‘God is Love’ Series: What Would Mary Do?
Image produced by Sr. Grace Remington, OCSO, of the Cistercian Sisters of the Mississippi Abbey
What did Mary know and when did she know it? If I'm being honest, I'm not really sure it matters all that much. Even though "Mary, Did You Know" is my favorite Christmas song, I think we are mistaken if we think the most important element to Mary's role in the Christmas story is what she believed about the coming Christ. Rather, I find it far more important to notice what Mary consented to and what she did with that information. I'd argue that such a faith, a faith that measures the authenticity of its beliefs and convictions by the actions that correspond to them, is unfamiliar to our modern sensibilities. Our culture seems content to assess its character and morality merely by what it believes or says, meaning that we often hide the truth of who we are behind loud opinions, hot takes, and aggressive social media posts. If we are to rediscover what it means to follow Jesus in our performative society, it would do us well to ask: what would Mary do?
In my last two posts, I tried to lay out a confessional critique of the American church as well as offer a theological account that might point us towards the love-logic of Christ. However, I don't think we can remain at critiques and beliefs if we are to be considered serious Christians. Any theology should and must account for the kind of people it produces, taking note of how they live, how they treat others, and what they do. I agree with James that "faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead" (James 2:17). Further, I would add that our very lives, defined by our habits and behaviors, point to what we really believe. In other words, what we do reveals in whom or what our real faith lies.
Real faith is a matter of what we allow to take root in our lives, meaning it is a matter of consent. Many wear the label "Christian" proudly, but I'm not so sure they've consented to the nonviolent, egalitarian, impoverished rabbi to take root in their lives. Instead, it seems the label "Christian" serves as a type of camouflage to hide the fact that, in reality, they've consented to the gods of greed, exploitation, racism, homophobia, tribalism, and fear, just to name a few. If we are to judge a tree by the fruit it bears, then we shouldn't be surprised many have fallen sick from the bitter fruit American Christianity has brought to our tables.
If Jesus and his life of abundance is the fruit we want to bear, then Jesus must also be the seed we plant in our hearts and lives. Jesus Christ is the goal toward which our souls yearn to grow and find rest. He is the incarnate God who shows us how to live as liberated flesh and healed humanity. He offers us the logic of God, the very logic of the universe, that we might take it as our own and learn to live in harmony with our neighbors and the rest of creation. The challenge is not really about how we might come to possess Christ as our own, but rather, it is how we might let go of our notions of control as a means of cooperating with the God that is always bringing forth new life. Our Creator seems to always be at work in bringing forth new harvests, blossoms, and offspring. That same opportunity to be born again, to be born in the image of the truly human and whole One, awaits us on the other side of our willingness to plant God's radical love in the soil of our deepest wounds and fears.
Mary shows us how to do exactly that. She is the very paradigm for how we might accommodate a perfect, omnipresent, omniscient God into the particularities of our lives, even when God's ways don't seem to make sense. God's plan confounded the assumptions that should have kept Mary from becoming the mother of Christ. Although Mary was an unwed virgin who knew pregnancy could be social suicide, she still responds to God's decree with, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word" (Luke 1: 38). Despite the fact that Mary was unsure how her miracle son was to save her people, she became the mother of God because she was willing to consent to God's life and plan for the world. Simply, she made the Incarnation possible by first allowing God to incarnate in her very decision making process.
This is what it means to follow Jesus. It is not some arbitrary list of rules, and it is certainly not as black and white as some would have us think. On the contrary, following Jesus is about the messy work of creating the conditions in our hearts and minds where He can be born into our lives over and over and over again. Yet in order to do this, we must work to remove those fears, insecurities, and prejudices that prevent us from consenting to God's love and work in our lives. In the words of Rumi, "Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it." The glorious light of God's love already resides in each one of us. We need not go searching for it with the hopes of earning it or possessing it. We only have to work at removing the veils from our eyes and hearts that keep us from seeing we are worthy and we are enough.
