Mary & Joseph

Hey, everybody.
Welcome back to the Pastor Talk podcast.
Good to have you back with us.
It’s good to have a chance to continue these discussions as we work through this series,
Real People of the Faith.
And I don’t know if that is more true of any of our characters than it is
of the couple we look at today as we continue to move deeper into the story of the New Testament.
We felt like a good place to spend a little time is the primary couple,
I guess,
of the New Testament,
Joseph and Mary, Jesus’ parents.
And as we move into this discussion,
we do so with a fairly limited amount of resources.
The Bible doesn’t tell us a great deal about their
background, and almost all of their story is really centered on or revolves around the birth
of Jesus, which you would expect.
I guess to start with,
Michael, the thing that is most amazing
is this idea that we should probably unpack a little bit,
that God has parents,
that Jesus Christ, the Savior, has parents, that we talk about Joseph and Mary as those who raised
the Messiah, the Son of God,
which is an outstanding and amazing claim.
Yeah, and by the way,
the New Testament doesn’t hide that.
It actually puts it out there.
Is this the son of Joseph?
So I think we,
as we come to the Scriptures,
find that they really emphasize for us these early writings of how significant that was,
even to the earliest
disciples, that Jesus was a person who came from this family in this particular place and time,
and it was for that very same reason that people were so shocked and surprised as Jesus taught the
things that he taught and lived the life that he lived and then ultimately revealed himself
as the Son of God in the way that God acted through and in him.
So, yeah, I think that that
is striking, and I think it’s also striking that the Bible doesn’t in many cases try to gloss over
the difficulty of life that this couple dealt with.
I mean, it’s very candid and honest about
the fact that Jesus’ childhood wasn’t stress-free,
it wasn’t worry-free.
Yeah, I think,
you know, again,
to push that theme a little bit,
not only is it
astounding to try and wrap your head around the fact that Jesus has parents,
but they’re very ordinary parents.
They’re not in a palace, they’re not royalty.
We know
very little of Joseph’s side of the equation.
He’s of the lineage of David.
He ends up in
Bethlehem to be registered.
He is a carpenter by trade or by training,
and that’s really
that’s really probably most of what we know.
We also know that sometimes he’s present in the story
at age 12.
When Jesus is 12,
Joseph is present.
By the time Jesus begins his ministry at about 30,
Joseph has passed away.
We know nothing about the particulars of that story,
but by and large,
we have to assume that Mary and Joseph lead a very typical life for that period,
which would have been not poverty,
perhaps,
but certainly not wealth,
probably some moments of hand to mouth,
probably some lean times,
probably, you know,
moments where things are going a little better,
but certainly they’re mundane,
they’re faces in the crowd,
and yet we remember them for this
incredibly astounding fact that they raise in Mary’s case by genetic and birth,
and we’ll talk about that in a moment,
but in Joseph’s case by example and by parenting,
none other than Jesus Christ.
Yeah, and I think as we start this story,
it’s worth really honing in,
because in a way,
in a strange way,
Mary and Joseph sort of have a shared biblical element to some of the prophets
that we talked about,
and even John the Baptist really,
and what I mean by that is the scripture
doesn’t really tell their backstory.
It doesn’t really give a history of their own childhood,
of their own parents,
of the choices and places that they had made and gone to in their lives
that brought them to the moment of being met and their lives being changed by God.
Clint, really,
we come into their story when it gets diverted by God’s story,
and I think that is a common theme
in the scripture, that scripture is always pointing us to the work of God and the world,
and it is at these critical intersections that we see it come into play into these individuals’
lives, and so it’s striking when we talk about someone like Joseph,
the honest truth is
what we know about Joseph’s life is almost encapsulated in a tiny section of his full life,
however long that actually was,
and yet that is always the purpose of scripture,
is not to tell
the whole story of that person,
but to show us how in that person’s life God’s story is encapsulated.
Yeah, I think that’s well said, Michael.
I would say only that scripture
delves into people’s stories really only to the extent that they connect to Jesus’ story,
and so the Bible isn’t particularly interested in questions we’d love to ask.
Where did Joseph come from?
What kind of person was he?
What did he do?
You know, we get the sense that he isn’t
a man of integrity.
We certainly have to assume that God makes a choice
according to those parameters,
but when he finds out that Mary is pregnant,
there’s that line that
says he was going to divorce her quietly.
