Mary’s Imagination
Luke 1:46b – 55
I must begin by telling you that I like to preach on Mary. Actually, I have to put it more strongly than that. I love preaching about Mary. Her faithfulness, humility, wisdom, and imagination are a light to our path. The celebration of Mary names a happy event for the Church Catholic. It names the fulfillment of the purpose of God. What distresses me is the unrelenting arguments of Protestants over the virginity of Mary. How odd that with all the wonderful themes of Christianity captured in the life of Mary, Protestants have made it about her sexual condition. And this fight didn’t start yesterday. Harry Emerson Fosdick, in his famous sermon, “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” called it “the vexed and mooted point”. How sad that fighting over Mary has obscured for so long the life of faithfulness, the beautiful life of Mary.
Pushing aside all this, I want to talk about Mary. Mary, Mary, Mary!
Our Advent word is imagination. Let’s look at Mary’s imagination. She had the most powerful imagination of anyone in the gospels. Mary – the great imaginer.
The disciples – that pack of 12 men often suffered from lack of imagination. When Jesus needed to feed 5,000 hungry people, the men said, “Six months wages would not feed all these people. We can’t afford it.” Nothing says lack of imagination like the dreadful words, “We can’t afford it.” When Jesus was rejected by a village of Samaritans, James and John asked if they should call down fire from heaven and wipe out the village. Now, that’s a wicked imagination. And the scary part is that the imagination of James and John, “the sons of thunder,” lives in religious people to this very moment. There’s always “James and John” in the churches with the evil imagination of control, dominance, and power. Always ready to lord it over others. James and John, we know you, because we often are you!
Evidence accumulates that churches, minus imagination, are looking back to the past to cling to old prejudices about women and gays. They fight about sexuality but ignore actual human bodies, lives, needs, desires, loves. One of the most disturbing trends in American Christianity is the movement to deny women the right to vote. I bet you never even heard of this have you? A group of male leaders associated with Doug Wilson believes the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which gave American women the right to vote, was a mistake.
Put this down: Imagination looks to the future; literalism looks to the past.
And then there’s Mary. I’m sticking with Mary. There’s something about Mary. Imagination is future oriented. A belief in the future and imagination are partners.
Mary got it from the get-go. Mary with the inner eyes of the spirit saw from Nazareth down the halls of eternity to the throne of God in heaven. Mary saw it all in advance and “kept all these things in her heart.” We owe her big time. Mary’s imagination suggests a model for our imaginations.
Mary’s faith shines like the sun. Mary readily accepted the call of God: “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Think of Saul on the Road of Damascus. He fought against God’s call and it took Jesus to ask, “‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?’ He asked, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ The reply came, ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.”
Now, if I had the privilege of preaching on this text every day for a week, I would take you through it verse by verse and flesh out for you the the magnificence of her imagination. Lacking that setting, let me pick a few bits here and there to illuminate Mary and her imagination. Imagination incubates in magnifying the Lord, rejoicing in God. Mary’s imagination rooted in the psalms. What an insight for us. Imagination rises from Scripture to give us the vision for the future. See it here at the beginning of our reading: And Mary said,
“My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.
Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.”
Imagination begins in praise, in rejoicing in the Lord, and in prayer. Mary was a woman of the psalms. This is what reading Scripture does: it activates a holy imagination and imagines what will be in God’s new future.
“I will praise the name of God with a song; I will magnify him with thanksgiving.” “O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”
The church has a prayer: “Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid: Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you, and worthily magnify your holy Name, through Christ our Lord. The Holy Spirit activates clean imaginations, holy imaginations.”
This is the Collect for Purity, but I call it Mary’s prayer. Mary’s heart was wide open to God. She opened all the windows of her heart to God. She was a woman that when she gave her heart, she gave it all and forever. Mary made clear all her desires and kept back no secrets from God. Her heart was clean and pure by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. She perfectly loved God. She worthily magnified God’s holy name.
Mary deserves our praise, our adoration for her powerful imagination. Mary sees the work of God. In a movie about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, an atheist asks Bonhoeffer if he still believes in God in the awfulness of the war and Bonhoeffer says, “Yes. I believe.” Look, says Mary, look at what God is doing: Scatters the proud in the thoughts of their imaginations – evil imaginations that think only of self. Bring down the powerful from their thrones, lifts up the lowly, fills the hungry with good thing, sends the rich away empty. Imagine it.
What a woman! What a faith! What an imagination. It took Mary some time to wrap her mind around what happened to her. The story tells us she went to the hill country to visit Elizabeth and she stayed for three months. What was she doing? “Pondering.” The good book says Mary pondered all these things and kept them in her heart.
I have a practical assignment in mind for us. Mary, the mother of our Lord, was the most imaginative, faithful woman in the world. I invite you to join me in sharing some of the vision of a movement within the Catholic Church known as the .
Marianists view Mary as the model of discipleship. Just as Mary gave birth to Jesus, Marianists seek to bring the presence of Jesus to life within ourselves and others.
The mission statement of the Marianists:
Through lives of prayer and Gospel service,
we dedicate ourselves to the following of
Jesus Christ, Son of God become Son of Mary.
Wherever we are sent, we invite others to share in
Mary’s mission of making Christ present in every
age and culture by forming persons and communities
of apostolic faith that advance justice and reconciliation.
Committed to education, we minister with youth
and in solidarity with the poor.
We have much to learn from Mary and our fellow Christians, the Marianists. Mary, Mary, Mary! There’s something special about Mary and it all started with her imagination.