Author: Valerie Showalter

This is my sermon from 12.20.20, based on the text from Luke 1:26-38. I used the Inclusive Bible translation, which does not reference Mary as a virgin but a “young woman.”

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You may have noticed that the translation of today’s Gospel reading chooses different language than what our ears might have expected.  The Inclusive Bible purposefully refers to Mary simply as a “young woman.” Maybe you didn’t notice the changed language — or maybe you did, but have long since resigned to downplaying or ignoring the traditional reading.  I’ve been there.

We are used to hearing here in Luke 1 that Mary is explicitly a virgin.  That her sexual history matters.  Not just that, but that her knowledge and experience of sex matters in the incarnation of God.  If we read this text at all, we cannot help but stumble through the seeming emphasis on Mary’s virginity. And it’s impossible to escape in the Advent and Christmas season generally, with regular references in our favorite carols and art.

So, why would the translators of the Inclusive Bible purposefully choose a more vague term, “young woman”?  The short answer is: because it doesn’t matter.  It doesn’t matter if Mary is, by clinical definition, a virgin or not.

Which of course, flies in the face of 2000 years of dominant Christian thought and theology that argues otherwise.

At the risk of condensing 2000 years of history that says it does matter, I’m going to sum up very briefly why I think the translators made this critical shift.

This text has been interpreted in a way that has impacted Western social structures, gender identity and formations, and concepts of sexual purity, particularly for women.  Mary’s virginity has been used to instill a purity standard and the consequential body shaming and promotion of sex as a dirty act, again particularly for women.

In the face of two millennia of distorted interpretations, one has to change the language to make a point.  I think the translators made the shift because the focus of this story isn’t meant to be Mary’s sexuality or sexual history. The focus of Luke 1:26-38 is the miracle of God affirming the human form to the extent that God chooses to inhabit it.

This aligns with God’s story as a whole: creation being inherently good and worth loving completely.

The credibility of the Good News does not rest on Mary being a virgin or not.  So, this scripture falls in the category of needing some proactive interpretive remediation.  We can’t just bypass it as a text that doesn’t matter when it has impacted our way of being for so long. Part of our burden and divine call is to dismantle life-leaching interpretations and rebuild what really matters. 

That’s what we’re doing here today.  I want to talk about two things that do matter in today’s text.

Mary Matters

First is that Mary matters!  Her significance, or at least part of it, is that she is a discerner and doer of God’s dream.  In the company of many of her Jewish ancestors, Mary is surprised by Gabriel’s visit and announcement of her role in God’s story.  Luke says she is confused, perplexed.  Even resistant. 

This is a familiar pattern in the story of Israel – Abraham and Sarah were confused and perplexed by God’s promise of a son, even in their old age. The prophets were known to be true prophets only if they had resisted their call a bit.

Even Zechariah, earlier in Luke 1, is also visited by a messenger from God who announces the future birth of Zechariah’s son, John the Baptist. If you remember that story, Zechariah is incredulous, for Elizabeth, his wife, is also too old to bear a child.  Zechariah, in his surprise, is rendered mute until John is born.

Mary follows in this very long tradition of being drawn into God’s story in a particular and compelling way.  After the requisite wrestling with strange, good news, Mary, like her ancestors, carries on with life as though she believes the word of God given to her. 

Mary’s body is undeniably significant in this story as the one who lovingly carries the child within her and delivers him.  But more significant is her willingness to wrestle with the blessing of God, even as she does not understand it. More significant is Mary’s willingness to actively consent to participate in God’s dream.

We know this is Luke’s intent for Mary’s place within the story.  Later, in chapter 11, as Jesus is in full-time ministry mode, a woman in a crowd cries out, “Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursed you!”  To which Jesus replies, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it.” [11:27-28.] Which is precisely what Mary did.

In Luke 1 and beyond, Mary steps into her vocation as a model disciple—one who discerns God’s word and does it, utilizing her body in faithful acts of discipleship.  Her response to God’s invitation is Luke 1 is evident in the Magnificat. Her response is joyful consent.

Does this resonate with you?  When have you been surprised by an invitation to participate in something greater than yourself?

God Affirms Human Form

The second thing that matters about today’s text is that God affirms the human form as good, beloved, holy: a sacred space worth inhabiting. 

