Mary, Did You Know?

Full disclosure: I have a higher opinion of Mary than most Protestants.  And so, it is with a bit of trepidation that I entered into this piece.  I have things to say, but first, let’s let Mary’s words speak (or sing) to us:  

Luke 1:46-55, New Revised Standard Version: Mary’s Song of Praise

“⁴⁶ And Mary said,

‘My soul magnifies the Lord,
⁴⁷     and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
⁴⁸ for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.
    Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
⁴⁹ for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
    and holy is his name.
⁵⁰ His mercy is for those who fear him
    from generation to generation.
⁵¹ He has shown strength with his arm;
    he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
⁵² He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
    and lifted up the lowly;
⁵³ he has filled the hungry with good things,
    and sent the rich away empty.
⁵⁴ He has helped his servant Israel,
    in remembrance of his mercy,
⁵⁵ according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
    to Abraham and to his descendants forever.’”

This Advent season, I have noticed an extraordinarily high number of complains rising against the classic (sort of) Christmas song, “Mary, Did You Know,” penned by Mark Lowry (lyrics) and Buddy Green (music) and originally released by Michael English on his self-titled album in 1991.  I don’t know if almost 30 years is enough to make something a classic, but I digress.  The question seems to be, did Mark and Michael mansplain Mary, and, if so, what should we do about it?  After taking a careful look at the lyrics (which I probably could have quoted, but I wanted to cover all the bases), I decided it’s about a 50/50 wash.  Yeah, Mary knew some of that stuff, and she didn’t know some of it, and maybe the question was rhetorical.  At any rate, I don’t think the song was intentionally degrading, and I’m probably going to go ahead and keep it in the rotation (but maybe the Pentatonix version).  I’m thankful for the controversy, though, because it caused me to think deeply about Mary… her knowledge… her faith… and her heart.  And that’s really what this post is about.

I love the Magnificat.  I love to read it.  I love to preach it.  Honestly, I just love that it exists.  I love young, faith-filled, faithful Mary, who consents to carry the incarnate, embodied child of God in her uterus.  So, when the songwriter asks, Mary, did you know “when you kiss your little baby, you kiss the face of God,” I think the answer is abundantly clear…  yes, yes, and yes.  

But if we were to ask, Mary, did you know this kid was going to disappear in the temple at age 12, I think the answer shifts.  Y’all cannot tell me that she foreknew Jesus would be briefly misplaced, and, frankly, I’m not going to buy it if you suggest she wasn’t panicked and maybe a little bit pissed.  If you have ever lost a child on a trip, you know full well how the reunion goes.  You are a blubbering mess, tears streaming down your face, because you are certain your kid has been abducted and you will never see him again, and you are certain you are the worst parent who has ever lived.  But then when you do see that little face, all the relief and emotions come out in a tight hug and a lecture about how he had better never, not ever, disappear from at least your peripheral vision, really… ever… again!  And it doesn’t actually end when your children become adults.  It’s the reason for the requested text at the end of the night.  Please… please just push a few buttons, so I know you’re alive and I can get some sleep.  Because the panic of not being able to physically see them doesn’t fade. 

When the songwriter asks, “Mary did you know that your baby boy would save our sons and daughters,” I think the answer, with the understanding that Mary certainly knew the Messiah was kicking her just beneath the ribs, is abundantly clear… yes, yes, and yes.

But if we were to ask, Mary, did you know the savior of the world was going to have an attitude… at age thirty… when you asked him to replace some water with some wine, I think she might have balked.  Seriously?  For real?  What do you do with this kid, who’s like, “Mom… that’s really not what I’m supposed to be doing right now… at least not quite yet.”  I like that Jesus relents.  I like that his first miracle takes place, not because he planned it that way, but because his Mama asked him to do something, and even though he didn’t really feel like it, he acquiesced.  It’s one for the books!  Mary, did you know about the miraculous healings and all the ways in which they would take place?  Maybe not… but she sure knew she taught that kid to set the table.  And then he did…  over, and over, and over again… 

It gets a little trickier after that, because like many of the Jewish people awaiting Messiah, Mary most certainly did not know what it meant for her child to be the lamb. 

Recently, I’ve re-read and re-watched some movies and stories and found myself in different characters than usual, so perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised when Matthew 12:46-50 hit me a little different the other day:

“⁴⁶ While Jesus was still talking to the crowd, his mother and brothers stood outside, wanting to speak to him. ⁴⁷ Someone told him, ‘Your mother and brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you.’ ⁴⁸ He replied to him, ‘Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?’ ⁴⁹ Pointing to his disciples, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers. ⁵⁰ For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.’”

