Mary Christmas

I drove out the Pennsylvania Turnpike to Pittsburgh for Thanksgiving. There, I dwelt and celebrated with Brother Steve and his wife and kids. I have been making the trek for over 20 years. It wouldn't seem like Thanksgiving without going out there. A tradition in the best sense of the word. I also get to hang out with my niece Averie who is a 7 year old ball of fire in 60 pounds of human flesh. She is a great spirit and a lot of fun to goof around with. Since I will probably never have kids, it is the closest slice of fatherhood that I will ever have--and a heck of a lot easier. More like unclehood. I am not exactly the most devoted uncle but I do think that my brothers' kids (I have three brothers) are supercool and a blessing to me.

At the end of the days, I want to be named the Patron Saint of Teenagers. Those are the children I have spent most of my life with praise God. What a remarkable blessing.

After one gets beyond Carlisle, the Pennsylvania Turnpike becomes a windy up and down and through mountains. The weather had been snowy and cold. The roads were safe but it is not a route for those prone to travel sickness. A lot of angles elongated into curves to make the route less linear. While in the middle of some mountainous pass, I lost most of the radio stations. There was one that came through loud and clear, some Catholic station where part of the broadcast that day was Pope Francis holding a ecumenical service with a Turkish Bishop, a head of the Eastern Orthodox Church. I think his religious name is Bartholomew. It was interesting and inspiring.

I like to state that I am intellectually Presbyterian (like Calvin) but emotionally Catholic (being raised and confirmed in the faith). Catholicism, for good or ill, has a way of getting into one's bones and heart, despite the troubling dogma arising elsewhere besides the Bible. Tradition, like a tree, is fine as long as it has roots in the Bible. For instance, confessing one's sins to another is biblical, particularly the one or ones that we have harmed. Does it take a priest and priest-craft to mediate forgiveness of God and Man? Nope. So, like a tree (again) tradition needs to be trimmed when it becomes over-grown. The saw is the Word of God. That was Luther's stance and he was correct, particularly when tradition runs counter to the Word. Then it needs to be felled. With an axe.

As the station moved into other programming, there was some meditation from a priest about Christ healing the woman with the issue of blood for 13 years (I think) before she touched the hem of Jesus's garment and was healed. It is one of the few instances in the Bible where Jesus did not first speak. The usual pattern is Christ sees and hears, He speaks, maybe questions, and then commands healing. This situation actually has Christ being not engaged with the woman with the sickness. It is only after she touches His clothes and she is made whole that Christ speaks of the "Power going out of Him." The priest in this homily expounded on this with great beauty and wisdom, noting that Christ's love for creation is an open and free response to a broken world. God's giving nature just shines and flows, like the sun or river supernaturally. The Priest then added that this healing and hope is for all, not just the people in the pews, but the whole world, to make the world whole.

As I drove over and through the mountains, I was deeply moved and pondered these things in my heart like Mary. I have rarely heard such a beautiful sermon in my life in a Protestant Evangelical Church where we want to transform everything into five steps for (name the issue): Financial Stability, Happy Marriages, Obedient Kids, etc. We seems to avoid the brokenness of ourselves and others. Bandage and Band-Aid the faithful. Keep smiling despite the gnawing pain in your soul that begs for answers with more depth than "buck-up kiddies."  And man, I can't stand praise music that is like a 45 minute sugar-high. With no theology or meaning, just snacky pseudo-spiritual phrases sung over and over again like a bunch of zombies. Give me an insulin shot to keep me from going into shock, please.

The priest's sermon, as is typical in Catholic exhortation, began to bring Mary into into everything. I have said it before in this blog and will say it again, Catholics make too much of Mary, Protestants make too little of her. I think there is a third-way where we recognize her unique role in giving birth to God in human flesh, and raising Him to boot, without creating an additional seat on Christ's throne for her to sit and mediate. It gets weird and awful when Catholics state that she is still a Virgin (she's not), was preserved from the stain of Original Sin by the Immaculate Conception (she wasn't) and that we should pray to her to intercede to get her Son's ear (we shouldn't).

Instead, we should rejoice that faithful Mary, wife of Joseph, was an ordinary girl, a teenager, in first century Israel, who was a model of piety, imperfect as she was. A faithful reader of the New Testament will see her in her motherly excesses at times. Maybe sinful, but understandable. For we all sin in many ways, even when we don't mean to--and even when we do.

This Christmas, let us rejoice that Mary is a model, actually more than a model, in Her Magnificat: (I bolded some of her most significant statements, ponder them in light of today).

Luke 1:46-55 English Standard Version (ESV)

Mary's Song of Praise: The Magnificat

⁴⁶ And Mary said,

“My soul magnifies the Lord,
⁴⁷     and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
⁴⁸ for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant.
    For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
⁴⁹ for he who is mighty has done great things for me,
    and holy is his name.
⁵⁰ And his mercy is for those who fear him
    from generation to generation.
⁵¹ He has shown strength with his arm;
    he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts;
⁵² he has brought down the mighty from their thrones
    and exalted those of humble estate;
⁵³ he has filled the hungry with good things,
    and the rich he has sent away empty.
⁵⁴ He has helped his servant Israel,
    in remembrance of his mercy,
⁵⁵ as he spoke to our fathers,
    to Abraham and to his offspring forever.”