This is the message behind the text.  As Dr. Kyle Roberts writes in A Complicated Pregnancy, “God did not avoid our body, our genetics, our brain, our human condition.”*   God is not indifferent, aloof, apathetic to the human experience.  God chose incarnation, to become mortal with all that that entailed.  And God chose a natural, pleasurable process by which to enter the world.

I wonder if that was part of Mary’s surprise as well—that God would affirm our cells and our experience. That God would choose an ordinary body—her ordinary body—to bring Love to life. 

But why should we be surprised?  Again, God has said from the very beginning that our bodies and all creation are very good. It is we who have cast doubt on that truth. It is we who have believed lies that we should be ashamed of our ordinary bodies.

This is part of why a virgin birth does not matter: “a virgin birth gives us a different Christ than the one we really need.”**  We need a Christ who knows pain and joy, pleasure and heartbreak, hope and despair.  God said, “Yes,” to humanity, to the goodness of our bodies.  God chose the human form because God loves the human form.

What matters in this story is that Love chose to become human, offering the ultimate affirmation of our full, embodied belovedness.

An Invitation to Love Our Bodies

One of the invitations of today’s scripture is to allow ourselves to be surprised that the human body is beloved and necessary in bringing God’s Love to life.

Body positivity is a bit of a buzzword these days.  Lizzo, an amazing singer and rapper, has been a vocal advocate for body love the last few years.  In particular her song, “Juice,” is what one commentator calls an “anthem” of self-love and respect.  She centers the goodness of her body in the song, a profoundly prophetic message as a Black woman.  While that might initially sound individualistic, Lizzo claims her liberation and expresses her joy in a way that echoes Mary’s song.  Mary’s song points to a deeply personal, internalized sense of worth and goodness, that then flows out beyond her self. 

“My body can do this. My body is worthy of birthing the Holy One.” 

Like Lizzo proclaims, Mary, too, is profoundly empowered and participating fully in the incarnation of Love. The incarnation that needs Mary’s body, individually first – all of our bodies, collectively – to bring Love to life. 

An Invitation to Love Others’ Bodies

The roll-on effect of this is that we are reminded that all human bodies are beloved and necessary in realizing God’s shalom – including those bodies we might consider enemies.

I want to share with you a poem by U.S. poet Jane Kenyon called “Mosaic of the Nativity: Serbia, Winter 1993”.  Yugoslavia was in the midst of violently breaking up in the winter of 1993.  As wars often are, it was a complex conflict fueled by religious tensions. On Orthodox Christmas Day, in January 1993, Bosnian forces launched a surprise attack on the Serbs, knowing that Serbian Orthodox Christians would be unprepared on this very special, holy day.  This is what Kenyon is referencing in her poem.  

On the domed ceiling God
is thinking:
I made them my joy,
and everything else I created
I made to bless them.
But see what they do!
I know their hearts and arguments: 

“We’re descended from
Cain. Evil is nothing new,
so what does it matter now
if we shell the infirmary,
and the well where the fearful
and rash alike must
come for water?” 

God thinks Mary into being.
Suspended at the apogee
of the golden dome,
she curls in a brown pod,
and inside her the mind
of Christ, cloaked in blood,
lodges and begins to grow.

“What does it matter now?”  It matters that God loved the world so much that God took on human form.  It matters that God took on human form, affirming “our bodies, our genetics, our brain, our human condition.” It matters that God chose Mary, an ordinary young woman, to lead us with her example of bold discernment and action.  This is what matters.  This is Good News.

Before Gabriel departs from Mary, they offer a blessing; so I offer this Advent blessing for you:

The Holy Spirit will gently rest on you,
a delicious glow that grows
from the tips of your toes and fingers
to the top of your head.
The Most High will empower you
and energize you
and the Love you bring to Life
will free us all.

I pray it be so.

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*Kyle Roberts, A Complicated Pregnancy: Whether Mary Was a Virgin and Why It Matters (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2017), 179.
**Roberts, 183.

In the final month we lived in Virginia, alongside the requisite sorting, box-making, and packing, I finished a project that was nearly a decade in the making.  The project hadn’t languished because it was particularly difficult or big—it was just one of those projects that lies fallow for awhile until it’s clear that its time has arrived.

