Theotokos (Part Two)

Advent reminds us that when God came among us in Jesus, he did not come as a ghost, hologram, vision, or media stunt. He came to us through a teenage girl not properly married. God came to us, not in the pomp and circumstance of royalty, but in the humility of a working class commoner. Jesus was born to a father who worked tirelessly with his hands and a mother who, most would say, wasn’t fit for the task of raising a child, let alone the child upon whom millions would rest their hopes for salvation.

Yet, in contemporary religious America, Mary is a polarizing figure. For Catholics, she is the essence of what it means to be a disciple. Against all odds, and against her reputation (we have names for children born out of wedlock as well as women who have children out of wedlock) she opens her hands to a God who refuses to force himself on people, and says, “Yes. I am the Lord’s servant, may it be to me as you have said.”

In other circles of Christianity, however, Protestants snicker and scoff at such notions. “They worship Mary. Those people are strange. Why do they spend so much time talking about Mary and not about Jesus?” Part of that observation is fair, but part misses out on what’s really happening in the Jesus Story.

Church tradition teaches us that Mary is the “god-bearer” . . . the theotokos. Mary is literally the one who agrees to bring God into his own world, though it will cost her everything: her fiancé’s trust, her parent’s adoration, and public standing. The story comes to a grand crescendo and for a brief moment pauses, waiting to see what Mary’s answer will be. “You can decide to be a daredevil, a test pilot, a gambler. You can set your book down and listen to a strange creature’s strange idea. You can decide to take part in a plan you did not choose, doing things you do not know how to do for reasons you do not entirely understand. You can take part in a thrilling and dangerous scheme with no script and no guarantees. You can agree to smuggle God into the world inside your own body” (Barbara Brown Taylor in Gospel Medicine, 153). This is the meaning of theotokos. Mary is courageous enough to smuggle (tokos) God (theo) into our world.

Even in our modern, technology-driven world, risk-takers are needed. Moms who take great risks for their children. Moms who risk societal shame for the sake of their children’s spirituality. Moms willing to go to great lengths to make sure their children know that it is God— not Caesar, the U.N., the President—who rules our world and invites us into relationship with him.

When mothers commit to this story, the outcomes are unpredictable. Mary could not have known how her son would alter the course of human history. She could not have possibly been able to gage the effect that her spirituality would have on Jesus— the single greatest influencer of spirituality, politics, and man’s search for meaning and for God himself.

I’ve often wondered about the relationship of Jesus’ development to his own parents. We know that Joseph moves to the backstage in Luke and Matthew’s account. Some church historians believe that Joseph died not long after Jesus became an adult. Mary, however, is in the story from beginning to end. One of her other sons, James, would become a pillar of the Jerusalem church, writing a letter we now have in our New Testament.

If you look twice at Mary’s story, you don’t see a statue planted on someone’s front yard or tucked away in a church sanctuary. Here’s what you see: A young mother, a mere teenager, hovering over her first born. Her other children would come quite normally (thank God!) but her firstborn is different. Angels, visions, visitors all point out that this boy is God’s agent of liberation. If you look close enough you can hear Mary singing over her sleeping child. Joseph is in bed, and she slips into Jesus’ room to remind him who he is, where he comes from. She begins to sing the same song God placed in her heart a few years prior. “My soul magnifies the Lord . . . His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. ⁵¹He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. ⁵²He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; ⁵³he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty,” (Lk. 1).

When we say “yes” to God, he always answers with a resounding and eternal “Yes!” God’s yes to Mary is good news. God takes the messy, mixed, complicated, deep, and true spirituality of Mary and blesses the entire world.

Theotokos (Part One)

James McBride wrote a book about his mother, capturing the hearts of many readers. The Color of Water is a tribute to Ruth McBride Jordan who raised twelve children on her own in the Red Hook Housing Projects of Harlem, New York. “As a boy . . . James knew his mother was different. But when he asked about it, she’d simply say, ‘I’m light skinned.’ Later he wondered if he was different, too, and asked his mother if he was black or white. ‘You’re a human being,’ she snapped.’ On another occasion, after a rousing experience in church, James asked his mother if God was white or black. ‘God is a spirit . . . neither. God is the color of water.’”

