our calling, if
we don't get too high fallutin' about it, and if we don't think
that's all of who we are. But if we do not allow ourselves to
become passive as well, if we do not allow ourselves to be open
and receptive to being blessed, then we are restricting the fullness
of our humanity.
I
don't mean to be preachy about this, even though I am giving a
sermon, and I don't have a lot more to say than just some words
of praise for what I am referring to as Mary's passivity, which
I also mean of course to be words of praise for the same kind
of passive qualities in our own lives. Maybe passivity isn't exactly
the right word. Maybe for reasons I've alluded to it has too many
negative connotations. But words of praise then for the receptive
places in our spirits where we know ourselves less as the blessers
and more as the blessed. In that sense what I am referring to
as Mary's passivity has much to teach us.
As
I say, I don't really want to elaborate too much on this thought,
but let me sneak in just one thing before I close. Blessings don't
always come to us in immediately recognizable form. We are not
always very good at recognizing what is a blessing and what isn't.
It is a good spiritual practice to be about blessing even and
especially people who are troublesome to us. For all we know,
they may already be in the process of blessing us in some way
that we won't recognize or appreciate until somewhere much farther
down the road. Being open to the receiving of blessings is not
only about being open to the most obviously good and welcome things
in our lives. It is about being open to being blessed sometimes
in what at the time may seem difficult or unwelcome ways, and
it is certainly about being open to being blessed in an enormous
number of unpredictable, unanticipated, unexpected, unexpressable
ways. It is about much more than not taking for granted the things
that make life easier or more pleasurable.
But
it is about giving thanks. We don't give thanks in any very deep
sense without having spirits that are open to the ways, the many
ways, in which we are among the blessed. And so some Advent-ish
words of praise for Mary's receptivity to blessing on this day
that is also part of Thanksgiving weekend, seem appropriate. Even
more appropriate for us here at Sojourners on this day when Emma
and Maggie, who have been part of the Sojourners family from the
very beginning, have become part of the larger Christian family
and have received signs of blessing from others that are at the
same time signs of God's blessing, and on this day when Emma and
Maggie and Paula and Beverly have become officially members of
the church, even more appropriate for us here at Sojourners on
this day is for us to be able to say we are blessed. Emma, Maggie,
Paula, Beverly...we are blessed. We are blessed. Let the people
of God say…
Amen.
Jim
Bundy
November
29 , 2009
Back
to Sermons |