The project was a small wall hanging—no more than 2’ x 2’. In early 2011, I had moved to Pittsburgh to begin a Master’s program, taking with me my sewing machine and a stash of fabric as my study-break hobby.

I began taking the scraps and piecing them together, using a technique called “crazy quilting,” where symmetry is not a goal, at least until you finish the square.

Eventually, I had made about 35 squares. Half of them, I pieced together and quilted for my sister.  The other half sat in a box for the rest of our time in PA.  And then it sat in a box in a basement while we lived in London.  And then, still in the same box, it sat in my study while we were in VA.

Years later, at the start of 2019, I resolved to finish what I now called my “Grandmother Project,” to put the final squares together and make a wall hanging for myself. 

By Summer 2019, it was still in the box.  But as a move loomed in our future, I felt a poke of “quilter’s conscience.”  And then, separately, when it seemed clear that my ordination for ministry would be happening before we moved, I felt the critical impetus for following through on my resolution.

I felt this because I linked the possibility of my ordination with my ancestors—particularly ancestral women with whom I shared either genes or spirit.

So, in August and September 2019, I finished piecing the top. I carefully layered the backing, batting, and top together. I then quilted it by hand.  Finally, I bound the edges and it was complete. With the ordination service approaching, I requested that “Grandmother Project” be part of the worship visuals as a symbol of gratitude and interconnectedness to those who have “made a way” for my journey.

As I stood facing the congregation that morning, I also stood in front of my handiwork, my grandmothers’ and mother’s fabrics, and I was anointed for ministry.  My mother and mother-in-law joined me, draping a vibrant stole around my neck that they had collectively made.  It was a sacred intersection of blessings, of standing on hallowed ground with women who had paved the way for me, whether or not they knew it.

Recently, I’ve taken out more of these old scraps from my grandmothers, my own fabric occasionally mixed in.  As I cut them into squares for some future project, I think of my grandmothers and I wonder about their lives.

As I’m currently reading My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Path to Mending our Bodies by Resmaa Menakem, at times I reflect on the mystery of my own grandmothers’ hands. 

I think about the scars and trauma my ancestors endured, and wonder how much of that lingers in me. I wonder about how my grandmothers thought about race, gender, white privilege, or the land they inhabited.  I smile at the question with an unknowable answer: What would they think of their granddaughter-pastor? 

In the absence of answers, I keep cutting squares and asking for their blessing and wisdom. I offer my gratitude for them, for their labors in keeping loved ones clothed and warm with all varieties of colors and patterns. And I let their love shape my ministry, as I think now of those who will lead us in the years to come.

In these late summer COVID days, the imagery and reality of storms seems ever-present. Several conversations lately have turned toward thunderstorms and the swirls of chaos many find themselves right now.  It’s a vulnerable time; we feel exposed to the elements, utterly out of control.

Of the storms in the Bible, my favorite to reflect on is in Job 38, where God speaks to Job from the middle of a whirlwind.

“From out of a storm, the LORD said to Job:
Why do you talk so much, when you know so little?
Now get ready to face me. Can you answer the questions I ask?” (CEV)

While some might read this theophany and hear an über-powerful God who smites doubters and sufferers alike, I hear in the passage a deep love for all that God has made: a God who birthed the oceans; who embroiders the hills with sunlight; who has storehouses of snow and dew.  This is a God who has thought of every detail, arranging the cosmos with an artist’s keen eye.  And this is a God with a dry sense of humor, asking questions that direct Job (and us) back to his inevitable mortality and finiteness.

One of the most disorienting aspects of life in this COVID time (perhaps especially for white U.S. folks) is that our illusions of being in control have been shattered. The whirlwind has whipped away the flimsy protections of privilege.  This has led to our feelings of vulnerability, to which we all respond in different ways.

The invitation of Job 38 in a time like this is to surrender to God.  There is so much we cannot control right now (or ever).  To surrender to God is not to be obliterated or made insignificant; it is to be liberated from the illusory self. To surrender is to see that we are but one piece in a beautiful web of the cosmos, intricately created and loved – loved not because we hold it all together, but simply because we are.

In the midst of the storm, the Holy One will meet you.
Let Them guide you through the chaos with a Love that is infinite.