You know, the idea that he wasn’t vindictive or angry
perhaps is wrapped up in those words,
and that seems reasonable,
but really the scripture’s
primary interest is only telling his story as it connects to Jesus’ story, even amazingly enough,
when that connection is as significant as the person on earth that Jesus would have likely called Dad, Father,
and the person who would have raised him,
who presumably taught him to work wood and
do carpentry and finish his first project with him and gave him lessons and lectured him,
and all of those various things,
which would be fascinating to know,
and unfortunately we’re only left to speculate at what that must have been like.
But again,
I think to our initial point,
the idea that Jesus had a parent like,
that Jesus grew up in someone’s house,
that he ate at the
table with them day in and day out,
that he traveled with them to Jerusalem,
that they, even as his spiritual reality is being shaped by God and the presence of God and the Holy Spirit,
that he is,
in many ways, his earthly reality is being shaped by these two people,
and the tremendous task to which God entrusted them to raise Jesus until he’s ready for his ministry.
Yeah, and we may miss some of the significance of that,
so I really want to just pause,
though it may seem obvious when I say it,
that there’s a sense in which that commonality,
that real people-ness of these two individuals,
is really an amazing part of God’s salvific story,
that Jesus was born into a home with a man who had a common job,
right, who worked by all accounts,
maybe a stable work,
but certainly not one which was ever going to make you rich,
which was never going to advance you in the society in which they lived.
And yet it is in that place that God
chooses for his son to be formed into what it means to be human,
right?
It’s that Jesus knew
something about what needs done to bring home food to a family,
what needs done to keep sibling
rivalries from breaking out,
right?
We would love to know what that house looked like with growing
kids, right?
And scripture doesn’t tell us those stories,
but the fact that we know that Jesus
was embedded in this family in a real way is,
in many ways, good news for all of us who are
embedded in families, who work jobs that need to be done,
some of those jobs which we don’t always
love.
And there’s a sense in which God’s salvific plan is really made big in the story of Jesus,
because Jesus is actually embedded into that same story that we share.
Yeah, and it’s an interesting detour,
Michael, but it would be a fun novel to write or to read,
or even a fun sermon maybe to preach.
The reality that at Jesus’ birth,
Joseph and Mary, of course, were overwhelmed and
had to be just simply astonished at the work of God and what’s happening in their midst.
But then life happens, right?
If you’re Protestant, you read a reference to other kids being born.
They’re making a living.
Mary’s putting food on the table.
And as we do in our
own lives, every birth is this incredible,
amazing moment where you think everything is going to
change.
And then two years later,
you’re changing a diaper and you’re picking up toys.
And the
miraculous part kind of gets pushed to the background a little bit and they just go on with life.
And yet, I have to think that it would be a fun thing to imagine those moments where they
must have looked at Jesus as they do in the story Luke tells,
where he’s 12 years old and he’s in the temple teaching.
And his parents must have had those moments where they looked at him and they remembered,
“Oh yeah,
he’s that.
He’s our son and he’s that.
He’s the incarnation.
He’s the presence of God.
He is both like us and not like us at all.” And maybe you see a little vestige of
that when Jesus is with his mom at the wedding and she says,
“They’re out of wine.” And he says,
“You know, that’s not my thing.” And yet then he proceeds to do this miracle,
the first of his miracles.
And there must have been those moments where they just looked at each other and kind of
remembered the unimaginable privilege and responsibility that visited their house.
Yeah.
And Clay, I don’t want to muddy the waters here.
So I’ve got to say,
just we promise to tell
you if we were ever going to cross outside the scriptural landscape,
and this is not in the
scripture, but if you’ve ever wondered what did that look like when Jesus was young,
because we have just such sparse stories of that time period,
there are several writings that were in the early
church, which did tell stories about that.
One of my favorites is from the Gospel of Thomas,
which was not included in the scriptures because the early church sifted through that and said it
wasn’t reliable enough to make it into our book.
And so that’s got to be said,
but there’s stories that were written about Jesus doing miracles as a child and doing things that were just in the town
absolutely remarkable, even as a young man.
And so though they didn’t make scripture,
I think they point us to other people have had those wonderings.
Even in that time,
people were wondering what would have been like for this child,
the son of God,
to be born into a
normal family and to grow up in a town with other little boys and girls.
