{"id":1070,"date":"2012-12-16T08:00:04","date_gmt":"2012-12-16T13:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/biteintheapple\/?p=1070"},"modified":"2012-12-16T08:00:04","modified_gmt":"2012-12-16T13:00:04","slug":"godbearer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/biteintheapple\/godbearer\/","title":{"rendered":"Godbearer"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
\u00a0<\/address>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

We are all called to be mothers of God, for God is always waiting to be born.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Meister\u00a0Eckart, 1260 \u2013 1327<\/em><\/p>\n

She enters\u00a0our Decembers with an angel, gloriously winged, who honors her.\u00a0 The moment is spellbinding:\u00a0 we are entranced by the arrival of this woman, Mary, on the stage of Christmas and in the story of God.<\/p>\n

And the\u00a0angel honors her:\u00a0 Hail Mary, full of grace . .\u00a0 . .\u00a0\u00a0 <\/em>\u00a0Is the angel bowing \u2013 kneeling \u2013 looking down \u2013 while speaking?\u00a0\u00a0 So very many images say yes, but Luke\u2019s words don\u2019t tell us the posture,\u00a0only the words the angel says.\u00a0 The poses in the paintings are our awe.<\/p>\n

The grace the angel honors is already hers, though she is not yet \u2018with child\u2019.\u00a0 It is\u00a0her grace that\u00a0has brought the angel, and the invitation.\u00a0 She reflects.\u00a0 She questions: angel-who-are-you, and how can this be?\u00a0\u00a0The angel explains:\u00a0 it is your spirit God\u00a0seeks as Godbearer, and it is God\u2019s spirit\u00a0that will enter you.<\/p>\n

For two thousand years we have chattered, endlessly, about her womb.\u00a0 Yet the angel did not honor her virginity, or her abstinence, or ask for her submission.\u00a0 The honor was for her grace.\u00a0 And by the angel\u2019s persuading her with answers, we know she did not submit:\u00a0 \u00a0she consented.<\/p>\n

The chatter, our chatter, has rendered her a freak of nature.\u00a0 And this has become doctrine.\u00a0 Alone of all her sex, historian Marina Warner calls her.\u00a0 But this is not what the angel honored, not what the angel sought.\u00a0 Nor is it what she consented to become.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Mary, the\u00a0first woman called as a prophetic servant of God, became the only woman in the prophetic lineage, and\u00a0one who speaks to Gentiles as well as Jews.<\/p>\n

Her call occurs in the pattern by which Jewish prophets are recognizably called:\u00a0angels come to them.\u00a0 To Gideon in the winepress, to Isaiah in the temple vision, to Ezekiel in a vision in the sky, to Jonah in dreams in a strange land, angels came asking, will you\u00a0 serve God in this terrible, murderous\u00a0time?<\/p>\n

Each prophet decides, as Mary decides:\u00a0 with questions, some reflection, and a deep understanding of the hope and hardness of what is being asked.\u00a0 They answer with the grace that is in them.<\/p>\n

After she says Yes to the angel, Mary sets out on a journey.\u00a0 Alone.\u00a0\u00a0 And she stays away for months, we are told.\u00a0 Elijah, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Samuel, Jonah, all set forth on journeys, alone, at the inauguration of their calling as servants.\u00a0 Each bears the word of God to someone who is unlikely to receive it well.\u00a0 Kings, mostly.\u00a0 Mary travels to the home of a prominent temple priest, Zechariah, who has been struck dumb for refusing to believe angelic hope brought to his wife, Mary\u2019s cousin.\u00a0 Upon \u00a0arriving at Zechariah\u2019s home, Mary delivers her Magnificat, with all the authority and clarity of Elijah speaking to King Ahab.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>In the gospels (unlike the paintings), Mary is never shown at home.\u00a0 Most biblical women are shown in domestic scenes, but not Mary:\u00a0 she does not bake cakes as Sarah and the widow of Zarephath do, as Hannah longs to do.\u00a0 Her child is born in a stable, not a house.\u00a0 She then flees to exile in Egypt.<\/p>\n

After that, she is seen at the Temple when Jesus is twelve, at a wedding in Cana, outside the door of a place where he is speaking, at the foot of the cross and at his grave.\u00a0 Likewise, the prophets are never shown in their homes, places they leave to bear God\u2019s word to places where they are sent.<\/p>\n

Mary\u2019s words, like Jeremiah\u2019s, Elijah\u2019s, Isaiah\u2019s, ring with life. \u00a0 There is wildness in them, and immense faith.\u00a0 She says her soul is enlarging God. Not her womb: her soul.<\/p>\n

Some compare her song to Hannah\u2019s, who indeed does sing a hymn of praise, but\u00a0 Hannah\u2019s song is full of prayer and longing.\u00a0 Mary\u2019s song is prophetic, \u00a0bold in its assertion of history-changing life, and her service in that.\u00a0 There is nothing domestic about Mary.\u00a0 And everything domestic about Hannah, who longs for a child so she will be more at home.<\/p>\n

