Download a study guide for this article (free to print/ Web subscribers) at www.
thelutheran.org (click on “study guides”).
Lutherans, too, can remember Mary’s gracious ‘yes’ I
t is August. In the Northern Hemisphere it is the season of harvest: wheat and corn, persimmons and grapes, jujubes and apples and peaches. Roadside ditches bloom
with foxtail and blanket flower. And in this season of har- vest is the festival day of Mary, Mother of Our Lord: Aug. 15, a day dedicated to her for at least 1,400 years. Author Gertrud Mueller Nelson, in To Dance With
God (Paulist Press, 1986), recalls “walking with my mother and sisters along the river banks, collecting every variety of grass seed … from pinks to sage …” to gather into large bouquets for the festival of Mary. “Blessed are you among women,” cried out Mary’s kinswoman Eliza- beth, “and blessed is the fruit of your womb.” Fruitfulness and harvest. Mary is the example of what
magnificence can occur in the world if we are willing to say “yes” to the request of God, if we are willing to cooperate with the divine and participate in the ongoing fulfillment of God’s creation. A 20th-century hymn sings: Mary the root, Christ the
mystic vine; Mary the grape, Christ the sacred wine! Mary the wheat sheaf, Christ the living bread; Mary the rose tree, Christ the rose blood-red ... (Justin Mulcahy, C.P.). Fruitfulness and harvest. Te first reading for this fes-
tival day is from Isaiah (61:7-11). “For as the earth brings forth its shoots, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations” (11). Mary is not the exception, not an unreachable apex of
humanity, but the example of what can spring up if we, in our human freedom, say “yes” to God. As Benedictine nun and author Joan Chittister writes: “By her uncondi- tional fiat, she became the perfect recipient of God’s will that each of us would like to be.” Te Lutheran church still joins with Mary in sing-
ing her great outpouring of praise, the Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55), in evening prayer and in every Advent season. But over the last centuries in Protestant churches, Mary has oſten been relegated to more of a footnote than an example of righteous faith. Martin Luther called Mary the “Queen of Heaven” and “Mother of God” (Teotokos) and advocated praying the first half of the Ave Maria. In his commentary on the Magnificat (1520), Luther
prayed: “May the tender Mother of God herself procure for me the spirit of wisdom, profitably and thoroughly to expound this song of hers.” And yet by 2004, church his- torian and theologian Jaroslav Pelikan felt compelled to write an essay, “Most Generations Shall Call Me Blessed.” A few remnants of the church’s honoring of Mary
By Susan Palo Cherwien
appear, oſten unnoticed, in the liturgies and hymns in the Lutheran church. In verse two of the magnificent hymn to the Trinity, “Ye Watchers and Ye Holy Ones,” J. Ath- elstan Riley (1858-1945) versified a traditional prayer to Mary (the Teotokion): O higher than the cherubim, more glorious than the seraphim, lead their praises: “Alleluia!” Tou bearer of the eternal Word, most gracious, magnify the Lord: “Alleluia! ...” (Evangelical Lutheran Worship, 424; Lutheran Book of Worship, 175). Here Mary is implored to lead the hosts of heaven
in singing praise to the Trinity: “Alleluia!” Mary always points past herself to God, to Christ. In the Magnificat, she sings: “Te Almighty has done great things for me.” In her reply to the angel’s announcement, she assents: “Here am I, the servant of the Lord.” Fruitfulness and harvest. What great and world-
changing things can take place when humans willingly, consciously cooperate with God. In a 14th-century Christmas sermon, German theo-
logian Meister Eckhart wrote: “We celebrate the eternal birth that God … has been bringing to fulfillment and still brings ceaselessly, that this same birth is also being completed in time in human nature. Tis birth is always happening, says (Christian philosopher) Augustine (354-430). But if it is not happening in me, of what use is that?” Like Mary, we, too, are approached by God to give
birth to God in the world—to give birth to compassion, to wisdom, to servanthood, to give birth to justice, peace. We all have the capacity to say “yes” to God, to say “let it be with me according to your word,” by allowing God to work in us, by becoming wise and loving servants, by becoming Christ-like, by incarnating beauty and com- passion and humility, by looking on the world with a gentle and compassionate gaze. Fruitfulness and harvest. Tankfulness be to Mary, for her heart whose gra-
cious “yes” gave the loving God a human body, an entry into the human world, a beating heart and breath and a place at the table with all of us mortals. “Tell me,” wrote
Luther, “was not hers a wondrous soul?”
Author bio: Cherwien is a Minnesota-based writer and musician who has written hymn texts for denominational hym- nals across the U.S.
and Canada. She is a member of Mount Olive Lutheran Church, Minneapolis.
August 2014 27
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52