Mary and Joseph are two of the most fascinating people in the Gospel.
Fascinating, yes, intensely fascinating when you consider the place that such a low status “handmaiden” and such a low status “carpenter” would end up having in the Christian story of salvation.
Today I’d like to talk a little bit about Mary. Joseph can wait until next Sunday –after all, he has gotten used to being número dos!
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Now, we have a problem with Mary, for we don’t have much information about her. All we know about Mary is that she was a cousin to Elizabeth, whose husband was one of the many priests assigned to the Temple in Jerusalem.
Yet everything seems to indicate that she was a deeply spiritual person, and quite humble. In her own words, “a handmaiden of a very low state.” What this the reason why Mary attracted God’s personal attention the way she did?
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What else do we know about Mary?
Well, we know, for instance, that she didn’t have it easy! Bible scholars talk about “Mary’s dilemma” as they attempt to imagine the kind of questions and questioning Mary might have gone through for quite a while from the moment a messenger from God whispered to her, “Hey, young lady, you are going to have a babe, the Son of God.”
“Should I say ‘yes” and welcome a child for whom I may not be ready?” “What is my fiancé, Joseph, going to say? And my family? And my friends?” “What about my reputation? I haven’t even married!” “Wouldn’t be wiser to wait a little bit longer and then have a child with a more normal life, without so many expectations for any of us?”
Painful, disturbing questions indeed.
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We also know that at some point during her pregnancy, Mary rushed to see her cousin Elizabeth, herself pregnant with baby John, the same John who years later would be known as John the Baptizer.
“Elizabeth, what do you think? What would you do in a situation like this?”
This time no words were needed, for the moment both teenagers embraced, Elizabeth’s baby leaped in her womb at the sound of Mary’s voice. Elizabeth herself was filled with the Spirit of God and exclaimed how greatly Mary was being blessed.
Mary’s questioning and hesitation, if any, was immediately dispelled. Now she truly believed, and deeply touched by the gift of joy she sang a beautiful, powerful song. We all know Mary’s song — it begins like this, “let my soul magnify the Lord.”
We know it as the “Magnificat,” from the Latin word for “let’s magnify” –yes, Mary magnified the Lord! In other words, she exalted the Lord and praised him for having done great things to her and to many others before her.
But she also magnified the Lord for the Lord will do great things to anyone who, like herself, is ready to welcome God’s love and radiate that same love wherever they may go.
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My Christmas wish list when I was nine or ten years old began with a telescope – I was obsessed with a telescope. So that Christmas I got a telescope –not a fancy one, yet strong enough to bring the heavens above closer to my eyes and my fantasies.
Did I tell you that back home in Argentina Christmas is a summer affair? Imagine the hottest, most humid, unbearable days of the year in Miami or Houston, and you get the idea.
Right after Christmas and New Year’s Day our people hit the road for a long-awaited summer vacation – three, four weeks away from the city. Anywhere where ocean or mountain breezes can give them relief from the heat and the humidity.
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That telescope, my friends, changed my life in many ways as I began to wonder in excitement what planet, what constellation, what star I was looking at with such a sense of joy and awe. It was amazing how the telescope magnified those distant lights — what before my naked eyes was only a glimmer, now thanks to my telescope they became a distinct object with its own uniqueness and shape.
I had known those “lights” before only by name — now I could know them “face to face” and see them in relationship to one another. A whole new vista was magnified before me, and I suddenly became a significant portion of it!
Was that what Mary (and Joseph too) may have discovered and enjoyed the moment they welcomed God’s joy? Mary’s Magnificat dispels any suspicion we may have that she was not ready nor willing to welcome such a gift as the son of God.
Despite her tender youth and the many unanswered questions, she may have harbored in her teenager mind, Mary eventually heard God’s call and said “yes.” At that precise moment she too became a significant portion of this amazing new vista already in the mind of God.
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Let me tell you about Ms. Anderson, a faithful member in one of the congregations I served many years ago. It was the third Sunday in Advent, the one for “joy,” and I had finished my homily (they didn’t call them sermons, just homilies) with this question, “Are you ready to accept joy?”
Overwhelmed by very difficult, bitter years of personal and professional turmoil and struggle, Ms. Anderson’s silent response at the time was, “Well, it’s not so much a matter of accepting joy as it is that I’m not sure it will ever be available to me again. I just don’t think it’s going to come my way, and certainly not any time soon.”
She had concluded that joy just didn’t seem attainable, yet that question must have stayed in the back of her mind because a few months later, during the Ash Wednesday service, she wrote something like this on a sheet of paper: “Dear God, help me give up the bitterness and everything else in my life that is an obstacle to your joy.”
And she placed that piece of paper at the foot of a wooden cross like this one. Her piece of paper and many others in the same basket would be burned later that evening to have the ashes of forgiveness. The moment she placed her words in the common basket, Ms. Anderson felt that now she was ready for the best part of her spiritual journey.
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A couple of weeks went by, and one day Ms. Anderson came across a devotional story about a man who is presented with a choice by the Risen Christ. The man must choose one thing – and one thing only – that will be written in the dust of his life. Whatever he chooses will become part of the man’s life forever.
He can choose any knowledge, any virtue, any gift, any grace, or any possession – anything — so he considers many choices, but each one leaves something else unfulfilled. He sits there for a long time trying to decide — “It’s time,” the Risen Christ reminds him.
The man takes a deep breath – he is ready to decide.
Addressing the Risen Christ with a deep sense of reverence and expectation, the man asks him: “I want to have your Name written in my dust. Please, write you Name in my dust.”
The Risen Christ and the man are suddenly surrounded by light and song as the Risen Christ moves a single finger forward and begins to write his Name. “In my best moments,” Ms. Anderson later said, “what I most deeply desire is to have God’s name written in the dust of my life. Dear God, write your name here: Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer, Abba, Father, Savior, Holy Presence, Wonderful Friend, Holy Spirit, Good Shepherd, Emmanuel, Lord! Write your name in my dust . . . I’m ready to accept the git of your joy.”
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Why Mary? Why Joseph, we may ask ourselves time and again — why those shepherds in the fields? We may never find one explanation more persuasive than others, and yet I want to believe that Ms. Anderson’s own explanation can help us a great deal.
Very much like Mary, and Joseph, and Ms. Anderson, the moment we surrender to God’s love and ask him to write his name in our lives, we discover a new vista – no longer we feel insignificant creatures in such a vast universe.
Now we are children of God – yes, children of God. And as children of God, deeply loved and appreciated, also properly fitted to bring joy to anyone we may meet along the road.
Such is, my friends, the miracle of Christmas, the moment, the day when we welcome the gift to become a gift to others, to God, also to ourselves.