Hannah\u2019s child is God\u2019s gift to her;\u00a0 the Child in Mary\u2019s womb is her service to God: \u00a0deeply physical service which is deeply spiritual.\u00a0 Physical service is true for all major prophets:\u00a0 Isaiah endures hot coals on his tongue.\u00a0 Elijah endures famine, and hides from death threats\u00a0in the wild for years, and then in the home of the impoverished widow of Zarephath, with whom he shares their only food, flour and oil, for months.\u00a0 Ezekiel suffers exile in Babylon, where he weeps and has visions.\u00a0 Jeremiah, naked except for a loin cloth, runs a marathon for God\u2019s sake, then goes into exile, where he writes the Lamentations.\u00a0 The work of prophecy is physical work:\u00a0 bearing God into a weary and unwelcoming world.\u00a0 Mary bears her child in the most dangerous possible place, a place strewn with the bodies of slaughtered children.\u00a0 In that place she lies down among animals, gives birth, gets up, and flees.\u00a0 And in this she claims that town for God.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Mary sings\u00a0stunning words:\u00a0\u00a0 the fruitfulness of the reign of God will be increased through her child.<\/p>\n

Luke knows that in Greek, and Roman cultures, prevailing cultures in his time, kings receive their sovereignty from goddess-women who become their wives.\u00a0 Their lands, their crops, their wars, as well as their lineage, in sum, their sovereignty, depend upon these women for fruitfulness.<\/p>\n

Catholic tradition has long understood Mary as the Queen of Heaven, sovereign of fruitfulness in the reign of God.\u00a0 But Luke, a Greek citizen and a Jew, surely understood that in Judaism the prophets have these powers and this role.\u00a0 Kings need prophetic blessing and anointing in order to reign.\u00a0 Samuel takes his anointing away from Saul, whose kingship withers,\u00a0and passes it to David.\u00a0 Elijah takes the rain away from the land and curses Ahab\u2019s throne.\u00a0 Jeremiah preserves the claim of God\u00a0to Israel even as the people are driven out of the land, by solemnly buying land and burying a deed. Mary withdraws the blessing of God from the rich, the proud and the mighty, and gives it to the\u00a0hungry.\u00a0 She\u00a0bears a child among the slaughtered,\u00a0and in this, defines\u00a0Bethlehem.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Like her European sisters, she has power rooted in nature itself.\u00a0 Her tears, in folkloric tradition,\u00a0become roses, flowers spring up in her footsteps.\u00a0 She bears her Child among animals, shows him only to shepherds, and outruns an army to protect him from a King whose reign is fruitless.\u00a0\u00a0 Christmas comes to us through Mary:\u00a0 she is Bethlehem.<\/p>\n

All this magic is\u00a0worked within<\/em><\/p>\n

the earthy Mary, where the Child<\/em><\/p>\n

is filled with grace and born with marvelous<\/em><\/p>\n

capacity, alive and kicking, growing,<\/em><\/p>\n

laughing, breathing, speaking, waxing wise.<\/em><\/p>\n

Knitting the eternal into dust,<\/em><\/p>\n

Mary makes a life that can outlast a lifetime \u2013<\/em><\/p>\n

mortal, with tired eyes and weary feet,<\/em><\/p>\n

and immortal, shining, sustaining<\/em><\/p>\n

even a body broken.<\/em><\/p>\n

The earth, too, within her deep storehouse,<\/em><\/p>\n

mothers strength to grow beyond winter,<\/em><\/p>\n

ponders possibility and providence,<\/em><\/p>\n

contemplates fruitfulness,<\/em><\/p>\n

Mary-ing another springtime for this world.<\/em><\/p>\n

In\u00a0gathering shadows December cloaks<\/em><\/p>\n

the cold ground with everlasting light.<\/em><\/p>\n

We wander among miracles as<\/em><\/p>\n

the hopes and fears of all the years are met in us.<\/em><\/p>\n

And it is Christmas, once again.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2013from December Light<\/strong><\/em> by Nancy Rockwell<\/p>\n

______________________________________________________________<\/p>\n

Illustrations:<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

1. Annunciation.<\/strong><\/em> Fra Angelico. 1434. Cortona, Italy. Vanderbilt Divinity School Library, Art in the Christian Tradition.<\/p>\n

2. Annunciation.<\/strong><\/em> Fra Angelico. 1417. Perugia, Italy. \u00a0Image from Wikimedia Commons.<\/p>\n

3.\u00a0Ecce Ancilla Domini! (Behold the Lord\u2019s Servant!)<\/strong><\/em> Rosetti, Dante Gabriel. 1849-50. \u00a0Tate Gallery, London. Vanderbilt Divinity School Library, Art in the Christian Tradition.<\/p>\n

4. Christ\u2019s Birth.<\/strong> <\/em>Conrad von Soest. 1403. Bad Wildungen, Germany. Vanderbilt Divinity School Library, Art in the Christian Tradition.<\/p>\n

5. Adoration of the Christ Child by the Three Wise Men<\/strong><\/em>. Albrecht. Durer. 1490-93. \u00a0Basel, Switzerland. Vanderbilt Divinity School Library, Art in the Christian Tradition.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0 We are all called to be mothers of God, for God is always waiting to be born. \u2014 Meister\u00a0Eckart, 1260 \u2013 1327 She enters\u00a0our Decembers with an angel, gloriously winged, who honors her.\u00a0 The moment is spellbinding:\u00a0 we are entranced by the arrival of this woman, Mary, on the stage of Christmas and in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2483,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[11,18,23,30,34,44,48,57,60,61,65,80,81],"class_list":["post-1070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bites","tag-angel","tag-child","tag-december","tag-godbearer","tag-hope","tag-luke","tag-mary","tag-prophets","tag-service","tag-slaughtered-children","tag-spirit","tag-wildness","tag-words"],"yoast_head":"\nGodbearer<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"\u00a0 We are all called to be mothers of God, for God is always waiting to be born. -- Meister\u00a0Eckart, 1260 - 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