Bellevue United Presbyterian Church

Mary’s Place

December 20, 2009 Luke 1: 26-55

Rev. Catherine Purves

We Protestants don’t really know what to do with Mary. We may think that the Roman Catholic Church gets it wrong with their veneration of Mary as “Mother of God,” but at least they know what they think about her. We are simply muddled. Our Catholic friends feel genuinely close to the virgin mother of Jesus, but we don’t know quite how to relate to her. In our defense, biblically, we know very little about Mary. This passage from the first chapter of Luke is really the only glimpse we are given of her as a person. And what are we to make of these strange encounters, first with the angel Gabriel and then with her relative Elizabeth? What is Mary’s place in the story of our salvation?

For our Catholic friends and neighbors, this is simple. They need only recite the prayer that they were taught at their mother’s knee as one of the first expressions of their faith: “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou among women, and blessed in the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.” On first hearing this central prayer of the rosary, it sounds like the echo of Gabriel’s words when he approached Mary and Elizabeth’s exclamation when she saw Mary. But the two are here combined and turned into a prayer to Mary, rather than as a simple recognition of Mary’s place in God’s plan. The focus is changed, so that the spotlight is shining on Mary herself, rather than on the mighty acts of God in Mary’s life. This is a significant difference, especially when the biblical words are here reinterpreted to mean that Mary herself was full of grace, that she was “bless-ed“, that she was specially chosen and uniquely holy among women.

Nancy and I had a very interesting conversation about this earlier in the week. It’s nice to have a resident Greek scholar around about the place when you need one. After I raised the question of what the words “blessed” or “bless-ed” and “favored” really meant, she was off like a shot pouring over the Greek text and mumbling about participles and verb forms. I wisely just sat back and let her figure it all out. The results were quite enlightening. And they give us a clearer indication of what Mary’s place really was.

I don’t think you want the full grammar lesson, but suffice it to say that the Greek is clearer than our English translations, and that “blessed” and “favored” when applied to Mary function more like verbs than adjectives. So, when Gabriel says, “Greetings, favored one,” he is meaning, “Greetings, one-who-has-been-favored or blessed.” He is not implying that Mary is God’s favorite virgin. He is saying that Mary has been chosen to receive a blessing from God.

And when he goes on to say, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God,” he is not saying that God discovered Mary as an exemplary human being. The Greek word translated “favor” is “charis” which means grace. What he is recognizing is that Mary has obtained or received grace from God.

Later, when Elizabeth cries, “Blessed are you among women,” she is really saying, “Having-been-blessed are you among women.” She is not implying that Mary is the best of all possible women. She is saying just what Gabriel said, that Mary has been blessed by God. Do you see the difference?

This means that Mary’s place in the drama of salvation is as one who received blessings from God, not as one who is, in her own right, bless-ed or holy. After serious discussion, Nancy and I agreed that Mary was probably not the only virgin in Israel. So why was she the mother of Jesus? God could have used someone else, but God chose Mary. We are not told why, and we probably shouldn’t speculate about that. Mary did respond with an openness, and a trust, and a willingness to be used by God that serves as a model for all of us. But it is nowhere implied that God chose Mary because of her own merits or her faith, or her uniqueness among women. In the Bible, we see again and again that God chooses the most unlikely people for reasons that God alone knows. We should understand Mary’s place as yet another example of that.

If we look at Mary’s song, it does seem like that’s the way she understood her place in all of this herself. The focus of her song of joy is almost entirely on God. “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,” she begins, “…for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name.” Mary seems to understand her place. She heard what Gabriel and Elizabeth were saying, even if we have a tendency to misunderstand what they meant.

And then Mary quickly moves on, and the subtext here might be, “But enough about me, you need to hear about what God has done.” The heart of her song is a series of exclamations, praising God for all of the ways in which the prophesies about God’s promised salvation have been fulfilled. Mary speaks about these things as if they were already accomplished. “He has shown strength.” “He has scattered the proud” “He has brought down the powerful…and lifted up the lowly.” “He has filled the hungry…and sent the rich away.” “He has helped his servant Israel.” It is all about God as the actor in the drama of salvation.

And what of Mary herself? She has little to say about herself in her song, and, again, what she does say shows that she thinks of herself simply as one who has received a blessing. “…for [God] has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.” The word favor doesn’t actually appear in the Greek which just says “to look upon,” though the implication is that she was looked upon with blessing. The point of her song was to magnify or glorify God, not herself, so she refers to herself as a servant or slave and notes her own lowliness or insignificance. Her place is that of a handmaid to the Lord.

Mary’s final comment about herself must be understood in the same way. She sang, “Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed.” In keeping with what she has already said about being a lowly servant, she is obviously not anticipating that for all time she would be treated as someone more holy than anyone else. What she is saying is that surely, all generations will think of her as one who was truly blessed by God. Her place was that of one who received a blessing, not as one who would bestow blessings on future generations or as one who should be venerated as the holy Mother of God.

Obviously, I’m trying to explain to you the Protestant perspective on Mary, and to show how it really is derived from Scripture and a proper understanding of the Greek. But, once we know that, what do we know, and what difference does it make?

We know that Mary’s place proves once again what is a general biblical truth, that when it comes to salvation, all of the emphasis must be placed on what God does rather than on what we do. All the praise goes to God; no praise or merit is reserved for us. Like Mary, our role is simply to be a servant, to receive God’s blessing, and then to magnify the Lord and to proclaim in joyful songs all that God has done in Jesus Christ.

We do not need Mary to be a holy intermediary between us and God. We do not need to become more holy ourselves in order to draw near to God. Mary’s place in the plan of salvation shows us that God chose to come all the way down to us and to use a simple human woman, with no personal claim to fame, so that the Son of God could be born in human flesh as a pure act of God through which God would accomplish our salvation.

For us, as Protestants, the importance of Mary’s place is that it shows us how to be the Lord’s servants, and it reminds us that that is what we are called to be. Mary in her quiet acceptance of God’s will for her life challenges us to be more willing, more trusting, less afraid, more humble, less impressed with ourselves and our accomplishments, and more in awe of God and what God has done, is doing, and will do in our world. If we can stand in Mary’s place, we will see that we have received many undeserved blessings and that the Mighty One has done great things for us in Jesus Christ. And, with Mary, we will see that our purpose in life is simply to magnify and praise the Lord as we receive the blessing of salvation, and to believe the words of the angel, “For nothing will be impossible with God.”