United Methodist Church Hyde Park, NY

MOTHERS OF GOD
Luke 1:26-38

When I did a tour of Greece, visiting all the sites where the apostle Paul had been, the only souvenir I knew I wanted even before I left home was an icon – a traditional Eastern Orthodox religious image painted on a small wooden panel. It took a long time to decide from among the hundreds of different images, but finally the choice narrowed down to two. The easier to choose was a beautiful rendering of St. Christopher – a gift for my son who bears that name. The more difficult was the one that would be mine, because there is no other subject in iconography, besides Christ, that has been painted so often and with so much love, as the image I wanted: Mary, the Theotokos.

Theotokos is a compound of two Greek words, Theos, God and tokos, childbirth. Historian Jaroslav Pelikan translated it more precisely as God-bearer or “the one who gives birth to the one who is God.” However, as this literal translation is awkward in liturgical use, Theotokos is often not translated, or is paraphrased as Mother of God.

Iconographers of all time have tried to show in the image of the Theotokos as much beauty, gentleness, dignity, and grandeur as they could imagine. They sometimes paint her as grieving or sorrowful, but always as filled with spiritual strength and wisdom.

This is the image of Theotokos I chose: a tender one of a loving mother holding her son. “The one with the sweet face” was the way the salesperson described her.

Mary was little more than a child when the angel came to her announcing that she would be the one who would give birth to the one who is God.” The angel did not ask her if she would like to be the mother of God; he told her – that God had been gracious to her, that she would bear a son, and that he would be king of Israel forever. The angel did not ask her how that sounded to her or would she like to try out for the role. He told her. The Lord is with you, he said. And Mary was much perplexed by his words. “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” she asked him. She wanted to know how it would – how it could – happen. She wanted to make sense out of what made no sense.

She listened as the angel told her the barest details about how it would all come to pass, and then came her turn to speak. It was going to happen, that much seemed clear, but still she had a choice – whether to say yes to it or no, whether to take hold of the unknown life the angel held out to her, or whether to defend herself against it however she could.

God, through the angel Gabriel, called on Mary to do what, in the world’s eyes, is impossible, and instead of saying, “I can’t,” she replied immediately, “Let it be with me according to your word.”

Mary did not really understand, but when the angel told her that she was to bear the Son of God, she was obedient to the command. One does not have to understand to be obedient. Instead of intellectual understanding, there is a feeling of rightness, of knowing, knowing things that we’re not yet able to understand.

A young woman once said to Madeleine L’Engle, during a question-and-answer period after a lecture, “I read A Wrinkle in Time when I was eight or nine. I didn’t understand it, but I knew what’s it was about.” As long we know what it’s about, then we can have the courage to go wherever we are asked to go.

Kathleen Norris reminds us that today’s gospel story is traditionally known as one of the “mysteries of faith” – annunciation, incarnation, transfiguration, resurrection – powerful spiritual experiences that defy rational interpretation. In fact, if we try to understand mystery with our minds, we may miss the poetry that can only dwell in our hearts. Norris suggests that the annunciation story is at the heart of Christian vocation, the unique purpose for which each one of us has been born. In all of us, she says, there is a virgin place in our souls, a point viege as Thomas Merton calls it, “a point untouched by illusion, a point of pure truth, the pure glory of God in us.” Or, to put it differently, it is the Holy Spirit conceiving within us the pure possibility of our lives.

Mary responded out of that virgin place in her soul. Her pondering produced resolve. Reminded of all that God had done in the past, convinced by Gabriel’s promise that God would be with her in the days ahead, Mary said “yes” – she decided to trust God with her future, with her soul, with her life. She affirmed her call even though she did not know where it would lead or what the future would hold. She may not have understood, but Mary knew what it was all about.

Mary was the only one in the history of the world who had that particular decision to make. And so the Eastern Church knows her as Theotokos, the God-bearer who consented to carry, give birth to, nurse, and raise the Son of God. Only one person was ever drafted to do that, but still it is hard to hear her story without hearing more than a little of our own. Like Mary, our choices often boil down to yes or no: yes, I will live this life that is being held out to me by God, or no, I will not; yes, I will explore this unexpected turn of events, or no, I will not.

You can decide to say no and pretend that nothing has happened. If your life begins to change anyway, you have several options. You can be stoic. You can refuse to accept it. You can put all your energy into ignoring it and insist in spite all of the evidence that it is not happening to you.

Or you can decide to say yes. You can decide to take part in a plan you did not choose, doing things you do not know how to do for reasons you do not entirely understand. You can agree to bear God into the world inside your own body.

Deciding to say yes does not mean that you are not afraid, by the way. It just means that you are not willing to let your fear stop you. So you say yes to the angel, you say, “Here I am; let it be with me according to your word,” and so saying you become one of Mary’s people, one more Theotokos who is willing to bear God into the world.

“We are all meant to be mothers of God,” wrote Meister Eckhart, a medieval German monk, mystic and theologian. “What good is it to me,” he continued, “if this eternal birth of the divine Son takes place unceasingly but does not take place within myself? And what good is it to me if Mary is full of grace if I am not also full of grace? What good is it to me for the Creator to give birth to his Son if I do not also give birth to him in my time and my culture? This, then, is the fullness of time: When the Son of God is begotten in us.”

Greetings, favored ones! The Lord is with you. Do not be afraid. For nothing will be impossible with God.