Sabbatical Book Club: Unmaking Mary

Luke 1:46-55

And Mary said: “My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour, for he has been mindful    of the humble state of his servant. From now on all generations will call me blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things for me—holy is his name. His mercy extends to those who fear him, from generation to generation. He has performed mighty deeds with his arm; he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts. He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, remembering to be merciful to Abraham and his descendants forever, just as he promised our ancestors.”

The full title of the book that is our inspiration for this morning is ‘Unmaking Mary: Shattering the Myth of Perfect Motherhood’ by Chine McDonald. It is part theological exploration of the mother of Jesus, and part memoir reflecting on the author’s own story of being a mother. I have written before about my own experience of motherhood, and the way it has been inextricably entwined with my experience of ministry, but this morning I want to focus on Mary. She may not hold the same place in our tradition as she does in the Catholic Church, but she does occupy an important place in both the Christian and cultural imagination, and I think the words we have just spoken together should be enough to remind us why she is worthy of our attention.

The language of ‘unmaking, and ‘shattering’ from the book’s title might lead us to think of deconstruction, a word that has taken on a particular resonance in theological circles over recent years. People are increasingly using it to describe a process of breaking down or unlearning or letting go of religious ideas that they were brought up with. I know some people feel deeply uncomfortable about the idea of deconstruction, because they fear those who go through it will end up with nothing but rubble. I’m sure that does happen sometimes, but I’m also sure that needs to happen sometimes. If the structure is no good, if the theology you have been handed has racism or homophobia or self hatred baked into the foundations, you are going to need to dig them out and start again.

The good news is that it is possible to rebuild from the rubble, although it may take some time before people are ready to do that. And if the foundations are not the problem, then it may be possible to reconstruct without having to tear everything down first.  That has certainly been my experience. I have never felt the need for a complete deconstruction, but I have done a fair bit of reconstruction. I’ve knocked off a wing or two that were shoddily built, and I’ve made it all a bit more open plan, and I believe my faith is truer to the architect’s design for it. And it struck me this week that for the first disciples, journeying with Jesus must have been an exercise in this kind of reconstruction, as they rethought their expectations of the Messiah, and their understanding of how far God’s promise extends.

But that’s all something of a digression, because the focus for this morning is supposed to be Mary. Chine McDonald argues that we need to unmake our image of her. But why? What’s wrong with it? Thinking quite literally about her image, we might start with the fact that she is rarely pictured as visibly pregnant, and she is very often pictured as white. Now I appreciate that Mary was not always pregnant, and I have no desire to reduce her to a walking womb, so there are good reasons why there should be images of Mary without child, but I have collected quite a few nativity scenes, and I am yet to find one in which Mary has a bump. Women do not deflate immediately after birth, and so even with baby Jesus in the manger, there should still be some evidence of Mary’s pregnancy. Perhaps it seems trivial, but hiding or sanitising the physical reality of Mary’s motherhood, and then setting her up as the ideal of motherhood, has fed into a culture in which many women end up hiding or sanitising the physical reality of their own motherhood. 

Likewise, there is a long tradition of artists painting religious figures to reflect their own context and culture, which means that for those of us raised with Western art, we are most used to seeing Mary with European features. There can be something quite powerful about recognising ourselves in the characters and stories of scripture, especially for groups of people who have not often seen themselves in those characters and stories, and Chine writes about the significance for her of the Black Madonna, but we should never forget that Mary was a real woman who existed in a real time and a real place, and it seems more important than ever that we remember her as a brown-skinned Palestinian Jewish woman who had to flee an occupying power. Picturing Mary in all her truth connects us to those who may not be like us, and it also frees us to picture ourselves in all our truth. 

And yet in some respects, it is Mary’s truth that causes the greatest difficulty, because she is the virgin who has given birth. Modern fertility treatments may make that technically possible, but it is still highly unlikely, and so positioning Mary as the ideal for womanhood, as the church has done for centuries, sets women up for almost certain failure. That is particularly the case in traditions which maintain the perpetual virginity of Mary, while also expecting women to treat motherhood as their highest calling. A bit like Barbie, who was meant to show little girls that they could be anything they wanted, but soon came to be associated primarily with unattainable standards of beauty, Mary is the impossible ideal that has the potential to liberate but has instead been used to oppress. As the late great Rachel Held Evans said, "it is as though, over time, Mary's feet have gotten farther and farther off the ground", so that we can no longer reach her.

We need to get away from the idea that Mary is the benchmark for all womanhood and motherhood. First because there are many ways to be a woman and a mother, second because Mary is a wonderful example for all of us whether we are one or both or neither of those things, and third because it can give the impression that there are different ideals for different people when the truth is that Jesus is the ideal for all personhood. I do appreciate the irony of complaining that trying to be like Mary sets us up for failure and then saying that we should try to be like Jesus, but at least then we’re all equally set up to fail. We can certainly admire and learn from Mary and other spiritual figures, but that is foremost because of the ways in which they show us how to live in the way of Christ.

So we’ve unmade Mary, but now can we remake her? I’m not going to be so bold to suggest we can reconstruct a whole new Marian theology in the next couple of minutes, but I think we can start to build some new ideas. In a short while, we will share communion, remembering that Jesus said, "This is my body, broken for you. This is my blood, shed for you." Those words have landed differently since I realised that thirty years before Jesus could say those words to his disciples, Mary was able to say those words to Jesus. I don’t know what her labour was like, but I am certain there was blood, and I am sure her body felt broken. Of course the sacrifice Jesus made on the cross is a sacrifice like no other, but the sacrifice Mary made in giving her body to bring Christ into the world reminds us that we too are called to make sacrifices for one another. People worry so much about being a burden, or are so quick to reassure others that they are not, but we are meant to carry one another.

I want to end by reminding us that Mary was not only a mother, but also a prophet and a disciple. When she sang of God bringing down the mighty and exalting the humble, filling the hungry with good things and sending the rich away empty, she was not simply speaking of things that had happened, but prophetically stepping into the kingdom that her son would announce. I have said before that in my sanctified imagination, Mary sang the Magnificat to Jesus as a child, so that those words helped shape him as he grew in wisdom and stature. They can shape us in the same way. We also know that Mary was present throughout Jesus’ ministry, and the fact that the gospel of Luke contains so much of her story suggests that the writer spoke to her, which means she continued to tell Jesus’ story after the resurrection and ascension. I think she loved him and believed in him better than anyone else. She can inspire us to love and believe in him too. So may we follow the advice of my jumper, and “eat, drink and be Mary”, as we strive to be like Christ.