And what would that
experience been like?
And the fact that that was written then about the miracles that Jesus did as
a child, though it didn’t make our scripture,
I think does remind us that the early Christians
were aware of what that meant,
right?
That it was significant that God chose humble people
for his son to be raised.
And that is really good for someone who is in the midst of parenting young
children to have that hope that,
you know, even God can work in the midst of parents who we know
we don’t have it all figured out.
Yeah.
Somewhere in the office,
I have a book called the book of
Jesus, which is just a collection of writings and poems that people have written through the years.
About Jesus.
And one of them,
well, they’re actually two from the same author,
25 questions for Mary and 25 questions for Joseph.
And it was things like,
did he ever cry?
Did you ever see him heal?
Did he ever comfort you?
And those kinds of questions that in general you could ask of any
child, but specifically only of that child.
And it is something we take for granted that I think
it is good to remind ourselves what must it have been like to occasionally remember, if not always,
that none other than the son of God was sleeping under your roof.
I mean, it’s not something that
one can get their head around.
Yeah, I try to.
I’m looking here at the beginning of Matthew.
We really have very few gospel stories at the beginning of Jesus’s life,
which is why when
we come to Christmas season,
the texts that you hear read are all familiar.
It’s because the Bible
just doesn’t have that many texts that include the story.
And what’s fascinating to me is extensively,
Joseph is engaged.
There’s some timeline there of what when he’s looking forward
to being married to his wife,
when he becomes aware of the fact that she’s pregnant,
that he’s resolved to himself, that he’s going to divorce her,
but do it in quiet,
which speaks to that integrity.
And that’s when the angel shows up.
And as we know from our other Old Testament biblical
stories, when angels show up,
serious God things are are being announced.
They’re happening.
And he’s told,
don’t be afraid.
Take Mary’s your wife for the child conceived in hers from the Holy Spirit.
And boom, immediately normal, regular process, what you thought was sort of planned
out and laid ahead of you has now been upended.
And Joseph has got to be reeling in that moment
with what does this mean?
Yeah. And I assume continued to ask that question for all the years
that he lived, right?
And Joseph, we have such minimal things.
Now, as we move to Mary,
we get slightly more information biblically,
but historically and theologically,
we have a lot
more attention, which makes sense, of course, because there is this physical biological
connection where Joseph is the father by proximity and by relationship.
Mary is literally the mother
of Jesus.
And before we get there,
Michael, maybe just a word along the same lines, but
geographically rather than relationally,
one thing that we might also mention is that Jesus
has a hometown that Joseph and Mary have a place they live.
And this place Nazareth is a small, it’s a backwater.
It’s not particularly well thought of from what we can tell.
In fact,
there’s still not agreement or consensus on where it was.
It’s not been agreed upon that
it was located in any particular place.
Some have argued that it wasn’t actually a town.
You know, that’s certainly not a biblical case,
but we don’t even agree on where…
It was so insignificant that we don’t even know where it was.
And yet Jesus grew up there, again,
not Rome,
not Jerusalem,
not palace,
just probably a hut or a stone clay house
in a very small,
out of the way,
somewhat backwardish kind of town.
And we maybe underestimate how rural that part of the story is.
And so it’s interesting to think not
only did he have a home,
but that home was located in a community.
And as we all know,
communities we grow up in have an impact on who we are and who we become.
And so interesting to think of that.
So then let’s kind of narrow our focus here for a minute,
Michael, and think about Mary.
And again, this is the broken record when we come to so many of these characters,
we don’t know a great deal about her.
Probably a relatively young girl,
almost certainly a teenager
at the time when the angel makes an appearance to her.
She’s a young maiden.
People argue about the word maiden,
whether or not it also does or doesn’t mean virgin.
I think the simple answer
on that is that in Jesus’ day,
maiden assumes virgin.
Those are synonymous.
I don’t find it
assumes some things that I think we can assume as well.
Related to Zechariah,
Elizabeth is a kinswoman.
That makes Jesus a cousin of John the Baptist.
We’ve talked about that.
I think initially,
Michael, the most interesting conversation about Mary is,
and I think it’s important to say,
because it can be assumed that she has no choice.
But I think it’s important,
and feminist theology has helped us here, I think,
in
helping us see in the text that Mary is a participant.
