Mary, A Prophet? A Sermon for 3 Advent by the Rev'd Emily Rose Proctor
“Mary, a Prophet?” - Sermon by Emily Rose Proctor
3rd Sunday in Advent – Dec. 11, 2022
Christ the King Episcopal Church, Santa Rosa Beach
In the gospel reading for today, Jesus asks the crowd, “Then what did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet.” In Advent we hear a lot from prophets, especially the prophet Isaiah and John the Baptist. But there’s another prophet in the lectionary today that you might have missed… and that’s the prophet Mary.
Mary, a prophet? You might be asking. And perhaps the image of Mary you have in your mind is the one most often depicted in art—a young woman, face placid, eyes downcast, hands together in prayer, crossed over her heart or, better yet, holding her child.
But is this the Mary of the Magnificat that we just read aloud together, and that Episcopalians say every day as part of evening prayer?
I’d like to propose that Mary is more than simply a willing servant, meek and mild. I’d like to propose that she is also a prophet, right up there with John the Baptist and Isaiah. And that the joy reflected in the Magnificat is not simply the joy of an expectant mother, but a prophet’s joy, anticipating the coming victory of God. Let me explain.
If we let scripture be our guide, one of the first things we learn about prophets is that they can be men or women. The title of prophet is first used to describe Abraham, then Moses’ brother Aaron, but the third prophet mentioned in the Bible is Miriam, Moses’ sister, who leads the people in singing and dancing in praise to God—her own Magnificat of sorts in Exodus 15. And here, in this first female prophet, we get a taste, not of meek and mild, but of bold and joyous, and maybe even a little disturbing.
You see, Miriam’s song praises God for bringing the parted waters of the Red Sea back together to sweep away their Egyptian pursuers. She is celebrating the defeat of her enemies. It’s understandable given that their freedom and their lives were in danger, but it is nonetheless a good reminder that the word prophets bring can be an unsettling one, especially to those in power.
Mary’s name, in Hebrew, is “Miriam.” She is named after the first female prophet. Coincidence?
Well, here’s another one for you. The second female prophet mentioned in the Bible is Deborah, who was not only a prophet, but a judge who led the Israelites into battle against the Canaanites (Judges 4), when the general whom she asked to lead the charge refused to go without her. Her prediction that because of his cowardice, the Canaanite commander Sisera would fall at the hands of a woman came true.
After the battle, the prophet Deborah sang a song of praise to God for the Israelites’ victory (are you detecting a pattern here?), and in it she praised in particular, Jael, the woman who killed Sisera, calling her “Most blessed of women” (Judges 5:24). The same phrase that Elizabeth used to describe Mary in Luke 1:42. The women that Mary has been linked to by Luke are not meek and mild women, but prophets and warriors.
Are there other clues that Mary’s joy goes beyond that of just an expectant mother’s? There are.
Many prophets have a moment where they are identified by God, chosen and called to do a particular prophetic task. Often that moment inspires some initial fear and trembling. Mary’s moment is the one we call the annunciation.
And the angel’s words to Mary, “Do not be afraid,” echo the words God spoke also to the prophets Abraham and Jeremiah.
Another recurring theme in the prophetic tradition is that prophets sometimes have some questions about their worthiness or ability to carry out the task. Moses protests that he is slow of speech and slow of tongue. Jeremiah says that he is just a boy. Isaiah laments that he is a man of unclean lips.
And Mary? Well, Mary has some questions about how exactly she’s going to have a baby since she’s not yet married. And like the other prophets, Mary is assured that the power of God is sufficient.
Prophets seem to know, or to quickly learn, that their calling isn’t about them and their special abilities—it’s about God and God’s ability to work through us in spite of or sometimes through our very weakness. Mary lifts this good news up for all of us to hear in her Magnificat, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.”
Another thing biblical prophets have in common is that they tend to be threatening to those in power. Often they have been given a word about who is to be the next King, which is not usually good news to the current King. Or the prophet provides a critique of the current king or religious leadership or of the nation as a whole.
