The Mother of Christmas

Propers: The Fourth Sunday of Advent, A.D. 2018 C

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for You know his sins are great.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

What can a Lutheran say about Mary?

We can say that there is something about her, something sublimely beautiful, which has called to us from the earliest centuries of the Church. So beautiful, in fact, that we’ve come to fear it, afraid that if we focus too much upon the Mother, we might somehow miss the Child. Of course, as any parent ought to know, it doesn’t really work that way. If you hope to hold the baby, you must contend with mom.

Advent is our excuse to circumvent our misgivings. At Advent, all of a sudden, Protestants of every stripe are just fine with images and statues of Mary in our homes, in our congregations, on our lawns. Suddenly we’re all Catholics.

And it’s wonderful, isn’t it? We get a little taste of what our Orthodox and Catholic brothers and sisters have known all along: that Mary calls to us, calls to the faithful, for indeed she is the Mother of our Lord. And if, as we confess, we are all truly one in Christ, then that surely makes her our Mother as well.

There is a story in the Church, taken from an episode in Revelation, that the reason Satan fell—the reason he went from angel to Accuser—is because he was given a vision of the day when God Himself would enter the world, the Creator become part of Creation. And the highest of the angels assumed that it ought to be through him. Angels are understood to be beings of pure mind, incapable of sickness, decay, injury or death, unfettered by the chains of material mortality. How could the Creator of all worlds deign to stoop down through any agent other than His angels, His firstborn, the oldest and purest of all the denizens of this or any other reality?

And yet the vision, we are told, prophesied a girl: young, vulnerable, poor, but of noble stock, with a soul spotlessly prepared for the greatest of all possible destinies. And this the angel found offensive. Disgusting. Sacrilegious! That the Almighty God in whom we all live and move and have our being would be born a mewling child, a slimy worm, gestant viscera puellae, as the old hymn puts it, “Born through the guts of a girl!”

And so the angel raged. And so the angel fell. And so he became the Dragon, the Satan, the Great Serpent, who rages at the woman and her Child, who hates everything she represents, everything she loves, because she is everything he wanted to be—the Mother and the Bearer of our God upon the earth! Luther called her Theotokos, Mother of God, and he loved her and he honored her as the New Ark of the New Covenant, the source of our Lord’s human flesh, the womb that bore Him, the breasts that nourished Him, and the woman who raised Him in her forefathers’ faith.

She is the highest creature in all of Creation—higher than angels, higher than men, higher than sun or moon or stars—for she is one, body and soul, with Jesus Christ our Lord. Which brings us to the most important lesson of Christian Mariology.

For while it is true that Mary is in a very real sense unique—the singular Mother of the Incarnate God—she is also a type of the Church, which is to say, of all of us. We are called to be like Mary. We are called to boldly believe the promises of God and to open ourselves to the workings of His will, which is none other than life everlasting for all of Creation and the whole human race.

In this way, in this humble acceptance that God has chosen us, through no merit of our own, we then receive the life of Christ within us, a life which only grows until it comes into fruition. He enters us in Spirit through Baptism. He enters us in Body and Blood through Holy Communion. He enters into us as He entered into Mary; not as a violation, not as a burden, not as a hijacking of our lives; but as a new beginning, a new creation, a new and abundant life forever poured out for the world.

And so we are called to be bearers of Christ into this new generation; to carry Him within us, that He may be born for others. And so here is this shocking notion, this scandalous image, of humanity perfected—of the New Eve raised up for a New Heaven and a New Earth—which is none other than a humble pregnant woman. This is our model. This is our type. This is who we are all meant to be. Because the promises given unto Mary are given unto all of us as well! We are full of grace. We have the Lord with us. Blessed are we amongst mortals and blessed is the fruit of our womb, Jesus.

In order to be Christ for the world, we must first be Mary for the world. And if that offends us, if that disturbs us, well—now we know a bit of how Satan must’ve felt.

Mary is beautiful and faithful and brave and true. Not because she’s a superwoman, or some sort of goddess. But because God chose her for His own: daughter of the Father, spouse of the Spirit, Mother of the Lord. And in the coming of Christ at Christmas, He chooses us, and all of us, as well.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.