There's Nothing Special about the Blessed Virgin Mary

Jesus is a pretty unusual guy. The core of Christian belief is that he is simultaneously fully divine and fully human. That's an intellectual puzzle, but a little easier to work through when you put it in practical terms.

Take the wedding at Cana (John 2:1-10). Jesus and his mom were at a wedding, and mom notices the wine has run out. Though she's just a guest at the wedding, she's apparently the hostess with the mostest and she notes this to her son, who basically says, "Seriously, you expect me to do a miracle so the best man doesn't have to do a liquor run? Not gonna do it." But after a minute he relents and produces thirty gallons of the best wine ever. So we see Jesus as just another guest at a wedding, aware of his power but reluctant to use it for trivial purposes. In the end he apparently concludes that communal celebrations are important enough to deserve God's grace, and the wedding feast continues. Party on.

The letter to the Hebrews puts the meaning of the incarnation this way: "For it is not as if we has a high priest who was incapable of feeling our weaknesses with us; but we have one who has been tempted in every way that we are, though he is without sin. Let us be confident, then, in approaching the throne of grace, that we shall have mercy from him and find grace when we are in need of help."

On August 15, the Episcopal church, along with many other denominations, will celebrate the feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary, mother of our Lord. My own Anglo-Catholic parish will transfer the observation to tomorrow so more people in our parish can participate in our practices of Marian devotion. I don't begrudge Mary her feast days, but we do ourselves a disservice if we set her apart too much.

If you accept the basic premise of the incarnation, then the person of Mary is pretty mind-blowing. Because it means that Mary, a regular person like you or me, was literally the Mother of God. Dude, like, wow.

The concept that a normal woman could give birth to God is so mind-blowing that the Catholic church has gone out of its way to state that, in fact, Mary was no normal woman. Through the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, which has found some traction in other denominations as well, the Catholic church teaches that Mary was born without original sin. The implication here is that Jesus couldn't have been born from just any woman. It had to be Mary. And the reason it had to be Mary, apparently, is that the genetic cooties of original sin are stronger than the grace of God. This completely misses the point of Mary, and further errs in trying to impose limits on God's power.

Mary's not special. Like us, she probably mostly tried her best, but failed from time to time. She probably talked back to her parents and had petty quarrels with Joseph. And yet for some reason God chose her as a dwelling place for a time before coming into the world.

Pondering why God chose Mary will lead us down blind alleys. Martin Luther notes, "The angel witnesses that she is on the same level with all other saints. He does not praise her for her piety, but simply because of the great grace of God by which she is chosen to be the mother of His own son." Ponder not the why, but the what.

And what is the what? In his letter to the Romans, Paul writes, "From the beginning till now the entire creation, as we know, has been groaning in one great act of giving birth; and not only creation, but all of us who possess the first fruits of the spirit, we too groan inwardly as we wait for our bodies to be set free." (Rom 8:22-23)

The hope we have in Mary is that we, like her, are active participants in the birth of a new creation. If God called on Mary, a sinner like us, to be his home for a while, God may also call on us the same way. We do not have to be perfect to produce holiness. We just have to listen for God's call, and say yes when it comes.

So by all means, let's celebrate Mary. We'll be processing around my church tomorrow with great clouds of incense and some big honking hymns. But let's remember that Mary's no more special than we are; she's only one of us.