It's usually one of those “Yay Jesus” moments or one of those “Yay disciples” moments, but as I read this, most recently, it cut deep as I thought about Mary.  Who is my mother?  Whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my… mother?  Incredulous.  For, who might that be more than Mary, herself?  Point taken, family is indeed more than just flesh and blood (maybe Jesus even represents this very best), but I cannot get around this paragraph.  I’d like to say I cannot even imagine how Mary felt when those words stung like barbs.  As she stood outside waiting for an audience of her firstborn child and being met with his silence, I have to wonder if her hand brushed over the stretch marks… if she shifted uncomfortably, because she never took off those last ten pounds and nobody remembered what she looked like before they were a permanent part of her… if she thought back to the ridicule of those early days, when she’d just begun to show and her explanation was unbelievable (literally)…  if she peed herself a little bit, or if she just cried.  Mothers tend to have a lot of bodily fluids that just flow whether they want them to or not.  I am dissatisfied that Jesus does not answer her call here, but it’s not the end of the story…

I wonder if Mary thought back to this moment when she was standing at the cross and Jesus publicly recognized her as his mother and provided for her by exclaiming that his dearest friend, the disciple whom he loved, was now her son.  I think the temptation here is to jump ahead too quickly, proclaiming closure, proclaiming repaired relationship.  Maybe it reaches back to Jesus’ words about making things right at the altar before you offer your gift.  I don’t really know.  What I do know is that there is no way any of that even mattered to Mary in that moment.  I know she would have traded places with Jesus in less than half a heartbeat, given the opportunity.  Given the chance, she would deliver him again… and again… and again, even if she knew “this child that you delivered [would] soon deliver you.”  I know this, because I am definitely not nearly as fabulous a mother or follower of God as Mary was, and I would spill my own blood over and over again, an unimaginable number of times, before ever accepting the abuse of any of my children as a simple fact I was wise enough to know and acknowledge.  And so, I have to push back on the idea that Mary knew… at least like that.  I don’t think she knew.  And it’s OK to admit that knowing isn’t the end-all solution to everything. 

There’s actually a whole lot of grace in recognizing that most of what we do, we do with limited knowledge.  At our best, we do what we think is right, given minimal details and perspective.  At our very best, we wake up and do it again, adjusting for all the things we got wrong.  And then again.  And then again.

Mary, did you know that being a mother was going to break you in every single way?  Spoiler:  Again, I’m going with no.  Mary, if you knew, would you still say yes?  I can’t actually answer for Mary, but I think so, because I would.

L.

If Jesus had a Facebook Account

Over the past few days, I have had a recurring thought: Everything is temporary.

This runs entirely counter to anything I want to be thinking, right now, in the midst of transition.  No one wants to consider the fleeting nature of everything when something wonderful has just begun.  We usually save this kind of contemplation for endings.  Yet here I am…

As it turns out, there might be some wisdom that comes with age and a couple of decades of ministry experience.  That’s the first thing I want to write about on this #MinistryMonday, but I have to start with the lack of wisdom that accompanied those early years when I set out to save the world with a wish and a prayer.

I think most of us imagine how life might be… at least sometimes.  I suppose I am something of an anomaly (surprise, surprise), but my daydreams have often included intense plans and details.  As soon as a viable possibility appears on my radar, I can build a life on it.  This is both a blessing and a curse.

In my early 20s (and beyond… and maybe right up until this morning, when it hit me like a ton of bricks), I didn’t understand the difference between attachment and permanence.  What a tragic flaw!   

Just statistically speaking, ministry assignments are not permanent, and they’re often far shorter than the average human being hopes.  Very early on, I made this connection and apparently (subconsciously) determined that I would only get attached if I found myself in a context that lent itself to permanence.  What a terrible mistake!  If we all lived like that, no one would ever get attached to anyone or any community. 

Nothing lasts forever.  For me, this drive toward permanence resulted in a few places that I love so much it hurts and a few more with which I never fully engaged.  I think I’m definitely having one of those “If I knew then what I know now” moments.  Live and learn.

Recently, this quote from Jim Elliot has resonated deeply (I honestly can’t remember if I’ve already blogged it.  If so, forgive me.  I have done an awful lot of writing on various platforms lately):

“Wherever you are, be all there.”       

