Theotokos

Text: Luke 1:26-38

In The Sound of Music, the perplexed nuns sing: “How do you solve a problem like Maria?” Great artists from Raphael to van Eyck, da Vinci to Botticelli, Picasso to Chagall have taken on the challenge of depicting Mary, the mother of Jesus. Travel to the National Gallery of Art to the Louvre to the National Portrait Gallery in London and you will see Mary portrayed as everything from angelic to naïve, from mature to an innocent young girl agonizing over news the angel Gabriel delivers.     

“How do you solve a problem like Maria?” If you are a Protestant, basically you ignore her. If you grew up Roman Catholic, you pray to Mary and scratch your head at how blithely Protestants ignore the blessed mother of Jesus. How do you solve a problem like Maria?  

Luke tells us next to nothing about Mary, but by the 5th century the religious imagination around Mary had exploded. Mary was a virgin, not just at the conception of Jesus, but a virgin all her life. Then there was the famous battle between Alexandria and Antioch. Those from Antioch said Mary was the Mother of Christ, but Alexandrians said “No”; Mary was the Mother of God. I’ll spare you more details on that church fight; suffice it to say, the title theotokos – mother of God or God-bearer – won the day. 

By the 7th century, many claimed that Mary never died, but like the prophet Elijah, was taken up into heaven. In the Mid-Ages, Mary was portrayed as the Queen of Heaven with the child Jesus sitting quietly on her lap.    

By the late Mid-Ages, Mary was the Maria Lactans whose mother’s milk symbolized God’s overflowing mercy.

Augustinian monk, Martin Luther added to the adoration of Mary as he explained that Mary conceived Jesus when the Holy Spirit entered through her ear. I’m still trying to get my head around that image. In the 19th century, Pope Pius XII declared that like her son, Mary was also immaculately conceived.

Since Vatican II, Roman Catholics have rethought many of these ancient ideas about Mary, but she still plays a far more prominent role in Catholic thought than she ever has among Protestants. In fact, Karl Barth, the 20th century Swiss reformer, had no use whatsoever for any serious focus on Mary. Barth barks, “Mariology is an excrescence, i.e., a diseased construct of theological thought. Excrescences must be excised” (Church Dogmatics, Index, p. 276).

Now, just a minute Dr. Barth. I am a Protestant, a thinker in the Reformed theological tradition but I beg to disagree. Like my Roman Catholic kin, I believe Mary was the theotokos. Where I differ with Roman Catholic thought for the last two millennia is that I do not believe Mary was the “only” theotokos. Meister Eckhart, a medieval mystic and theologian, said, “We are all meant to be mothers of God. What good is it . . . if Mary is full of grace if I am not also full of grace? What good is it . . . for the Creator to give birth to his Son if I do not also give birth to him in my time and my culture?” (Meditations with Meister Eckhart, Matthew Fox, ed. Aut. trans., pp. 74, 81). 

Unlike his contemporaries, Eckhart actually listened to what Luke says about Mary. He realized that Luke’s story of Gabriel’s visitation to Mary is not a first-century biology lesson about how a young girl immaculately conceives a child. It is a story in the great tradition of call stories in the Bible. These stories are about what happens when God calls unsuspecting women, men, and children into God’s service.

When God calls Moses, Moses offers a laundry list of why God should reconsider. When God calls Sarah in her old age, she bursts into a fit of laughter. When God calls Jeremiah, the prophet tells God to look elsewhere because he is not even old enough to drink.

When God calls Mary, she asks a good question, gets a fantastic answer, and then says, “Okay,” “So be it,” “Amen.” Notice that in Luke’s story – as in every call story in the Bible – God does not campaign for Mary’s vote. God does not cajole her by saying, “By the way, Mary, I mean if you don’t mind, could you possibly help me out here.” No, God visits Mary and tells her that she is to be a theotokos – a God-bearer, bearing within her the child of God.

