INCLUDING MARY
May 8, 2005
Texts – I Peter 5: 6-11
Acts 1: 6-14
This is where it all begins. Next Sunday is Pentecost, the birthday of the Church. Here, Luke says in our reading from Acts, they are gathered in preparation. All the disciples save Judas Iscariot are present; each is named individually. Some we know quite well – Peter, John, James, Andrew, Philip, Thomas, Matthew. Others have slipped into obscurity. They are the pillars, the foundation stones, the “Founding Fathers” whom God used to build a new nation, a chosen people, the Church of Jesus Christ. That’s how the story goes, but wait . . . there’s more. It’s just a footnote, really . . . at least that’s how we’ve treated it. Luke says – “All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers.” [Acts 1: 14] “Together with certain women, including Mary . . . ”?
We’ve a book at home which we keep near the kitchen table. It was a gift from a dear friend who is no longer with us. It is not, I hasten to add, a bestseller; indeed, it’s one of those academic tomes you need to really want to work your way through if you’re going to succeed in finishing it. The author is a professor of history up in Toronto; for all I know it may well have been his doctoral dissertation (and you know how those are!). David F. Noble is his name; his area of specialization is the history of science and technology. Did I say it’s not a page turner?
A World Without Women is the title of this intimidating book, and that’s really all you need to know about it. Professor Noble argues that for the last one thousand years a male-dominated religious community in the West has succeeded in making the contributions of women in science and in every other arena of societal life virtually invisible. “A World Without Women,” he says, is the way the world is portrayed to us through our culture’s dominant historical narrative.
Now certainly that’s the picture most of us carry around in our heads of the world of the early Church. It is not a picture, however, which the Bible shares. “All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer,” Luke writes, “together with certain women, including Mary.” She is there with her sisters at the beginning. They, together with certain men, are among those God used to create the beloved community.
Odd, isn’t it, that we don’t see this . . . we don’t think of this . . . when we think of church and Christianity. Here it is, in black and white, but it’s invisible to us. Too many of us still live in a world without women.
At the risk of becoming too academic myself, let me draw this out a bit. One of the earliest challenges to the Christian movement was something called Gnosticism: the influence on Christian thought of a Greek view of reality which set the realm of the spiritual over against the material. The realm of mind, spirit, and divinity is the realm of real life, the Gnostics said; the realm of matter, body, sex, dirt, and diapers is the source of all our troubles, a kind of cage in which we are caught for a time.
For people of this Gnostic perspective, salvation meant a secret wisdom and experience through which one psychologically escaped the material world into a purely spiritual existence. It was something available only to a certain few heavenly-minded people. Jesus, they argued, was a divine being who slipped into this world assuming the appearance of a human being for a time, in order to enable a select few to achieve this wisdom and spirituality. As a divine being, they went on to say, Jesus was not involved in a truly physical, earthly, mortal existence. Many of this
persuasion even denied that he, being truly divine, ever hungered, suffered, or even died.
Now, this would be nothing but ancient history were it not for the fact that this way of viewing reality has been a perennial temptation from that day to now. The tendency to separate religious faith and experience from the everyday world of material endeavor and needs is ever present.
Over against this point of view, the gospel writers in the first century went out of their way to emphasize the full humanity of Jesus. One of the ways they did so was by talking about Mary – Mary his mother, his care giver, his teacher . . . Mary traveling with him when he himself became a teacher . . . Mary standing by weeping at the foot of the cross . . . Mary, as well as his brothers, there with the rest of the disciples at the end which was the beginning. It’s so important, they seem to be saying, to always include Mary. Why? Because Mary, the mother of Jesus, grounds his life solidly in this world, and not just in some supposedly higher spiritual realm.
“A World Without Women” . . . It is an illusion. It is also, of course, quite literally impossible. This day – Mother’s Day – acknowledges that, and in so doing invites us to ground the spiritual in the material earthy world of now.