She’s not simply a vessel that
God uses because God wants to.
She has a moment of what we might call choice or agency.
She partners with God in the creation.
There’s this moment where the angel explains to what’s
going to happen to her,
and then she agrees or she feels joy in that.
She rejoices in that.
And I think that’s important because otherwise,
she’s somewhat of a slave,
certainly isn’t the right word,
but somebody without a choice.
And I think it’s important
that we understand that God does not dictate Mary’s life,
but gives her an invitation to which she responds.
Yeah, I think it’s really,
it’s a fruitful place to spend a little bit of
time if we’re going to talk about Mary.
I would encourage you wherever you are,
maybe just make a mental note.
Luke chapter 1 verses 26 through 38 is a really deep sort of collection of this
early time for Mary.
And what’s fascinating, Clint, is this angel comes,
the first thing that’s said
is greetings favored one,
the Lord is with you.
And it’s a powerful way to initiate that conversation
because Mary is from the very start named as being the one who is favored,
the one who’s given a gift.
And you might not know this,
that in the history of Christianity,
Mary has been remembered in different ways, theologically.
And there’s a lot of threads that we’re not going to have time to trace.
And quite frankly,
many may not be interested.
But in the Roman Catholic Church,
Mary has a very particular place not shared in the Reformed churches,
certainly post-Reformation.
And one of the things I think that Reformed churches,
maybe we struggle to name the significance of Mary,
some of it was intentional,
some of it unintentional, I think,
is the fact that
Mary represents how seriously God has determined to be with God’s people.
God has taken his
intention to encompass all of his love for all humanity,
for all time, by becoming human.
In God’s willingness to come and profess favor upon this young girl who lives in an insignificant place,
in a relatively insignificant family.
As best as we can tell,
this encounter is what
transforms Mary’s life forever.
And yet,
in the midst of this,
Mary is able to say,
surely what is one of the most courageous statements in all of scripture,
“Here I am, let it be with me according to your word.” Let it be with me.
It’s a kind of response to God’s
gracious gift that says,
“I am ready to be part of what you have proclaimed as favor for me.”
And I just point out that when Mary says these words,
she’s repeating words, “Here I am,” that are spread throughout the entire Old Testament.
And these significant encounters,
God with Abraham, God with Moses,
in each of these moments,
the response is so often,
“Here I am, God.
I’m here.
I’m listening.
I’m your servant.” And that’s exactly what we hear from this young woman.
And so even though we’re on the reform side of the fence and we have less theological
space for Mary and the significance of that,
I think we can name and own the fact that Mary
represents a courageous woman who represents not only God’s commitment to take humanity in all of
our senses, but also God’s desire to use those people who are willing to show up and say,
“God, here I am.” Yeah,
and there’s a real subtle reinforcement of that,
Michael.
Early in that story,
the angel says, “Greetings, favored one.
The Lord is with you.” Now,
that’s in Luke’s gospel,
and Luke sort of centers on the name Jesus.
But in Matthew’s gospel,
we get that text,
you may know, from Christmas.
He will be called Immanuel.
God is with us.
And if you put those things in conversation,
Mary is the first one that hears the announcement that is then through her
shared with all people.
She is the forerunner of the herald of what God is doing, that the Messiah
is to be born.
And the first one to hear that is a teenage girl out in the sticks.
And again,
that kind of idea hangs over the whole story.
And Mary’s response to that is incredible.
You may know this has been put to music in Luke 2,
verses 46, following there is a poem
that Mary utters, and it begins, “My soul magnifies the Lord.” It’s been put into music.
It’s called the Magnificat.
You’ve probably heard it sung,
or at least you may want to Google it if you haven’t.
It’s beautiful music.
But in the text itself,
just poetic,
a celebration of what God has done
and what God promises to continue doing,
and incredible depth and theology and
history and faith from this young girl.
It’s very impressive, and it’s an incredible passage
that she gives as she celebrates what God is going to do,
and even her role in it.
Very much like Miriam’s song in the Old Testament,
and those kind of moments where
almost lyrically what God is doing is professed and celebrated.
And this is one of those places where the gift of multiple witnesses to the life of Jesus is
so significant, because if you only had the book of Luke,
and you read that as the sole testimony to Jesus Christ,
it is,
in some ways, a rosy picture is not what I mean to say,
but it’s a very positive image of this proclamation.
