Ordinary Mary

The Rev. Alissa Newton

St. Mary the Virgin

text: Luke 1:46-55

Aly Raismen is known throughout her sport as a consummate professional. Aly is the captain of the team USA gymnastics team, an Olympic veteran, and is right now at the ripe old age of 22 competing in what will surely be her last Olympics. At the 2012 Olympics she barely missed medaling in the all around competition. For many gymnasts that would have been the end of it, but Aly decided to try one more time. It’s not easy, at her age, which is quite elderly for the sport of gymnastics. There is a picture of Aly with Simone Biles, gymnastics' breakout star of the past four year cycle. The caption reads “the amount of athletic tape we need for the Olympics.” Simone, the youngster, is holding one roll of tape. Aly is holding a giant Ziploc bag of athletic tape, with more piled in her arms. Every elite gymnast is familiar with risk and pain and injury – Aly is very familiar with these things. One writer said "If Simone Biles has been a study in the impossible, Aly Raisman has been a display of what’s possible." That possibility includes both success and injury and mindblowing hard work.

Also on display at the Olympics this year are Aly's parents. I'm sure no one knows better than her mother, Lynn, just how hard Aly has worked. I am sure no one knows better the risks she has taken and just how dangerous the routines Aly is famous for really are. I'm sure of this because after every vault, bar, or floor routine the camera cuts to Lynn, who looks like she is about to throw up. In fact Lynn's responses to Aly's routines have gone viral on YouTube, because she jumps, twitches, covers her eyes, and grabs at her husband so dramatically that her performance is almost as entertaining as Aly's. Unlike Aly, however, her mom doesn't look like she is having any fun. The performances that challenge Aly and exhilirate viewers seem like torture, for the watching mother.

I love Aly Raisman's mother even more than I love Aly. Maybe it is because I have a little gymnast at my house whose antics regularly frighten and amaze me. Maybe I love her because of how obvious her love for her child is in the rollercoaster of emotions that crosses her face. But mostly, I love her because she is a visible icon of what is at stake in loving someone the way parents love children, and what really matters – not a medal, but that her child comes home safe, and whole. Taken together, this mother and daughter are so ordinary, even as we watch them through the extraordinary lens of the Olympic games and major, major accomplishment. After all, what is youth if not saying yes to impossible dreams and then risking life and limb to make them happen, consequences be damned? And what is motherhood, if not watching with pride and horror as the human beings we have poured our very hearts into say yes to life, to all the wonder and danger that living entails?

This morning we celebrate the feast day of Mary the Virgin. People do lots of things with and for and about Mary. She holds a special place in our tradition as the mother of Jesus, the vessel through which God came so close to human beings that God lived a human life and died a human death. She is called the Queen of Heaven, and Theotokos, or God-bearer. Some corners of our faith get very mystical with her, and there are doctrines that claim she was without sin, or that she never died but was taken directly to heaven to be with her Son. We don't exactly always know what to do with her, because she seems so extraordinary, unique, one of a kind. And I think all of that is fine, if it works for you. But what I love about Mary is how ordinary she is, in the midst of all that is extraordinary about her. In many ways she faces a choice that each of us faces in our lives – the choice to say yes to God's desire to be born in us, God's desires to give us lives that focus on what really matters. And Mary shows us just how devastating and wonderful that yes can become.

We find in Mary, here in Luke's gospel, the human things we all know so well – she is all the good and terrifying things about youth as she recklessly sacrifices her social standing and safety by saying yes to what really matters - a kingdom where all are seen, heard, and loved and a God who is born in the midst of humankind. And Mary is everything we know about motherhood as we see her suffering the consequence of that radical yes to God. Mary in Luke's gospel will be greatly disappointed. The child she expects to turn the world upside down does, but not in the way she may have pictured. The young Mary who sings the Magnificat can't see the cross ahead. She doesn't know that her son will reject his family, that he will spend his ministry with the poor and sick, that he will change the world through dying for it, not ruling it. Mary is both the young, determined gymnast and her wiser, older, terrified mom. She holds both these realities for us as we are asked to say yes to God as if we were teenagers, and then hold on as life brings us whatever that yes means.

“All generations will call me blessed,” Mary sings to us this morning, and we do. But not because everything turned out okay for her. No, we call Mary blessed because she shows us that God's invitation to turn the world upside down is a complicated one, a road that will bring disappointment, heartache and fear just as it also invites justice, hope and love. Mary lifts up not only the extraordinary potential of human beings to say yes to God, but also our ordinary potential: the ways we can bear God into the world in our ordinary lives and loves, the way we say yes to God in each other, in our children, in the human beings who challenge us, and in the moments where we are afraid and yet still choose God, and love.

So I wonder where in your life this morning you are being asked to say yes to God? Where is God inviting you to recklessly go today for the sake of hope, or justice, or mercy, or love? What is God asking you to give up, in favor of a life that is focused on what really matters? Mary invites you to listen for that call, and to say yes.

Or perhaps you are less like young Mary, and you resonate more with her later suffering. I wonder if your suffering is part of God's call to you? I wonder if however you are feeling poor, or hungry, or low this morning, if there is in that disappointment or heartache or fear an invitation to come close to God, to stick with love despite it all? If you need inspiration to hold on, Mary is a good place to start. Mary knows disappointment, fear, and loss for the sake of God's love. As we come and eat God's table together this morning, let us strive for Mary's yes, and listen for the opportunity to say it ourselves, and to live it, together, no matter what comes.