What, exactly, does this mean?  Admittedly, I’m not 100% sure, but it must begin with relationship… with attachment… 

With all of this came a second thought (or maybe a question), and I feel as if I need to be exceptionally careful with it, because technology has moved and shifted our social contexts in ways none of us could have imagined when I started out in ministry: Who are my people?

This used to be an easy one to answer.  Our people were the ones we saw on a regular basis, in “real life.”  My very imaginative children used to play this game they made up, and there were actually three “worlds” of sorts.  There was real life, real life; real life, pretend; and pretend, pretend.  Depending on which mode they were in, there were different people and different scenarios.  As you might imagine, sometimes it was entirely dramatic play (see pretend, pretend), but sometimes they were themselves in their alternate reality (real life, pretend), and I think maybe “real life, real life” was actually real life… duh…  I found it endearing that they inherited the whole “daydream like it’s real” thing.     

Enter social media…

We don’t ever really leave anyone or any place, anymore.  There are things about this that I love.  The ability to stay connected with everyone who has ever been a part of our lives is phenomenal on so many levels.  But do we have the capacity for this?  Do I have the capacity for this?  I don’t know.

So, I started thinking about if Jesus had had access to Facebook when he was here on Earth in bodily form.  Would he have had a personal profile and a separate page for ministry related posts?  Would he have had an automatic feed of his blog and podcast that friends could use for cross-pollinating promotions?  Would he have been offended if Peter didn’t share his posts?  What about John?  What about Mary… or Mary… or Mary?  Would his disciples have joined a “closed” group, perhaps with additional “secret” groups for the seventy-two and the twelve?  As he went from one town to another, how well connected would he have been able to stay with each community?  Would this kind of pervasive interaction have kept Jesus from being as “all in” as he needed to be with the people who were literally in front of his face, or would it have served as a way to strengthen every relationship, appropriately, in a timeless sort of way?  Would Jesus have used Memes?  Wait… don’t answer that one…

Somehow this all comes together… this balance between permanent and temporary, between attachment and distance, between face-to-face and face-to-screen.  And I think one of the hardest things to work through is the fact that it’s all real.  We simply live in an era where our communication and connectivity is greater than it has ever been before… simply, but not simple.

L.

εὐωδία Χριστοῦ: God Who Smells

When I started out with this plan to identify some of the ways in which God relates to us on a basic, sensory level; I have to admit I was thinking about very usual, reciprocal stuff.  God sees us.  God hears us.  We feel God’s touch.  We hear God’s voice.  But then I got all weird and truly sensory oriented, and I started to think about how important the olfactory system can be to memory.  It’s probably a processing phenomenon. Smell simply comes closer to the areas of the brain that handle memory and emotion than any other sense. 

So, I’m going to talk about noses, and you really, truly do not have to read this.  But I do have to write it.

My grandpa on my mom’s side—my “Paw”—had a huge nose.  Huge.

Of all the wonderful things that might have been passed down in the gene pool, I inherited his nose.  Four of my five children also have his nose.  My fifth child has a mix between his nose and another family nose.  It’s a dominant nose.  There’s nothing we can do about it (well…  OK… technically there probably is, but we’re not going to do anything about it).

I have a phenomenal sense of smell.  Sometimes this is a blessing, and sometimes it’s less than that.  I live with three sons.  On a bad day, I have been known to walk into rooms and immediately back out of them because of the universal scent of teenage boy.  On a good day, it’s like Axe body spray overload.  Even the people we love most kind of stink sometimes.

But then there are these moments when a scent that may or may not actually be there hits me, and I am transported back in time, often to a really good place where I am in the presence of happy memories of experiences or people or feelings.  This, of course, can go both ways, so if the scent is unpleasant; it is also overwhelming.  To smell is to remember.   

This all seems very human, and yet we have what I would consider to be a somewhat obscure passage in II Corinthians, a letter that I think Paul begins to write in the midst of grief and stress and struggle, perhaps even looking for a little bit of comfort himself.  His plans are shaken, he is missing his people, and he is tracking Titus like a dog.  Then boom!  Out of nowhere, Paul is describing how we smell.  This goes on for one paragraph, and then he returns to a more typical treatise.  It’s really too bad Paul didn’t live in an era during which he could have written a daily blog…

II Corinthians 2:14-17: “But thanks be to God, who always leads us as captives in Christ’s triumphal procession and uses us to spread the aroma of the knowledge of him everywhere.  For we are to God the pleasing aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing.  To the one we are an aroma that brings death; to the other, an aroma that brings life. And who is equal to such a task?  Unlike so many, we do not peddle the word of God for profit. On the contrary, in Christ we speak before God with sincerity, as those sent from God” (NIV).