There’s like maybe a few sentences where the weight of
what God is proclaiming is sort of hanging out there.
And then when Mary says,
“Here I am,” this beautiful song,
she’s the blessed above all,
she’s the first to see God’s full plan for humanity.
And if you read Luke,
that’s it.
But we know from Matthew that Joseph is seriously thinking,
“I may need to dismiss her.” So we get the sense from Matthew that this has serious social
implications for this young woman.
And we already get a sense in that small detail that Mary’s
choice to say to God,
“Here I am, let it be done as you have said,” that will impact her for the
rest of her life.
That puts her in a position where she was with child before she was with Joseph,
and that’s known in her community,
and that has significance.
Yeah. And to further that in the Matthew text,
they then run.
They find out that Herod knows where they are.
And so in the midst of this celebration of new birth,
and not only a normal
child, but the Messiah has come,
now they’re on the run.
And right away a sign that this family,
though they live under divine blessing,
is not under any particular divine protection.
They are vulnerable to the threats and the problems and the hatred of the world.
Ultimately, we’ll see that in the cross,
but we see it foreshadowed even in Jesus’ family.
It’s less true in Luke,
but there is a moment where they take Jesus to the temple,
and there’s a man there named Simeon, and he prophesies.
And then he says this to Mary,
“A sword will pierce your own soul too.”
And this foreshadowing of the transition we make,
we really see Mary in the beginning of
the Jesus story and at the end.
And at the beginning,
there is primarily celebration,
but then we have to remember that this same woman who delivered the Son of God into the world
looks upon him as he suffers and dies on the cross.
And here we have Luke connecting the stories
with this short phrase,
“And a sword will pierce your own soul too.” And the pain of a mother,
even of faith and of hope and promise,
seeing the loss,
seeing the death of her son,
and we see, I think, in even those two short vignettes of Mary’s life,
the incredible emotional journey that must have been present in lots of ways,
but those may be most encapsulated.
Yeah.
I’m going to make what seems to probably be an absolutely obvious statement.
Mary is a real person.
Mary was a real person.
Mary’s not the plastic figurines that we put
out in our yards at Christmas.
She’s not the nativity person that we have on our mantles.
Mary has been captured in history in a way that for sometimes I think it’s easy for us,
sorry, it’s difficult for us to access truly the reality.
Mary was a person.
So, when you’re 30 diapers into changing your little one,
and someone comes to you and says,
“Hey, do you know this,
and do you know this,
and do you know this?” I mean, the parents,
out of frustration, “Yeah, I know that,” and way more.
That song that we have at Christmas,
“Mary, did you know?” Lots of people like that song,
and I don’t mean to dismiss it, but like,
Mary knew a lot more than she wanted to know about being the mother of the Son of God,
and yet, it is this woman who so courageously as a young person,
aligned herself with what God wanted to
do in her life,
that then follows that journey like all of us do,
having no clue what the arc
is going to look like,
right?
And that emotional arc you talk about,
Clint, there’s no way that
girl in that moment at that time could imagine what laid ahead.
And yet, as she faithfully travels along,
as she is heartbroken,
as her soul is pierced,
in the midst of that,
she models for us
what true faith looks like.
Faith in God, not just when it’s easy,
even faith that goes beyond
one moment of extreme courage,
but a faith that lasts a lifetime of discipleship and trust.
And I think it’s rightly then that the church has for thousands of years after held Mary in high regard.
Yeah, so you think if she’s a teenager at the birth,
33-ish years later,
she’s in her mid to late 40s,
and this is the same woman,
right?
The young girl who gives birth,
the
older, wiser woman whose soul is pierced,
but then who sees that giveaway to what Jesus has done.
It’s fascinating that there’s no post resurrection Mary the mother of Jesus story.
And when we think
of her story, we almost always think of it in conjunction with Christmas, because that’s
the nicer part of the story.
Right.
And certainly,
Mary has,
without any reservation,
earned a place
in the characters of faith that we look to and celebrate.
Michael, you touched on it earlier,
but maybe it would be interesting to some extent quickly to unpack what Protestants do with Mary, specifically Presbyterians.
So theologically,
the birth of Jesus raises some troubling questions
from the Catholic perspective.
Specifically,
what do you do with sin?