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Songs featuring storms have themselves been swirling through my mind. Here’s a short playlist.

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This essay was originally written for the August 2020 Madison Mennonite Church newsletter.

The details: L.S. Dugdale, The Lost Art of Dying: Reviving Forgotten Wisdom (New York: Harper One, 2020).

The problem and the question:  More and more North Americans have been dying poorly. We pursue a seemingly endless array of medical treatments with the hope of a cure, and, in exchange, often sacrifice our quality of life. We are dying alone and with regrets. And we die in fear, untethered from a sense of a bigger purpose. How can we support others’ dying and prepare for our own dying so that death is done “well”?

The thesis:  To die well, we must live well. 

What this means for Dugdale:  Dying well means living with a sense of our finitude.  We’re all going to die someday, and it’s best if we deal with that fact while we aren’t facing death head-on.  That does not mean we look forward to dying, but that we have judged and arranged our todays (and tomorrows) with an awareness that we cannot do/have it all.  We cannot be cured of death.

Dying well requires a connection to community and loved ones.  Which is to say that we must be present for others when they are dying (to both support them and to be reminded of our own mortality), and we must be prepared to unashamedly invite others in to our dying processes. Community helps us answer – or, at least admit that we often have – lingering questions about our existence.

Dying well means considering our literal deathbed.  The art of dying well is to curate, if you are able, your final days and moments so that you are at “home.” A hospital can be a “home” for various reasons, but Dugdale argues that hospitals often present barriers to dying well. So, thinking through what is important to you is a first step to dying in the bed and company of your heart’s desire.

Dying well requires that we acknowledge our fear of death.  It is out of fear of death that we “wage war” on the illnesses that ravage our bodies.  This fear is sometimes mistaken for a “desire to live,” though the quality of life one lives when on a third or fourth experimental drug says otherwise. It is natural to be afraid of what we do not know and what we cannot control, but Dugdale writes,“[N]ot all fear compels a person to submit to torturous procedures that are unlikely to help.”*.  To die well while afraid is to “walk courageously…toward the terror and sadness.”** To stare back at the fear of death is the only way to die well.

Dying well means attending to the body and the spirit. Dugdale writes of “vandalized shalom,” where bodies, communities, and the world are not as they are meant to be and are affected by decay.***  Yet it is within (broken) community that we find meaning and transformation. And it is within communities of faith, Dugdale suggests, that we find spiritual grounding to ease despair and emptiness.

Finally, dying well entails devoting time—more than one might think—to the rituals surrounding death.  While our culture around death has shifted significantly in the recent past, passing on to “professionals” the actions associated with saying our final good byes, Dugdale suggests that what is gained with efficiency does not offset what is lost ritually. Rituals, like preparing the body for burial or funerals, aren’t meant to be efficient, but to be effective markers of significant transition. In the case of death, they are meant to allow us to show love to the deceased, to the bereaved, and to contemplate our own mortality. What would it look like for families and communities to return to holding these rituals, rather than funeral homes?  Would it help the living to live (and die) better and to mourn more fully?

Personal reflection:  I finished this book on my birthday, a purposeful move…for though birthdays invite us to celebrate our lives and existence, with each passing year, they also mark, if we pay attention, our certain mortality. While I had a blip in my mid-20s where the idea of death filled me with utter sadness, I have largely felt unintimidated by death. I’m certainly not personally eager for it, nor do I wish anyone else an untimely death, but, with Dugdale, I have felt convicted that how we live (not what we have or ultimately what we accomplish) is how we die. And so I have tried to shape my life around priorities, which include faith, community, and no small amount of not-putting-up-with-crap.

Reading The Lost Art of Dying couldn’t have come at a better time–in the midst of a pandemic, in the midst of societal upheaval, and in the midst of the earth rebelling against human abuse. Each of these circumstances reminds us of just how interconnected we all are. How your ability to live well relies on my ability to live well. How your ability to die well — without fear, surrounded by loved ones at home — is intricately connected with my ability to die well.

It may seem strange to educate ourselves on dying well, while death feels far off, but as Dugdale suggests, what better time is there?  What does it mean for you to live well? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

On a lighter but connected note: 

*Dugdale, 98.
**Dugdale, 110.
***Dugdale, 150.