BLOG 12/14/14. A PROTESTANT: “HAIL, MARY?”

I started my pilgrimage as a follower of Christ in that part of the Protestant tradition where the Roman Catholic Church, and everything to do with it, was regarded with dire suspicion as some sort of a deviation from our understanding of Christ and his church. So for me to, at this juncture in my life, to be affirming my own: “Greetings/Hail, O favored one of the Lord, the Lord is with you!” may seem to be a little odd, and yet it grows on me. Let me tell you some of the pieces of my journey here.

First of all, the unbelievable act of faith, for this very young woman to be told that she will conceive a child by the Holy Spirit, … who will be called Son of the Most High, and for her to respond: “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word,” makes her, in my book, the giant epitome of faith in the New Testament.

Secondly, who else could have been the eyewitness who could have filled the gospel writers in on the details of Jesus life from start to finish? She was the only one who was there from the events surrounding his birth, through his life, to the cross, and to the resurrection. There is no one else who was eyewitness to it all. She was one of the witnesses at the foot of the cross as he died. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John depend upon her knowledge of the details.

Thirdly, it doesn’t take much to realize that she (and Joseph though he disappears from the scene quite early, but was a quiet giant of faith in my book) was the one who so faithfully formed Jesus, and fulfilled the instruction given to parents in Deuteronomy: “You shall therefore lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul, … You shall teach them to your children, talking of them when you are sitting in your house, and when walking by the way, and when you lie down and when you rise” (Deuteronomy 11:18-19). Mary and Joseph did this so faithfully and effectively that when Jesus was presented to the priests in Jerusalem when he was twelve years old, he was found sitting with the teachers in the temple, asking them questions, and amazing them with his understanding and his own answers.

For those first decades of Jesus’ life, Mary would have been the primary formative figure in his life. It doesn’t take much to figure this out. When all of the other followers were sometimes trying to interpret Jesus and his ministry, and his preaching through all kinds of traditional interpretations, it was Mary who remembered what the angel Gabriel had promised. She also remembered that the godly Simeon had prophesied that: “a sword will pierce through you soul also,” (Luke 2:35) as the first suggestion that there would be acute pain somehow involved with Jesus and his work.

So then, I am one who believes that we Protestants have given Mary short shrift, and that she deserves a huge place in our understanding of Jesus and his great mission to make all things new. I am always ready to join in affirming: “Hail Mary, the Lord is with you!” I am also quite willing to affirm with my Roman Catholic brothers and sisters, that she is, in a very real sense, the “mother of God” since it was her son who would later be affirmed as God made flesh.

This is not to mention the more mundane and earthy parts of being the mother of Jesus, of giving birth away from home, of being driven into exile at a very delicate time, and of living Jesus’ early years in Egypt—all this before any modern laundry conveniences or Huggies or sanitized necessities. Then, there was the day-in-and-day-out faithfulness of teaching and modeling authentic faith to this one who was so obviously a miracle child, as she was God’s instrument to form him for his Messianic role.

Hail, Mary! Who cannot love you?

About rthenderson

Sixty years a pastor-teacher within the Presbyterian Church. Author of several books, the latest of which are a trilogy on missional ecclesiology: ENCHANTED COMMUNITY: JOURNEY INTO THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH, then, REFOUNDING THE CHURCH FROM THE UNDERSIDE, then THE CHURCH AND THE RELENTLESS DARKNESS. Previous to this trilogy was A DOOR OF HOPE: SPIRITUAL CONFLICT IN PASTORAL MINISTRY, and SUBVERSIVE JESUS, RADICAL FAITH. I am a native of West Palm Beach, Florida, a graduate of Davidson College, then of Columbia and Westminster Theological Seminaries.
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