What do you do with this idea
that Mary as a real person would be a sinful person?
And how could you reconcile a sinful human
housing through pregnancy the incarnate,
perfect Son of God?
And so the Catholics have,
at times in their history,
backed off and made us a special kind of dispensation for Mary,
that she was,
to some degree,
without sin,
or her sin was dealt with early,
or some way of getting around the question.
Protestants have not typically worried about this.
We have said that she was a person like all persons,
and yet God used her in this incredible way without any real trouble because
that’s what God does.
God finds a way and found a way with Mary.
The other difference, probably major difference as we look back on Mary’s life,
is that there are reference to Jesus having brothers and sisters,
and Protestants have generally read that literally,
as though Mary and Joseph had other children,
the Catholic Church, in order to preserve the sort of perfection of Mary,
has done that sexually as well,
and said that Mary remained a virgin.
Maybe you’ve heard the ever blessed,
ever virgin Mary in a Catholic prayer,
and they take that literally,
that they would read that
reference to brothers and sisters as meaning cousins or some kind of extended family,
and not literal siblings, brothers and sisters.
And, you know,
that’s strange for us.
It’s a little odd
for Protestants, but it really has to do with this idea of trying to honor Mary above other people,
of occupying or carving out a space for Mary to occupy that is somehow a step over the rest of
human experience to make room for God.
You know,
obviously a Catholic is going to find that version
of the story more compelling.
As a Protestant,
I find Mary being ordinary,
more profound.
But I just say that to know that historically Catholics and Protestants have done some
different things with Mary in regard,
and we could talk about lots of them,
but those are probably the major two. Yeah, I might only add to that,
Clint, because if you’re joining us,
you may know of the Hail Mary,
which is a pretty significant prayer,
probably the most well-known prayer that isn’t
directed to Jesus out in the larger Christian church,
certainly the Orthodox and Reformed churches.
And there’s a,
in non-Reformed traditions,
there’s a comfort with praying
to God, but doing so through intermediaries.
And Mary is sometimes that intermediary.
So when someone says they’re Hail Marys,
what the Catholic Church does,
as I understand it,
they can see that
not as ultimately praying to Mary,
but rather asking Mary who’s with Jesus right now to put
in a good word with Jesus,
right, to say, “Hey, in my brokenness, Mary,
would you put in a good word
with Jesus?” And the Reformed tradition has always said,
you know, the thing that Jesus did
was open the throne of grace to all,
that we don’t send our prayers through anyone else,
we send them directly to the God who knows us and loves us.
But I think I don’t want to quickly
rush past the fact that the Christian church,
our larger extended family,
has had a special
place for Mary.
And one of the upsides of that is I do think Mary provides a really beautiful,
inviting image for young women as to what faithfulness looks like.
And I think if you’re a young girl,
Jesus lives a life as a male in his time and place,
and Mary in some ways portrays
faithfulness as a woman who was blessed and favored by God.
And so I think there’s a beautiful
meaning in that.
Mary is not the same as Jesus.
She doesn’t occupy the same theological place.
But I do celebrate,
certainly with two daughters,
I celebrate a woman who represents faithfulness,
she represents the best of what it means to care for,
she represents what it means to be a strong
woman of faith.
In many ways, I think we don’t have to throw out the baby with the bathwater,
to use the phrase.
We can keep what is an amazing story of an amazing woman of faith.
And we don’t necessarily have to incorporate all of the things that the reformers found troubling
to yet see in Mary a beautiful exemplar of God’s grace and love.
Yeah, so two follow ups on that,
Michael.
The first is just kind of a funny,
practical thing.
You may know the song Ave Maria,
which is a prayer to Mary.
And it has made its way into
Presbyterian Christmas Eve services occasionally,
but it probably shouldn’t.
And when it does,
it’s usually because somebody really wants to sing it and a pastor says, “Well, okay,
we’ll all just look the other way.” But it’s not something…
It’s a place in which our different understanding
has been kind of practical.
It’s one of those places where…
And it’s probably less true
than it used to be,
but I studied under pastors who said that will never happen in a Presbyterian
church, and yet it does sometimes.
Secondly,
and far more importantly,
as we talked in the Old Testament,
as we worked our way through some of those characters of faith,
this idea that when the
story of God is told,
there are these moments where God is directive,
where the angels come,
and God gives very clear and explicit instructions,
“You’re going to have a baby.
