thing but meekness, a reminder of how gifted we are, and how deeply God trusts us and gambles on our courage and willingness.
Henrich: She is a living model of what author Marianne Williamson asked: “Your playing small does not serve the world. Who are you not to be great?”
Mary is so clearly like us. Church folks have been encouraged to imagine Mary as a living, breathing character for the millennia. And we have. She can be everything from a poor teenage girl to queen of heaven, mother of sorrows to a serenely con- fident believer.
Over the course of her life and from our own, Mary is a harried mother who wonders where her child is, can’t understand what he’s been up to, and knows he’s been brought to birth to do great things even when the rest of the town or world doesn’t see it. At the same time she is a faith- ful woman, a reflective woman who reminds us of our individual and cor- porate callings.
Oldenburg: And she reflects our weaker moments as well. That line of Simeon at the presentation at the tem- ple, when he tells Mary that “a sword will pierce your own soul too” (Luke 2:35), means that she keeps us com- pany when we’re conflicted about this Jesus, and when he offends, embarrasses or just confuses us. Not only does Mary offer us Lutherans— modest to a fault—a model of eager- ness, she offers a model of honesty as well.
Henrich: But that’s not the only thing Simeon says at the presenta- tion. Mary really listens to him when he says Jesus will be “glory to your people Israel” (Luke 2:32). For me, Mary is one of the bibli- cal characters who must constantly
discern, as we ourselves are called to do, how God is acting in and in spite of our experi- ences. Mary knows what God’s purpose is right away in Luke’s Gospel. She realizes, even as she speaks the wonderful words of her own scripture, how God’s call and gift to her is a gift for all her people, Israel (Luke 1:54).
In fact, she comes to under- stand very quickly that God is keeping ancient promises to redeem God’s people in giving her this son. Even so, she has to keep on learning and pondering as each new experience—I’m thinking of the shepherds and then Simeon’s words, but also as she is with the 11 and others at Pentecost (Acts 1:14)—chal- lenges her to reformulate and alter her earlier ideas. In that way she is exactly
DESIGN PICS
like us. We are baptized and there- fore bear the name of Jesus; we are his body. And yet, there is no simple “recipe” or manual for how we are called to bear that name in all the cir- cumstances we live through. Ponder- ing and discerning are our lot as they were Mary’s.
Oldenburg: That reworking has cer- tainly been done by people treated as if they were on the margin of society, and even of the church. The Magnifi- cat (Luke 1:46-55) identifies not just Mary, but God with the lowly and the hungry, and greets with joy the news that the structures of society will be turned upside down.
Henrich: And think of the Virgin of Guadalupe. As we get to know Latino and Latina brothers and sisters bet- ter, we catch a glimpse of how Mary became the one who summoned them into seeing and hearing themselves as God’s beloved children. Mary
appeared to native peoples and raised up the lowly, embracing them as called into discipleship by God. And how Mexico loves her. The rest of the church could learn something about celebration from them.
Oldenburg: Twenty years ago the eighth round of the Lutheran-Roman Catholic dialogues examined “One Mediator, the Saints, and Mary.” The Lutherans on that team—several of them our teachers, colleagues and friends, Sarah—called on Lutherans to continue to affirm Christ as the only mediator between God and humanity, but also to continue to rec- ognize Mary as “the most praisewor- thy of saints.”
She is a model of the life of faith, but also the means by which the Word of God took on flesh. She is a mirror for us, in which we can see who we are as the people of God and how we might live out that identity. We can learn constantly from her and, over the centuries, we certainly have.
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