New Testament Reading—Luke 1: 46-55
What if Mary were alive today? Would her life seem at all relevant to us here in Vancouver? If she were at all like the Mary of ancient times, she would probably live somewhere outside of the United States in a third world country. The Mary of ancient times lived a long way from the center of power in Rome. Even for a person outside of Rome, Mary would have been rather obscure as a twelve or thirteen year old Jewish peasant woman. Compared to 2000 years ago, however, one advantage that we would have today in getting to know such a young Mary from a distant land is the internet. I have thus decided that the true test for determining Mary’s relevance for us today is to imagine her having a MySpace webpage.
I actually learned this past week that there is indeed a MySpace Virgin Mary webpage. The entire page is designed and written from the perspective of Mary. On the site, Mary describes herself as “popular with Catholics, Orthodoxes, and some Muslims, and Wiccans.” Her biographical details state that she lives in heaven, that she is a “proud parent,” and that her occupation is that of being a “saint.” She has a total of 2,773 friends on MySpace and is open to meeting everybody.
While this Mary might be a worthy MySpace friend, I personally am more interested in what the pre-Jesus Mary would be like if she had her own MySpace webpage. These days I don’t spend much time myself surfing MySpace. However, this past May I received a mysterious email that would eventually lead me deep into the heart of the teenage internet world. The email read, “Hi, you might not remember me but you were an exchange student and you came here to South Africa…Oh, and I’m Amanda.” I was quite perplexed by this message. I had studied in South Africa for three months as a junior in college back in 1997, and I could not remember anyone from South Africa named Amanda. At that point in my life, I was not doing very well in the romance department, so I found it hard to believe there could be someone who had nursed a crush on me for all these years.
Unable to figure out who it was, I emailed a friend of mine who had been a student with me in South Africa, and I asked him if he could remember this person. He could not. Eventually, I had to ask the embarrassing question of Amanda, “Could you refresh me as to how we knew each other?” Soon came the reply: at the time of my visit, she was the toddler of the Zulu host family with whom I had stayed. Instantly, I remembered Amanda. I thought I had never seen a kid as cute as her. She was so innocent and adorable. It was thus much to my shock when I later visited her personal webpage. About her interests, she wrote: “I love magazines, fast cars, fast food and fast guys.” Among the things she likes, she listed chainsaw massacre movies and heavy metal music.
As Amanda and I continued to exchange emails, I tried to keep a nonjudgmental attitude as I got to know her. I soon discovered that she has a terrific, outgoing personality that is very sweet and humorous. She also has a steady boyfriend who is the son of a pastor, so I am hoping the part about fast guys is just a joke. Despite my attempts to be non-judgemental, however, I confess to having felt a pang of disappointment and sadness when I read in one of her emails that she had decided South Africa is not the place for her and that she wants to come to the United States and “live the American dream!! Including all the glitz and glam.” As I reflected upon this, it occurred to me that Amanda, like myself at her age, is trying to find her place in the world. What is truly troubling is how the global spread of American culture not only destroys cultures elsewhere but also leads young people in other countries to have dreams that are largely unattainable even for youth who live in the United States.
I have thus wondered whether a pre-Jesus teenage Mary today would have to wrestle with similar issues in struggling to find her place in the world. Would she long to come to the United States and become a pop star like Madonna? What would her MySpace dairy tell us? On the happy side, maybe we would read about her crush on Joseph and the excitement of being engaged? With giddy exuberance, she would post updates about her wedding plans, especially the color of the bridesmaids’ dresses. On the unhappy side, would her webpage tell us about what it is like to be a teen living in poverty? Or, maybe it would tell us about the difficulties of her family life? What if she had fundamentalist parents who preached to her night and day about what it means to live a faithful life? I imagine such parents would be quite disappointed over their daughter’s unwed pregnancy. A modern Mary would certainly provide us with a juicy teen dairy, a new lost gospel of Mary.
For those beyond the MySpace years of life, the idea of a MySpace Virgin Mary might seem blasphemous or a bit hard to consider seriously. However, the most popular article on the The New York Times website a few weeks ago was an article entitled “Teenagers’ Internet Socializing Not a Bad Thing.” The article discusses a MacArthur Foundation study that asserts teenage internet usage gives teens valuable technological skills, the ability “to get along with others,” and peer learning opportunities that they enjoy. Contrary to popular fears, one researcher quoted in the article described “concerns about predators and stranger danger…overblown.” So maybe a MySpace Virgin Mary would not be such a bad thing after all.
If you still resist the virtual Mary, another way to re-imagine her story today is by considering the plight of pregnant women in some of the poorest countries in the world today. A recent article from Doctors Without Borders shows a picture of a young pregnant woman in Haiti sitting on a wooden bench in a hospital as she waits five hours for a bed. She could be our Mary I thought. In the article, it talks about how this hospital “has been so overwhelmed by demand that mothers have given birth in the hospital’s waiting room, the staircases, and in washrooms, essentially anywhere they could find space.” The article notes that “Haiti has the highest maternal mortality rate in the Western Hemisphere.” In such circumstances, one can easily imagine a Mary giving birth to a child in the modern unhygienic equivalent of a manger.
If such conditions were to indeed face a modern Mary, it becomes easier to imagine such a Mary proclaiming a poetic manifesto similar to the one in our scripture for today. I think the wrong way to view our scripture would be to think of it as the story of a woman from the third world who has finally climbed her way out of the obscurity of poverty and made it big on the world stage. While it is true that Mary proclaims that all the generations will call her blessed, she is not portrayed as becoming a big star in the modern sense. In our scripture, Mary’s sense of identity and self-worth come from a different source than the limelight of popular culture. In fact, it comes from a source that runs counter to the trends of fame and fortune during her time. Her sense of self comes from knowing the history of her faith. It comes from knowing that God has stood by her people through the hard and bitter years. It comes from knowing that God has brought down the powerful and lifted up the lowly. It comes from knowing that God feeds the hungry and sends the rich away empty. It comes from knowing that God works through history by reversing the fortunes of the unfortunate, and Mary knows that she has been one of the unfortunate. She’s been one of the lowly.
I think Mary’s joy and sense of self come from knowing that she is a part of the great tide of God’s movement through history. I believe this is the way in which Mary is still relevant for us today. Mary is relevant if we do not think in literal terms of her being the virgin mother of God. None of us can aspire to that. Mary is relevant when we think of what she symbolizes. She symbolizes something that all of us can do. She symbolizes how any one of us can join the long line of faithful witnesses that stretch through history. She symbolizes how any one of us can join with God in creating a better world. No matter what our condition in life, no matter how many friends we have on MySpace, no matter whether we are even on MySpace, Mary represents the possibility that all of us can join with God in giving birth to a world in which Jesus continues to live through the joyful and just work of the body of Christ. Amen.