Protestants have traditionally brought Mary out with the crèche and put her away with the Christmas wrappings. We have tended to think of Mary as belonging primarily to Catholics and have been reluctant to talk about her. We've been more reluctant to talk about Mary than we have a good number of other biblical women.I think a lot of it is reaction to some Roman Catholic teaching, some Orthodox teaching, a sort of fear that Mary was too elevated in some other traditions, and a little bit of concern that Mary was being regarded more highly than she ought to be regarded. But we've gone to the other extreme.
Even if some of the language that other Christian traditions use to talk about Mary is uncomfortable for us, we can still do what Protestants like to think we do well, which is stay with biblical stories and look at how she's treated there and pay close attention to those as characteristic of our own tradition. There's a lot there that we've neglected, I think, to our own detriment.
In Luke's Christmas story, which most of us know by heart, one of the important early scenes is of the annunciation to Mary. What strikes me about that story is that the first thing we learn about Mary is only her name. Really, Luke tells us nothing about her. He doesn't give us any credentials to make us think that Mary is worthy of being chosen by God. God has made a decision that Mary will be the mother of Jesus. Mary is chosen entirely by God's own initiative. This is a primary example of what Protestants emphasize as God's divine grace. In Luke's version of the story it has nothing to do with Mary's own virtue or Mary's own religiosity. Well, we've neglected that wonderful example of divine grace.
At the end of the story, Mary says, "Behold, the slave of the Lord." She takes on herself this very distinct title and becomes, in a sense, the first Christian disciple, the first disciple of Jesus. I think it's unfortunate that Protestants, of all people, have neglected to pay attention to the way in which Mary becomes an example of Christian service.
Another example would be in the Magnificat itself, the wonderful poem that Mary comes out with when she goes to visit her kinswoman, Elizabeth. The Magnificat really is an example of biblical prophecy. Mary takes on a very strong role there of declaring God's favor upon the poor and oppressed, and God's warning about the downfall of the mighty and the powerful and the wealthy. We have not given due regard to Mary as the one who utters those words.
One of the reasons I think some women in the Protestant churches have been drawn to Mary is their own sense of connection to her as a mother. But I also think that because we fear that Mary will only be identified as a mother, some Protestants have been a little reluctant about that. I tend to prefer to think of her myself as the leading disciple, the first of the disciples. But I think we also see her vulnerability as a mother -- the loss that she has, the risk that she has -- and a lot of Protestants, especially women, are drawn to that motif in the biblical texts. Some of them won't talk about it. They'll only talk about it when someone else has opened the conversation.
Protestants are generally uncomfortable with elevating any of the disciples over any other, and I probably would share that discomfort. There is a sense, though, in which Mary becomes the mother of disciples as we follow her story, and I don't think we should be reluctant to acknowledge that title for her. In that sense, we have a lot to share with Christians of other traditions that we haven't always acknowledged.