Hence prophets like Elijah and Jeremiah faced real danger at the hands of their political enemies. And Mary was no different. By announcing to Mary that her son would be given “the throne of his ancestor David” in order to “reign over the house of Jacob forever,” Gabriel effectively dubbed her a kingmaker.
And according to Matthew, Mary, Joseph, and the baby were forced to flee into Egypt as refugees to avoid Herod’s genocidal wrath at the announcement of this new king.
But perhaps the most essential task of a prophet is being entrusted with God’s Word. Sometimes that means reminding people of God’s commandments, deeds of power or God’s past promises. Sometimes it means interpreting current events. And sometimes it means providing a warning or a promise about what the future holds or may hold.
We tend to think about prophesy only as a prediction of the future, but God’s Word is relevant in the past, present and future tense. And that too is manifest in the word Mary receives and the word she speaks in the Magnificat. Gabriel tells Mary first about what WILL happen, and then Mary rejoices with Elizabeth in what is currently happening to them both. But she ends her Magnificat with a kind of battle cry in the past tense:
“[The LORD] HAS shown strength with his arm; he HAS scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy,
according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
to Abraham and to his descendants forever.”
Is Mary quoting the song of her ancestor prophet Miriam passed down through the generations, implying that her present joy and trust in the future promises of God is founded on her people’s experience what God has done in the past? Or is she saying that God’s promise for the future is so trustworthy that it might as well be in the past tense—it’s as good as happened?
Perhaps her Word to us is in part that with God the three tenses can’t be separated—past joy=present joy=future joy. They are intertwined and interdependent.
But we can’t skip over the fact that Mary’s joy isn’t just a mother’s joy. The whole last half of the Magnificat has nothing to do with pregnancy or motherhood. There is nothing meek or mild about it. She is rejoicing in the promise that under God’s reign, everything is turned upside down. The hungry are fed, and the rich sent away empty. The lowly are lifted up, and the powerful brought down.
It’s clear whom Mary identifies with—she’s among the lowly—a young unmarried Jewish woman in a no-account town in a territory occupied by a foreign power. And yet, by coming into the world in this particular way, through this particular woman, God has said, women’s lives matter, poor lives matter, Jewish lives matter. And Mary is announcing it loud and proud. What she celebrates is the coming of God that turns the current social hierarchy on its head.
Here again are the potentially disturbing words of the prophet, spoken first to Elizabeth, and then through scripture to generation after generation of Christians for nearly two thousand years. An affliction to the comfortable, and a comfort to the afflicted. As God’s Word has always been, is, and will be. As Jesus was, and is and will be.
Which brings us to the final way in which Mary is a prophet. Prophets are often called upon to embody the word given to them, to perform some kind of representative symbolic act. Hosea is asked to marry an unfaithful woman as a symbol of God’s marriage to unfaithful Israel. Jeremiah is asked to remain unmarried and childless as a sign of the bleakness of the immediate future. Ezekiel is asked to pack a bag and dig through Jerusalem’s wall to symbolize the coming exile.
And Mary is asked to bear a child conceived, not with a human father, but with the Holy Spirit, as a sign and the incarnation of God’s presence with us. Mary doesn’t just bear God’s Word through her speaking, she bears God’s Word in her very body. Through her, the Word is made flesh.
Today, on Gaudete Sunday, we lit the candle for joy. And today we heard the joy, not just of an expectant mother, but of a prophet, asked to bear God’s Word into a hurting world. Not all of us have the ability or desire to birth a baby, but all of us can be bearers of God’s Word in a hurting world.
Greetings, beloved ones. The Lord is with you. Do not be afraid. For nothing is impossible with God. His mercy is for those who fear him throughout all generations. That’s good news we can all bear into the world with our words, and with our whole lives.
May we let the prophet Mary inspire in us deep ponderings this Advent season. May we hear her questions to us this day…
Where in our own lives can we choose hope over fear?
What might we do or say if we really believed, with Mary, that nothing is impossible for God?
How might we can cast our lot with the lowly, like God does, like Jesus did, so that we too will experience God’s promise that the first shall be last and the last shall be first as good news? So that we too can boldly rejoice with Mary, that God’s promise has been fulfilled, is being fulfilled, will be fulfilled and that Christ has come and is coming to make all things new.