What do I mean by that? Well, you know as well as I that mothering – in the first century as in the twenty first century – is about as worldly an enterprise as there is. Oh, to be sure, it has its rewards. But it is also a taxing and tiring responsibility, especially in a time of careers and countless other obligations. Raising kids is tough. Between the homework and hockey, the books and the baths, the coughs and the croup, the arguments and the acrobatics, mothering remains one of the most strenuous earth-bound enterprises we know.
Hardly seems the most spiritual of experiences, does it? Yet where do we learn about those things of the spirit – things like “right” and “wrong,” “good” and “bad,” “loving” and “selfish” . . . where, I say again, does such spiritual knowledge come from if not from our most basic and primary relationships, including and especially the relationship we have with mother?
She is not perfect – not your mother, nor mine (though don’t you dare tell her I said that!). She needs, as we all do, help and advice, guidance and direction, forgiveness and mercy. She also needs partners who will join her in the task of lovingly bringing into being the next generation of God’s family.
Two things, it seems to me, lie at the heart of every mother’s calling (as they do as well of every father’s calling) – accountability and affirmation. Were we truly able to live in a world without women, we would have precious little of either.
Accountability. We do not come into this world blessed with moral character. It is something we learn – not from books or exotic spiritual experiences, but from the women who hold and nurture us from the beginning of our days. Unless there are caring adult figures in our lives who say “No” as well as “Yes,” who check, restrain, channel, expect, and discipline, human beings rarely develop any sense of inner control or conscience, and are seldom able to effectively direct their own lives in a healthy manner.
Accountability. This is not just a matter of child psychology; it is also at the heart of Biblical theology. Ever stop to think what the Ten Commandments imply . . . that fabled list which repeats over and over, “Thou Shalt Not”? They imply that we do not realize the good life by doing what comes naturally, what we feel like. And in this sense those commandments run counter to the culture of that day and this.
“Thou shall have no other Gods before me,” the first one says. What were the gods of that time? Sex and power. And what are the Gods of our time? Are they not in large measure success, status and stuff? These are not all bad in their place. But when they become the ruling passions of your life, to the exclusion or displacement of higher values and deeper visions, they tend to take over – they literally become God – and erode real life and joy.
And how about the others in that list of ten? Reverent use of language. Humility about what we know. Respect for those who no longer can contribute. Restraint upon our acquisitiveness. Care about the truth. Reverence for all life. The point is that all of these injunctions ran against the grain of human nature then, and they still do in our time. But unless we stay in touch with these . . . unless we find ways to internalize them in ourselves and in our children . . . there will be consequences.
Accountability. It is so important. It is the task intrusted to the women who mother us, not just to those who birth us. But there is a second calling which is equally important, for at the same time that we and our kids need to hear again and again that we are accountable, we also desperately need to hear over and over again that we count. This is doubly true in a time and a culture that measures human worth by such meager standards as success, status and stuff.
Affirmation. It is something many of us learned way back in Sunday School and still need to hear even now again and again, the word by which we live. “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” It means – You are loved infinitely, unconditionally, eternally by your God. You belong to God. You can trust your life into God’s hands. This is your hope and comfort, your salvation and your life.
Affirmation lies at the heart of Christianity. Everyone counts. “In Christ there is neither male nor female, slave nor free, Jew nor Greek . . .” “Love one another, as I have loved you . . . forgive one another, as I have forgiven you.” “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.” They are not just lovely words engraved on a greeting card. They are the living truth in-fleshed in Jesus of Nazareth, and built into the very fabric of our faith. They do not become real, however, unless and until when we experience them in the unconditionally loving embrace of she who is mother, to say nothing of he who is father.
“A World Without Women” is the book title I glance at every morning at my kitchen table as I drink my coffee and open my newspaper. I need it there to remind me of the illusion I grew up believing and which much of the world around me continues to perpetuate. Success, Status and Stuff don’t cut it in the real world. Accountability and Affirmation do. “Together with certain women, including Mary” let us recommit ourselves to the task of mothering the next generation of God’s family. Amen.