Advent 3 - Mary Rejoices In The Lord

Today’s Advent devotional comes from Steve Bell’s Pilgrim Year series, in chapter 7 from his Advent booklet. There is also a link to a song written to go with it from a companion website at the end.

The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God.” Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her. - Luke 1:35, 38

Steve Bell writes “We cannot begin to understand the profundity of the season and its implications for human dignity without considering the woman whom Eastern Orthodox Christians reverence as Theotokos: the God-bearer, and the one whom Catholic tradition venerates as the Daughter of the Father, the Mother Incarnate Word and the Spouse of the Holy Spirit.

Growing up as I did, in a Protestant tradition, I was not encouraged to ponder the life and faith of Mary. She was presented as a mere passive instrument of God in the drama of salvation: not particularly heroic, not a leader or a theological shaper of the faith like Paul, or Peter, or any of the disciples, for that matter. She was not as interesting as Mary Magdalene and didn’t seem to play a supporting role in Jesus’ ministry, as did the women who followed and funded his work. Mary was a quiet, quant, and somewhat tragic figure in the background who drew empathy from those who attended to her story, but not much else. Yet, it is the story of God’s loving humility meeting hers that we have been created to house heaven and bear forth Christ for the sake of the world.”

I (Borden) identify with that. We even see it in some of our popular Christmas songs. In “A Strange Way To Save The World” the author has Joseph ask “Why her, she’s just an ordinary girl?” But she wasn’t ordinary - God chose Mary to step out of obscurity and into the dangerous centre of his world-saving plan and she said “bring it on, God.” OK, that’s as loose paraphrase, but I hope that I might, one day, express such complete trust in God. That’s not ordinary.

In Steve Bell’s advent book he talks about spending time seeing terrible conflict alongside a Palestinian-Christian aid worker. Rather than return immediately to their families in the stressed state they were in after finishing their assignment they found a quiet monastery on a hilltop overlooking an Arab-Israeli village. Bell writes:

“On the pinnacle of the hill was a graceful chapel adorned by an elegant statue the Madonna and Child. She, Mary, was holding the Christ Child in her right arm and gesturing toward Jerusalem with her lift, as if to show the child the glory and the tragedy of his inheritance.

The night before I left for home, I decided to keep vigil amid the olive trees and wait for the sun to rise over Jerusalem, visible to the east from my vantage on the hill. I had my guitar with me, and through the night I played some, I prayed some, I wept some, and I waited. At dawn, a gentle, rose-coloured wave of light glided across the valley floor and up the hill to the chapel behind me. As the ascending sun bathed the Madonna and Child with new-dawn splendour I noticed - for the first time - the inscription beneath the figure: Mary, Ark of the New Covenant.

I stared at the inscription for the longest time, the truth of it rising in me like the morning sun which illuminated it.

Mary, the prototypical Christ, who first received the seed of the Word of God in her womb and who bore it for the sake of the world, beckons us all to realize our innate calling to be co-bearers of the seed of God. Even in our troubled humanity - within the drama of brokenness, redemption and salvation - we, too, have been invited to take up our role as maternal-spouse of God: to receive, carry and bear forth new life for the sake of the world. Anything less is beneath our dignity."

Malcolm Guite’s sonnet captures this mystery so well:

Annunciation

We see so little, stayed on surfaces

We calculate the outside of all things

Preoccupied with our own purposes

We miss the shimmer of the angel’s wings

They coruscate around us in their joy

A swirl of the wheels and eyes and wings unfurled

They guard the good we purpose to destroy

A hidden blaze of glory in God’s world.

But on this day a young girl stopped to see

With open eyes and heart. She heard the voice;

The promise of His glory yet to be

As time stood still for her to make a choice;

Gabriel knelt and not a feather stirred

The Word Himself was waiting on her word.

Back to Steve Bell: "During Advent, when Christians piously exhort the world to “keep Christ in Christmas” we may do better by encouraging one another to keep ourselves in Christmas. I sense that Christ doesn’t need us to defend him. We have not understood our place in this astonishing story; we should instead ponder and internalize how this season reveals not only the truth of God, but also the truth of our humanity. And so our souls, too, can whelm in song along with Mary’s Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55)."

My soul magnifies the Lord

And my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour,

For he has looked with favour on the lowliness of his servant

Surely, from now on, all generations will call me blessed;

For the Mighty One has done great things for me,

And holy is his name.

Click here to listen to Steve Bell's song to accompany this chapter about Mary. It's chapter 7, Magnificat, Holy Is His Name

Annunciation poem by Malcom Guite, Sounding the Seasons: Seventy Sonnets for the Church Year (Canterbury, 2012), 45

Other quotations from Steve Bell, Advent: Pilgrim Year Series (Novalis, 2018), 52-57