Mary Mother, Not So Meek & Mild
My grandbabies are about to be born! Yes, you heard correctly: Babies! My daughter-in-law will deliver twins—a boy and a girl—probably by C-section, right after Christmas. I couldn’t be more excited.
I don’t need to tell most of you that becoming a grandparent is fun. And part of the fun of, at least for me, has been watching my son—the kid who wasted untold hours playing video games, who had to be nagged incessantly to make a walking path through the mess in his room, who couldn’t be depended on to take out the garbage until the can was overflowing—that kid! Watching him become a dad before my very eyes has been a delight. He’s a good one already, full of anticipation and love for his “munchkins.”
But he’s had to learn a few lessons along the way, not only about being a dad, but about being husband to the mother of his children. I’ll never forget the day he reported that he couldn’t argue with his pregnant wife about anything anymore. No matter what his complaint or concern, she would say, “I made organs today. What did you do?”
He laughed ruefully and conceded, “There’s just nothing you can say in response to that.” I would sum up the lesson my son learned as you mess with pregnant women at your own peril.
Today’s Gospel story is about the powerful, spirit-filled meeting of two pregnant women, Mary, the mother of our Lord, and Elizabeth, her cousin and the mother of John the Baptist. We know the story well. The messenger meets the message. John the Unborn leaps in his mother’s womb. He recognizes Mary’s Unborn, just as John the Baptist would later recognize Jesus the Son of God on the banks of the Jordan River.
There’s a 15th Century English Christmas carol called Mary Mother, Meek and Mild. I was surprised when I searched on YouTube yesterday for a recording of it, that all I found was two versions under the title “Maiden Mother, Meek and Mild.”
I have no idea what inspired that title change, but if you search via Google for the lyrics, you will find them:
Mary mother, meek and mild,
From shame and sin that ye us shield,
For great on ground ye go with child,
Gabriele nuncio. (Gabriel’s messenger.)
Much art and much popular culture tends to think of Mary in those terms. In most representations, she sits or stands with her head bowed and canted slightly to the side. Dressed in the white of purity with a cloak of calm, serene blue, she is the very picture of submissive, demure womanhood.
She said “yes” to God. Her response to Gabriel, when he tells her she is pregnant, is mild indeed. I cannot image myself—or any woman I know—being quite so calm under the same circumstances. She refers to herself in her song as “lowly servant.”
So Mary comes by the “meek and mild” description somewhat honestly. She does say “yes” to God, even when it means a tough road ahead, and that’s an important lesson for all of us.
But if we leave it there, we have done Mary a disservice. We have ignored an equally important aspect of this story. We have downplayed the absolutely subversive aspect of what is happening here.
Diana Butler Bass is a prolific author of books to inspire, challenge and support people determined to follow Jesus, come what may. And she is one of a handful of contemporary Christian leaders who skillfully employs social media to counter the negative forces of divisive politics and Christian nationalism.
So yesterday I paused during sermon writing to check my own Twitter feed, and came across her take on today’s Gospel story. “The only Christmas action movie I want to see,” she wrote, “is about two pregnant women plotting to overthrow empire.”
“Plotting to overthrow empire”? Well, yes, if you take Mary’s song seriously!
See, we read the Song of Mary every year—every single year—on Advent 4. It is also a required piece of Evening Prayer. So if you do Evening Prayer with any regularity, you read the Song of Mary often. Suffice it to say, we are familiar with the Song of Mary.
Perhaps too familiar with it. So familiar with it that the words roll off our lips without a thought about the implication of them. So let’s hear them again, but without that disarming bit at the beginning about being a “lowly servant.” Indeed, let’s get to the heart of it. Mary sings,
He has shown the strength of his arm, *
he has scattered the proud in their conceit.
He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, *
and has lifted up the lowly.
He has filled the hungry with good things, *
and the rich he has sent away empty.
Notice that Mary does not put these subversive actions in the future. She does not say, “He will scatter the proud…,” or “He will lift up the lowly…” Rather, she says, with this pregnancy, God has already done these things. And, indeed, that is exactly what Jesus taught and preached and stood for: lifting up the lowly, challenging and rejecting the proud, self-righteous, and powerful.
As for the rich, recall the rich young ruler. When Jesus declined to give him the excuse he was looking for, he went away, sad but empty, for he valued his wealth more than following Jesus.
This story of two pregnant women and a babe leaping in the womb of one of them, in recognition of the Holy One in the womb of the other, is a call to us. It is a call to make space for Jesus the Christ to come alive in our hearts.
But more than that. Brothers and sisters, no matter how hard we try to make the Gospel message an affirmation of the status quo, we cannot. To sing the Song of Mary is to say that the Gospel message resists and rejects the status quo, and the relationships of power and wealth that so dominate human societies.
Yes, we should be good church people. We should come to church, study the Bible, break bread as siblings in Christ, love one another. But that’s the beginning. It was precisely the good church people of his time that Jesus was most critical of and with whom he argued the most.
So be subversive! See Christ in everyone. Love them. Share what you have. Seek the common good. Consider the most powerless, poorest person you know and walk a mile in their shoes.
When you make room in your heart for Jesus the Christ to come alive and leap for joy, you will also know joy. It will change your priorities. It will change how you view your neighbors. You will not be able to help yourself.
In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. AMEN.
[19 December 2021 Christ Episcopal Church, St. Joseph, LA, Year C, Advent 4,Micah 5:2-5a; Hebrews 10:5-10; Luke 1:39-45 (46-55)]
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