All mothers ponder things about their children. Some worry a lot. All treasure memories in their heart.
We are told in the Christmas narrative retold by Luke, that the mother of Jesus, pondered certain events in her young life when she discovered that she was expecting a child and gave birth to Jesus.
The ancient prophetic writings contained references in the Hebrew Language to the birth of a child by a "Young Woman". The birth of her child would be a Savior, A Redeemer, named Emmanuel. Over the years the Latin and English translations begin to rend this Hebrew Word as "Virgin" and Mary was set aside from other women as extraordinarily different.
In medieval times, Anselm of Canterbury, in a book entitled "Why God Became Man," claimed Mary's selection had to do with the fact that she was a daughter of Eve, our primal mother. "It is most fitting for the medicine of sin and the cause of our salvation to be born of a woman, just as the sin and the condemnation took its beginning from a woman, so also it is right that such a great good should come also from a woman. Says he, if the cause of all evil for the human race was a virgin, it is still more fitting for the cause of all good to be a virgin."
The flip side of this attitude is found in 1854 when the Roman Catholic Church decreed Mary to be free from sin. It was reasoned that Jesus, was the Messiah, the Redeemer, and a redeemer from sin must be without sin, therefore in order for Jesus to be sinless; his mother must also be sinless. So the church wrote 300 years ago: "We declare, pronounce and define, the doctrine that maintains that the most Blessed Virgin Mary was reserved free from all stain of original sin."
Perhaps these are things that only theologians think about and debate, and there are varied and different opinions, while the truth of our knowledge of Mary and the conception and birth of Jesus is hidden in the mystery of God and is really not important except that we want her to be a model of the perfect woman.
Well, she is a perfect model, at least in her response to the early experiences of her life, with all of the anxieties this created in the mind of a young woman. She was a young woman having a child and she ponders these things in her heart while she says: "Let it be with me according to your word." Mary lived in joyful obedience to the Creator.
Mary said: "Let it be with me according to your word." She lived in joyful obedience to circumstances which were beyond her control. Perhaps this is the secret to understanding Mary. What she experienced was traumatic and more than any mother could bear, yet, in joyful obedience to a power beyond her-- she accepted what was to be. Not resigned to her fate.
Mary reached a level of spiritual maturity few of us have yet discovered. Being informed that she was expecting a child, she realized that these unexpected circumstances were not about her, but that they were about God and she responded in Joyful Obedience.
You see Christmas is not about us, not about what we will receive as Christmas gifts and not about what we will give. Christmas is about God: God coming to us. God among us. God in us. God with us.
Christmas informs us of God's Incarnation, His coming into human flesh. That's the N.T. understanding of what God accomplished in the son of Mary. God became flesh and dwelt among us. God in us. God with us. The O.T. faith was about what God could do for us. He gave to us the commandments – promised blessings if we would obey. But here the mystery is God in us.
We, you and I, are
only included in this mystery by means of a few prepositions. “God with
us.” Matt. 1:23
“Christ in me.” Gal. 2:20
“God for us.” (Rom. 8:31)
“With,” “in,” “for”--these are powerful connecting words in our scriptures but not one of them makes us the subject. We are little more than the rag-tag end of a prepositional phrase. Nothing more and nothing less.
Mary understood this, while some of us are yet to learn it.
Christmas is not about us, it is about God. Your life, as important as it is to you, is not about you, but it is about God. What he has willed in you and for you to accomplish for him in the greater scheme of things.
Summary: This past month, the Anglican and the Methodist Church of England signed a covenant of reunion after two centuries of separation. Rowen Williams the Archbishop of Canterbury said: "We have all, in the intervening years, discovered things about Christ and his kingdom that we are now eager to share with each other."
I will tell you what I have learned over the years and I find it affirmed in these stories of Mary, regardless of the circumstances of life, I have learned to trust in God no matter how bad or challenging or overwhelming the circumstances of our days. "In Joyful Obedience” Mary said: "Let it be with me according to your word." Joyful Obedience, That's the key: "In Joyful Obedience to a power beyond our control. In Joyful Obedience, to God whose ways are not our ways, whose thoughts are at times not our thoughts. In Joyful Obedience. That’s Mary’s story.