This is the first step of Christian ethics. Once we truly believe that we are beloved children of God, then we are released from the habits, addictions, and mistakes that too often numb, distract, or pacify us. In this way, the Christian life is not so much about abstaining from sin as much as it is about opening our hearts for God's love to remove our need of it. Like Mary, our ethical task is to lead lives that are perpetually pregnant with God's love such that our very actions birth new possibilities into this cold and dark world. In our very act of consenting to God's love as the primary source of our identity and purpose, we give permission to a universal God to incarnate into every dimension, aspect, and detail of our lives.
Barbara Brown Taylor argues, "I have decided that incarnation is less a doctrine than a practice, which Jesus did not come to do once and for all but to show any who were willing how God’s word might become flesh in their own lives too." This is both the great challenge and great joy of the Christian journey. The challenge is that there isn't a mess or a mistake in our lives that God doesn't want to heal, which is, more often than not, a painful process of purification and slow growth. The great joy is found in the promise that whatever we offer God can and will be transformed into the likeness of God's perfect son. Each of our offerings are opportunities for God to incarnate into the particularities and messiness of our lives, creating the possibility for our culture, business, politics, identity, family, music, pain, and stories to become conduits of God's transforming love and grace.
To be clear, I am not arguing for more Christian music or movies, or more "Christian" anything for that matter. Instead, I propose that we consider how everything we do can be done in incarnating ways. "Christian" media, spaces, events, and propaganda may do well to generate profits, consolidate social capital, or make us feel self-righteous, but I wonder to what degree they help us understand that God's powerful plan to save the world begins with the helpless cries of a babe being born in a secluded manger. When we view our actions through the lens of the manger and how Christ might be consistently born into our lives, we learn quickly that God's ways are certainly not our own, and it is in this realization that we can begin the process of living truly transformed lives. I do not mean the kind of lives that feel the need to plaster "Christian" over everything we do as a means of proving to the world we are who we say we are. On the contrary, I mean learning to incorporate God's love, vulnerability, gentleness, mutuality, and grace into our every move.
Allowing the incarnation to incarnate into our lives will certainly look different for each one of us. Yet, it should change each of us. It should change how we drive a car, how we talk to others, how we take care of our bodies, how we rest, how we enjoy recreation, how we work, how we sing, how we write, how we think, how we shop, how we give, how we worship, etc. I hope you are seeing that there are countless ways for us to allow Christ to be born into our actions, no matter how big or small they seem. Regardless of what form Christ's incarnation takes in our lives, the incarnational life will always be one where Love is welcome, nurtured, and multiplied. While we might get to choose what actions we will submit to Christ's Lordship, we do not get to choose how those actions are to be carried out. If our faith and our relationship with Christ does not make us more loving, compassionate, and merciful, we can be sure we've never met the babe in swaddling clothes, the prophet with no place to lay his head, the crucified wearing a crown of thorns, the marred body laid in a tomb, or the resurrected One bearing the scars of radical love.
Friends, it is not our job to be Jesus. He made the blind see, the lame walk, the hungry fed, the possessed free, and the dead live again. He is God, and we are not. He is Creator. We are creation. He is Savior. We are saved. I think it is okay that we let Jesus be Jesus. It is not up to us to save the world, nor even pretend like we can. Christ is our eternal goal, and to accept his life and logic as our own is our eternal destiny, but it is His mother, Mary, who shows us how we might live faithfully as fallen creatures. In this way, she is our spiritual mother, teaching us how we might be channels and conduits of God's Spirit and love. Just as she birthed the Kingdom of God into our hurting world, she invites us to carry Christ in our hearts and minds and allow him passage into our lives as well. Mary does not create God's work. She consents to God's work by removing any obstacle, fear, assumption, or narrative that might prevent God being with her – with us. Her willingness to be open to God created a fertile womb for Love to become flesh in her arms. If we can find the courage to open our hearts to Love, we, too, can experience the joy and peace of holding Love in and with our very flesh. This is the promise of Christmas.