Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Jesus had a Mother


The simplest fact of the Christmas story is that Jesus had a mother. Mary is the guarantee of the true humanity of Jesus Christ. That Jesus had a mother indicates that he doesn’t merely resemble us; he is the same as us.

In the Creed Jesus’ human life is bracketed by two people: “He was born of the Virgin Mary, and he suffered under Pontius Pilate.”

“Born of the Virgin Mary.” Jesus begins his life, as we all do, with his mother. I was born in the former Women’s Hospital in New York City, now part of the great St Luke’s complex. The tired Floyd family joke was that as a male I came to be born in a women’s hospital, “because I wanted to be with my mother.”

But if in his human nature he is just the same as us, he is at the same time truly divine, and this is where the paradox of the virgin birth helps communicate the mystery of the incarnation. Mary herself carries some of the paradoxes of the story. Historian Jaroslav Pelikan calls her “Our Lady of the Paradoxes: Virgin but Mother, Human Mother but Mother of God.”

The title for Mary, “Mother of God,” comes from the story of the Visitation in Luke, which many Christians will be hearing this week in the Gospel lesson for the Fourth Sunday of Advent. It is her cousin Elizabeth who is the first person to recognize Mary’s unique role in the drama of salvation. She says, “Who am I, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?”

As the Mother of God, or the “God bearer,” as the Eastern Orthodox put it, Mary is instrumental to the story. An ordinary humble young women who find herself in an extraordinary situation, Mary, like John the Baptist, points beyond herself to Christ. Since her role is to insure the humanity of Jesus, all attempts to turn her into something more than a human mother undermine her proper place in the story. It is helpful to keep in mind St. Ambrose’s dictum, that “Mary was the temple of God, not the God of the Temple.”

3 comments:

  1. Nice post Rick, though I reckon that the claim ‘Mary is the guarantee of the true humanity of Jesus Christ’ both invites and requires some further clarification. In what sense can we make this claim? Upon what basis? What might be some theological implications of making such a claim? What does it say about God? About us? And where’s the Spirit at work in all this? Do we not also want to say that the Spirit is the guarantee of the humanity of Jesus Christ?

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  2. Thanks, Jason, for the good questions.

    It seems to me that one or another end of the Chalcedonian see-saw is always either too far up or too far down.

    So I was merely reminding us that the fact that Jesus was born like the rest of us, which helps us realize that whatever else he is, he is “truly human.”

    And what does this say about God? That he is truly “God with us,” sharing our humanity in the flesh of the man Jesus. To me, that was always a place of connection for my pastoral work, that through the Incarnation God “shared our frame.”

    The work of the Spirit in all this is a subject of another post, but I love the question and will need to think about it.

    This is the first in a series about “the scandal of particularity,” with some Karl Barth and C. S. Lewis on the way, where the even bigger scandal (for some people) is that not only was Jesus human, but Jewish, which I think is theologically decisive for the whole Christian story (as you know.)

    Best,
    Rick

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  3. I love your image of the 'Chalcedonian see-saw' and the hint of posts to come sounds great. Bring it on brother. I need more Floyd!

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