Paul uses two notable words:

εὐωδία (euōdia, fragrance) – This is used to describe Jesus.  A fragrance, it appears from other definitions, is a pleasant, sweet, delicate smell.  It is also generally a quality.

ὀσμὴ (osmē, aroma) – This is used to describe how we take on and exude that fragrance.  Interestingly, the definitions are very closely related, but an aroma is only almost always pleasant, and it is exhibits a stronger quality.

Both are used to depict undeniable attributes.  We can’t spray these on and wash them off.  We all smell.

I am somewhat astounded by the idea that Jesus has a scent… and we have a scent… and we can smell him… and people can smell us… and here’s the kicker—God is smelling us!  I hope I smell like life as I walk by, because this is lasting. 

We talk a lot about remembering God, and maybe especially about remembering Christ, but I’m not sure we speak too much to the subject of being remembered by God.  In a culture where it is often easier to be forgotten, may we recognize that God is not in that business.  God knows us intimately enough to follow our scent and to actually find us in all of our past and present… and to stay close as we move into our future.  God must have a fabulous nose.

L.

Unmemorable

True story…  I had already written this post before I read the daily office, but when I saw this, I laughed… and laughed…  Fair warning, it’s seriously out of context…

Psalm 13:1a “How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever?” (NIV)

There was this awkward moment, this morning, when I sat down to have coffee with my friend Erin and looked across the room.  I turned to her and began to ask, “Erin… behind you… is that…” And since we have fallen into an old familiar pattern, where we can apparently finish each other’s sentences and answer each other’s questions, even if they are not complete, Erin replied, “Yeah, that’s Mr. Wilson.  He’s here almost every Wednesday.  I talk to him all the time.”

Well, OK then.  Nothing like starting your morning off feeling like you’re in 10^th grade geometry class again.

When Mr. Wilson walked by our table, I jumped up and said, “MR. WILSON!”

I instinctively knew what was coming before he ever uttered a word…

“Uh-oh…  name… I don’t remember who you are…”

I gave my name.  Then my thought process went something like this:

I had you for geometry…  and honors algebra II/trig… and driver’s ed… and I was your TA for a year!  Oh my goodness, I must be completely unmemorable.  Wait, did he just ask a math question?  At 37, I don’t have to answer that, do I?

Mr. Wilson graciously pretended to remember me at this point and asked what I have been doing.  Because they only thing I could think was, “Drinking a mocha at Panera,” I was especially glad that Erin came through…

“She’s raising five kids… and teaching music… and working on a third degree, because she’s always working on another degree…  She’s basically a professional student… and lives in two states…”

Um… yeah… insert me saying, “Life is kinda weird…”

Now, here’s the truth.  I shouldn’t expect Mr. Wilson to remember me.  It’s been close to twenty years, and I am certain he had hundreds of students pass through the doors of his classroom after me.  He did, in fact, make something of a profound impact on my life, because he pretty much saved me from repeating my sophomore year of high school due to lack of attendance.  I was hospitalized for asthma three times that year and risked failure, even though I was an honor roll student, because of truancy.  This made it pretty difficult to pass a speech class, which is how I ended up as his TA.

Well, Mr. Wilson finished off our conversation by saying, “Keep working and paying taxes, so I can stay retired,” and we all laughed and went on our way.

But this interaction got me thinking…  I don’t really want to spend several years of my life with someone just to be forgotten.

I have long since stopped worrying about being credited for anything I do in the world.  I don’t feel the need to see my name in lights or even to have it whispered from across a coffee shop.  If no one ever asks, “Hey… isn’t that L,” I’ll be OK.  And I mean that.  I honestly mean that, so don’t go worrying about whether or not I’m legitimately alright with invisibility as a super power.  I am.  But I’m only OK with this if the things I am doing and saying are making a real and lasting impact on the people with whom I come into contact.  I want to be redemptive.  I don’t care if people remember who I am, but I do care that I’m doing something that matters. 

I recently read a quote by Mother Teresa.  Apparently it was her motto: “I don’t do great things.  I do small things with great love.”  I could definitely live with that.  I hope I can live like that.  Unmemorable can be OK, as long as it’s accompanied by loving action.

 
L.