As an evangelical protestant I am never sure what to do with the Virgin Mary, even at this time of the year when her story is so much at the
center of our story. Oh, I have a great appreciation for her. I have even added
praying the Rosary to my personal spiritual practice of disciplines, so at
least several times a week I recite, “Hail Mary, full of Grace, the Lord is
with thee. Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb,
Jesus.”
Still, as I set up the manger scenes and read the
Christmas story to my grandkids I don’t know exactly how to describe her. My
wonderful Catholic friends call her easily mater
Theou, the Mother of God. I believe that is true in some sense and yet my
desire to keep Jesus fully God, there before time began, makes it hard for me
to wrap my little head around that name, Mother of God. Then a few weeks ago I
came across another designation for this blessed woman, theotokos, the God bearer. The God bearer, the one who carried God
to us. Now that’s a name I can grasp.
I sat down early this morning and wrote a blog that
began with those two paragraphs. I went on to talk about our responsibility to
be theotokos, God bearers; to those
people we come in contact with. It was a fine little blog. And then I turned on
the news and began following with horror the all too familiar unfolding of the
tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Somehow my
little blogging seem so irrelevant so I took it down and deleted it. Except for
the first two paragraphs.
I have been singing this Christmas season that Mark
Lowry song that has become a classic, Mary
Did You Know? Remember those words?
Mary did
you know that your baby boy would someday walk on water?
Mary did you know that your baby boy would save our sons and daughters?
Did you know that your baby boy has come to make you new?
This child that you've delivered, will soon deliver you.
There were other things I wonder if she
knew. Did she know that He would suffer the way He did? Did she know about the
beating? Did she ever imagine the cross? Mary, did you know that you would
outlive your precious little baby and watch them carry His lifeless body from
the top of a hill to a hole in the ground? Did you know the price you would pay
to be theotokos?
This morning as I sat in front of the TV
and wept and prayed for those broken families in Newtown, for those frightened,
helpless children, for those unimaginably wounded mothers, I began to think of
Mary, the God bearer, theotokos. She
may not have known then but she knows now. She knows the pain of being a mother
that lost her child. And perhaps, in some sense, just as her Son carried the
pain of the whole world, she carried the pain of a thousand generations of
wounded mothers. Perhaps she was not only theotokos
then and there but she remains the God bearer now for those families that face
a Christmas season that we cannot fathom.
Two things seem to bring some comfort in
those moments when the loss is so devastating that we cannot breath. One is
some meaning or purpose. “My son gave his life in the military protecting our
freedom.” “My daughter died on a mission field doing what she loved.” It
doesn’t ease the sadness but somehow I think it helps with the pain to know
there was some reason, some rhyme to this madness. Try as I might, I can find
no meaning, no purpose to bring any kind of solace to the senseless act today.
There is nothing that I or anyone can say that will help us to understand this
morning in Connecticut.
But the other thing that helps in some
small measure I believe is to know that I am not alone in my grief; that
someone, somewhere, has been through this before and knows what I am going
through. I know the Scripture says that Jesus was “tempted in every way like we
are.” And that “He was acquainted with all our grief.” But it doesn’t feel like
Jesus knew about this kind of loss. I am pretty sure that even God doesn’t
understand this pain. Enter Mary, theotokos.
Is it possible that God in His Wisdom said, “I’ll start the whole story
with a young mother that knows the pain of all mothers, everywhere. She will be
the God bearer?” Is it possible that on a Christmas Eve 2000 years ago God
foresaw the blinding tragedy in a small school in New England and said, “They
will need someone to carry God to them. They will need theotokos?”
And so I rewrote my blog. And I wept and
prayed for 20 young mothers (and fathers and brothers and sisters) that I have
never met and never will meet. I prayed that God would send someone to them to
comfort them, to carry God to them and them to Him. I prayed for theotokos. And I will be honest, I
prayed to the Mother of God.
Hail Mary, full
of grace, the Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou
among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary,
mother of God, PRAY FOR US sinners both now and in the hour of our death.