If you read on in Luke’s Gospel, you will find Mary’s boy traveling throughout Palestine calling together women, men, children, sex workers, sailors, fishers, losers, winners, anyone and everyone to be theotokoi, God-bearers. The Spirit of God still travels about and calls on us to do the same. The theotokoi – God-bearers, are what you and I become as with Mary we learn to say to God’s call, “So be it.” When we do, God does not breathe a great sigh of relief, as if God’s purposes were on hold until we made up our mind. Instead, whenever we do – and at least for me it is not all that often that I do – God smiles. God rejoices when you and I agree to the call to be God-bearers, loving in the way God loves us, living in the way God wants us to live.

In Archbishop Desmund Tutu’s riveting account of The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, he is often criticized for being too soft on those who committed horrendous crimes. In response, Tutu observes, “Frequently we in the commission were quite appalled at the depth of depravity to which human beings could sink and we would, most of us, say that those who committed such dastardly deeds were monsters because the deeds were monstrous. But theology prevents us from doing this. Theology reminded me that, however diabolical the act, it did not turn the perpetrator into a demon” (p. 83 of No Future Without Forgiveness).

Tutu knows that no matter how hard we try that we cannot totally destroy the image of God within us, because we are not the ones who put it there in the first place. He says, “Ultimately no one is an irredeemable cause devoid of all hope . . . God does not give up on anyone, for God loved us from all eternity . . . When I realize the deep love God has for me, I will strive for love’s sake to do what pleases my Lover.”

Tutu goes on to say, “Those who think this opens the door for moral laxity have obviously never been in love, for love is much more demanding than law. An exhausted mother, ready to drop dead into bed, will think nothing of sitting the whole night through by the bed of her sick child.

“As I listened . . . to the stories of perpetrators, I realized how each of us has this capacity for the most awful evil . . . This is not to condone or excuse what they did. It is to be filled more and more with the compassion of God, looking on and weeping that one of His [God’s] beloved had come to such a sad pass . . . Mercifully and wonderfully, as I listened to the stories of victims I marveled at their magnanimity, that after so much suffering, instead of lusting for revenge, they had this extraordinary willingness to forgive. Then I thanked God that all of us, even I, had this remarkable capacity for good, for generosity, for magnanimity.’” (p. 86)

Such are the words of a theotokos, a God-bearer, called to speak God’s words of grace and truth into a world that exhibits precious little grace and most often settles for far less than the truth. The pages of the Bible are not filled with haloed saints who glide a foot or two above the common dirt, but with theotokoi, God-bearers, human beings created and called by God, all of whom live east of Eden, each of whom walk on clay feet. Mary fits that bill as well as any biblical star. At one point, she shines brightly as she humbly accepts the astonishing call to bear the child of God into the world and then later her shine dulls a bit as she tries to remove Jesus from a crowded room thinking he has gone mad. 

I long ago gave up any hope for human perfection, mine in particular or Desmund Tutu’s or even Mary’s. I still believe, though, that God’s perfect love is often worked out through imperfect people, imperfect pastors, and imperfect institutions, and I trust that someday God’s perfect love will get the best of every last one of us.

Till then, I am thankful for you - the theotokoi of Cove Presbyterian Church, for the wondrous ways you bear the image of God into a world that has stared in the mirror for its identity way too long, for the healing ways that you bear the image of God to each other, and for the loving ways that you bear the image of God until the time comes when hatred and retribution and revenge simply have no ground left on which to stand. Your love is not always perfect, but as Mary learned, Tutu learned, and I have learned over many years, our faith is not about our perfect love, but about God’s perfect love being worked out through us.

This is my ninth Advent/Christmas season at Cove. I am thankful for the privilege of standing in this pulpit over these years and for the joy of looking out, Sunday after Sunday, at God’s beloved theotokoi, people through whom I have often encountered the love and grace of God. I will miss you. O how I will miss you. Fortunately, though, this pulpit will soon be filled by three remarkable theotokoi by the names of Alex Evans, Louie Andrews, and Jane Govan. They will then be followed by Cove’s next installed pastor for whom the search will soon begin.

So, back to the opening question: “How do you solve a problem like Maria?” Simple enough. By realizing that Mary is really no problem at all. For, by God’s grace alone and despite her imperfections, Mary is a theotokos, a God-bearer and by God’s grace alone, so are we.

If you forget everything else I have said from this pulpit, please never forget that. Please!

         Alleluia!      

                  Merry Christmas!

                           Amen!