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| Eleusa Theotokos with scenes from the life of Mary, 18th century |
My friend Ann sent me a link to the wonderful sermon about Mary that Ian McAlister will preach this coming Sunday. Below is an excerpt.
The sermon is one of the best on the mother of Jesus and offers perhaps the most realistic description of Mary and her life that I've known. I love the emphasis on Mary's sisterhood with marginalized women. It makes me somewhat ashamed of my rather flip and superficial question about Mary's perpetual virginity in my earlier post on the Feast of St Mary the Virgin. How on earth did we get from the accounts in the Gospels to "an icon of a peaceful middle-class, western woman dressed in a blue robe"?While Mary was one of the original Jewish Christians, she was never a Gentile. It does her no honour, therefore, to take to her Jewishness with a bottle of White King Bleach. Don’t think we haven’t done that, believe me. We have.
We’ve turned her Jewish complexion into that of a blond, blue-eyed Caucasian. Not content with disfigurement, we’ve also taken to her spiritual life and made her into a 20th/21st century version of a Christian woman, which she ain’t.
Mary lived in a rural village, Nazareth, whose population consisted largely of peasants and tradies. Married to a local chippie, her life consisted of taking care of her large household. Besides Joseph and Jesus, Scripture tells us there were four brothers: James, Joses, Judas and Simon and some unnamed sisters.
Her days were filled with the hard, unpaid work of women of all ages: the feeding, clothing and nurturing of a growing household. Like other village women of her day, she was, most likely, illiterate.
Times were tough in l’le old Nazareth. This village was part of an occupied state under the heel of imperial Rome. Revolution was in the air. The atmosphere was tense. Violence and poverty prevailed.
To our shame, it’s only in recent days that we’ve even noticed the similarities between Mary's life and the lives of many others. The Flight into Egypt and the death of her son Jesus by execution compares with those who, among other horrors, have had their children and grandchildren disappear or murdered by dictatorial regimes.
Whatever else Mary is, she is a sister of the marginalized women in every oppressive situation. It does her no honour, then, to take her out of her dangerous historical circumstance and transform her into an icon of a peaceful middle-class, western woman dressed in a blue robe.
The icon pictured at the head of the post with Mary and Jesus clothed in finery is hardly realistic, but at least the two are not blond of hair and fair of complexion.
Image from Wikipedia.
