Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

In the beginning the baby was born. God chose Mary to be the Mother of God. God chose Mary to be the Mother of God, and the Word was born a wordless child.

In many places around the globe the song of Mary is sung today, the song that she breaks into full of joy after it was announced to her that she was chosen to bear the Word of God, the Son of God, born a wordless child, the savior of the world. Faithful Catholics and Protestants (at least some), bishops, cardinals, pastors, congregations, rich and poor, North Americans, South Americans, Europeans, Africans, and Asian people are singing everywhere “Magnificat - My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.” (Luke 1: 46-48a)

In the Roman catholic tradition the 15th of August is celebrated as the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary (which became a dogma not until 1950!), to Protestants this day may be better known as Mary’s Ascension, or simply Mary, Mother of Our Lord.

It used to be that around Protestants the name of Mary could not be mentioned as a saint of the church without causing eyebrows to be raised. She appeared only in the annual Christmas pageant. Mary had become a symbol separating the confessions.

Lately however, preconceived notions and prejudices in this regard have eased up thanks to different movements. First, a lot of hard work has been done on the level of the official churches, for example by a group called the Lutheran-Catholic Dialogue, to get to know each other, to better understand each other’s teachings. In 1999, the Lutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church signed a Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, a document representing decades worth of deepened understanding and reconciliation.

On another level, lay people, Christians of all colors and backgrounds have rediscovered Mary in their own spiritual searches and started to incorporate her into their personal devotion, in a somewhat subversive manner trespassing if not official guidelines then at least traditional do’s and don’ts. In a similar way there are Christians today (lay people, priests, pastors, counselors) who incorporate elements of Yoga or Zen Buddhism into their faith, and still are focused fully on Christ as the center of their life.

We welcome the discovery and pursuit of new and helpful meditation techniques. As such things go, however, to include and remember Mary, the Mother of our Lord, in prayer is nothing new or revolutionary.

Mary was there from the beginning as art history tells us.
The earliest depiction of Jesus is not a picture of the Resurrected One, not of the Crucified Jesus, not of Jesus working a miracle or teaching. The very earliest image – probably as early as the second century – is that of Jesus seated on his mother’s lap, receiving the three Magi. Jesus on his mother’s lap - there could not be a better reminder of the fact that the Word became flesh, that Jesus is God incarnate. The adult Jesus could have been a god in disguise: Greek gods traveled that way, and angels disguise themselves as men in the Hebrew Scriptures. The toddler Jesus however, sitting on Mary’s lap, is obviously human.

The picture that I am talking about is to be found in the catacombs in Rome. So, indeed, Mary is there in the earliest Christian devotional images. The fact that this is to be found in the catacombs teaches us something important about the role Mary played in early Christian piety:

Those who came to the catacombs were already Christians. Mary and her image were not a teaching tool for new Christians. Also, the catacombs were not regular places for congregational worship, meaning that Mary’s image did not serve as liturgical support, contributing something essential to the liturgy. Rather, the image of Mary and child was an aid to individual devotion, a catalyst for spirituality. Individuals visited the tombs quite regularly for this purpose. Meditating on Mary depicted with Jesus on her lap he or she was provided with a healthy, useful, strong picture to equip him or her for intentional discipleship in a hard world.

In a very similar way did Martin Luther use the image of Mary as an aid for prayerful devotion, and encouraged the listeners of his numerous sermons on Marian holidays to do the same. Luther held Mary in high esteem as a vessel of God’s grace, and as an example of the response of the faithful when called on by God. He writes:

“O Blessed Virgin, Mother of God, what great comfort God has shown us in you, by so graciously regarding your unworthiness and low estate. This encourages us to believe that henceforth He will not despise us poor and lowly ones, but graciously regard us also, according to your example.”

In a another place Luther even stirs the devotional imagination of the faithful to put themselves as a child on Mary’s lap: Through faith a person “may boast of such treasure as that Mary is his real mother, Christ his brother, and God his father ... By this token you sit assuredly in the Virgin Mary’s lap and are her dear child.”

The image of sitting on Mary’s lap and being held as her dear child, is a bold image. Maybe too bold for some of us. But the invitation is there. Extended by Luther himself. It is a direct, earthy image that puts us very close to the wonder of the Word incarnate, become flesh in Jesus, a wordless child at first like you and me, a toddler on his mother’s lap, who for my and your sake grew up to overcome death and the grave.

If you allow me I would like to take this image even a little further:
Sitting on Mary’s lap actually points our gaze in the right direction. It is not Mary whom we can see, she is just holding us, is behind us. What we see is Christ next to us and the world before us. So Mary truly is the spiritual catalyst for our meditation to rejoice in God our savior and find out what he would have us do as disciples in this world that is before us. Rather than her image being the focus and content of our contemplation, Mary points us to the words of her song.

The Magnificat rejoices in God the Savior, who in mercy 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 the rich sent away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, remembering his promise of mercy, a promise which through Abraham extends to all his descendants, including us.

This is Mary’s joyful song. Sung in a way as if all that has actually already happened.
But it hasn’t.

And because I can see the world plainly in front of me from the position on Mary’s lap, her song makes me uncomfortable because in comparison to someone without a home I am in the position of power. In comparison to someone who is hungry I am the rich sent away empty. I am ashamed at my own little faith. I know that around the world today Mary’s song is sung from very different perspectives and very different heights.

Young Mary’s song turns out to be quite challenging. However, she encourages us to join with her against our own doubts and with her invoke God and remind him to save this world.

It will be the work of Mary’s son Jesus Christ to bring salvation to all, to turn those things upside down at which we can only fail, to extend God’s mercy eventually to all the world, bringing God’s promise to fulfillment. We still can see only beginnings of such fulfillment in our world. We still live in the tension of Mary’s fervent song anticipating the everlasting joy in an unfulfilled world.

It is my hope therefore that the trust with which Mary accepted God’s choosing her to be the Mother of God would serve us as an example of faith and increase our own trust to be who we are called to be: disciples of Christ, knowing him to be Lord for us and brother with us.
Amen.