James’s step-father died when he was fourteen. His biological father— a devout Christian who started the Brown Memorial Baptist Church in Harlem (which still stands today)—died while Ruth carried James in her womb. The death of two husbands sent his mother into a state of chaos. She coped by riding her bike all over Harlem. While most New Yorkers drove cars, took the bus, hopped on the subway, she decided to ride her red bike through the busy streets of America’s biggest city. “The image of her riding that bicycle typified her whole existence to me. Her oddness, her complete nonawareness of what the world thought of her, nonchalance in the face of what I perceived to be imminent danger from blacks and whites who disliked her for being a white person in a black world. She saw none of it.”

The Color of Water is the story of his mother’s improbable life—the story of a rabbi’s daughter (she was Jewish ethnically but later became a Bible believing Christian because of the acceptance she experienced in the black community): born in Poland, raised a southerner, abused by the men in her life, only to escape to New York City to make a new life for herself and her children.

In the end, all twelve of her children attended college: they became doctors, lawyers, teachers, and psychologists. From the projects to Harvard, their mother’s eccentric ways and unrelenting love pushed them to seize all that life offered. In retrospect, all of her children now realize their mother’s love was like the power of the moon. “It’s what made the river flow, the ocean swell, and the tide rise, but it was a silent power, intractable, indomitable, and thus completely ignorable.”

There are two simple reasons why this story captured my heart and imagination the first time I read it. First, it brought back memories of my own mother and her deep commitment to her children.

I am not supposed to be here on planet earth. According to the doctors, prior to my birth, I did not exist. My mother was convinced she was having twins, but her doctor insisted that she was only bringing one child into the world. If you are wondering about the ultra-sound, in the late 1970’s it was still controversial to use this particular modern technology for fear that the procedure could harm baby or mother.

The doctor congratulated both my parents when my twin brother was born thirteen minutes prior to my grand entrance. My dad went into the waiting room to tell everyone and then proceeded to grab a bite to eat at the McDonald’s across the street from the hospital. My brother had already been finger-printed, weighed, and photographed. When my father returned, the doctor (and by now, my mom) had some additional news. “Phil, you have two sons now.”

My mom’s love for me was never less than her love for my sister, Kelly or my brother, Jason. She loved all of her children equally—with disregard for “balance”—she loved us with every fiber of her being. The Color of Water reminded me of my mother’s unwavering love and affection for her children. Lost in the story of James McBride in New York, I remembered my mother’s love for me, with an eye towards the birth of my first child as my wife now enters the half-way point of her first pregnancy.

The second reason The Color of Water resonated with me is that it reminded of the universal human truth that our mothers are perhaps the single greatest influence on our spirituality and who we believe God is. When I entered kindergarten in Wichita, KS, I was terrified. My mom asked, “Pick anything or anyone that brings you comfort and I’ll give you a picture to calm you.” I asked for a picture of her. I still remember the locket she gave me. It was a picture of me as a baby and a picture of her. “When you are scared, open this and I’m there.” I wasn’t worried about public perception at that state in my intellectual development, obviously.

As I look back, I realize that my mother’s love and constant presence (“Is that the right decision?” “Are you telling the whole truth?”) gave me a framework to understand the way in which Scripture describes God. A mother’s love is the seedbed for authentic spiritual connection to the world around us. God knows our thoughts. He loves us unconditionally. God has our name engraved on the palm of his hand. He delights in our lives. He holds us close to his bosom when we are in grief. He weeps for us as a mother hen gathers her chick’s. He will provide food for our belly and clothes for our body—so don’t worry about tomorrow, God will take care of us just as he does the birds of the air. The only way I could dare believe in a God I could not see is because I had a mom whose presence was with me regardless of if we were in close physical proximity together.

I am fully aware that, for men and women who cannot have children or for those who’ve had a difficult relationship with their mother, this is a subject that perhaps conjures unwanted memories. However, in the story of Advent, good news awaits for all who dare to remember the Story.