You’re going to name him Jesus.
You’re going to do this.
You’re going to do this.” And then there are these other massive
parts of the story where it feels like the characters are left to work it out.
Imagine the trust placed in Mary and Joseph that God would say,
“I’m going to send my son to you.
You take him to Nazareth.
You bring him up.
You teach him the faith.
You teach him the prayers.
You read the Scripture with him.
You show him a trade.
You teach him to be a good man.
And then at some point,
I’m going to do even more incredible and amazing things with him
and through him.” But it’s those gaps.
We read that Christmas story.
There’s no reference to God
taking them to the end.
They end up in the end.
It’s not the birth they expected.
There’s no—they get warned in a dream,
but they’re in real danger from Herod.
And
I think the beauty of that,
Michael, is that that’s the way life feels,
right?
There are these clear
moments where we have guidance from God and we have the grace of Christ big and bold in life.
And then there are so many other moments where we’re left to kind of make our way through the
details and the trust which God places in Mary.
To do that with the living Christ,
literally the living Christ, is astounding.
And I cannot think of another character of whom that could be said in
the entire Scripture.
I mean, Mary is unique in that.
There are lots of characters, of course,
trusted to do the will of God.
But that kind of partnership,
that kind of cohesive working
together is, I think,
amazing.
And maybe Protestants in our rush to kind of not
overdo the theology of Mary have underdone it.
I think maybe sometimes we’ve underappreciated
the staggering role that she plays.
Yeah, I don’t want to overstate my case,
but I think in the effort to do away with theology
that we thought was suspect,
we lost some of the scriptural view,
which is so plain.
And I do think
that as we look at this,
the thing about Mary that really stands to me as being just leagues
apart is the fact that this is a woman who was willing to allow God to work in spectacular ways.
She was literally the closest to Jesus and therefore to God that anyone has ever
been or could imagine.
And yet she is normal.
And the truth of that,
if you will just let it
rest with you for a moment,
can be life changing.
The fact that God,
when God means I am with you,
when God says Immanuel,
God literally means it.
This woman, who God did an astonishing thing through and with,
was a real person.
And so that’s good news for every real person because God is
capable of doing that with us.
It won’t be in the same way as Mary,
but it’s not,
Scripture intends to show us this,
not on accident, to say that God’s grace and love is far more expansive than we
tend to think it is.
And oftentimes we write ourselves or we write other people out of this story.
And Mary is just one of those people who stands,
she was the closest you could possibly get
and yet she was normal, she was real.
And so everyone who is normal and who is real has
good news in that gift that we see in her.
Yeah, that mixture of the absolute profound and the absolute mundane,
that she delivered the son of the living God and then she had to figure out how to feed him.
And then she had to figure out why is he crying?
And that God who could have chosen
any young woman on the planet at the time,
for whatever reason,
chooses her as the favored one
and then works with her to bring about this incredible thing that will change the world
and change the history of the world.
And she takes her role in it willingly and amazingly.
And so, yeah, we may be underdo Mary and we should give her more credit sometimes than we do.
It’s a fascinating story,
is the story the right word?
She’s a fascinating character,
even though we wish we knew a lot more about her,
we know enough to be astounded,
which is generally
all the Bible is interested in telling us is enough to be amazed.
And so in this case,
I hope that will be true for you.
We very much appreciate you listening.
We hope there’s something in this that strikes something,
strikes a chord with you,
does something, gives you some information.
If it raises questions,
email them to us,
send them to us, Facebook,
email, whatever, give us a call.
And we’d love to continue the conversation,
but we appreciate the time and are grateful to be with you.
Yeah. And, you know, we’re grateful.
We’ve had a lot of new people listening recently.
We’re grateful to have you join us.
Thanks for taking time to join these conversations.
If there’s someone who you think might be interested in learning a little bit more about Mary,
share this with them,
send them an email, a text message,
of course, subscribing and
sharing on Facebook all these ways,
help others find it.
We will continue to premiere these on
Facebook at nine o’clock central standard time every Wednesday.
And that’s a great place as well,
Clint.
We are there every time that that comes out.
And so if there’s a question in real time,
drop that in there and we’d be happy to have a conversation with you.
So all that said,
thanks for joining us.
We look forward to seeing you next week as we continue the real people of faith.