What about Mary? Protestants and Marian devotion

Christian Century, Dec 14, 2004 by Jason Byassee

A focus on Mary also gives us a fresh approach to scripture. A standard Protestant objection to Catholic Mariology is that she is not as important in scripture as she has become in ecclesial traditions. To a degree this is true. No one can argue for her immaculate conception, her assumption into heaven, or her coronation as heaven's queen directly from scripture. Yet argument over those points has clouded other scriptural claims about Mary. What she lacks in quantity of appearance in scripture she makes up for in quality. Luke's telling of the gospel begins with hen and her fiat ("let it be" in Latin) to Gabriel's announcement of God's incarnational intent opens the way for a new eruption of grace into the world. She is present at and indeed an instigator of Jesus' first miracle at Cana in Galilee (John 2: 1-11). She and other women are present at the cross, when the male disciples flee. Depending on how one reads the resurrection narratives, she is present there too (Mark 15:40; 47).

It is striking that Mary is in the upper room at Pentecost--the only woman present there who is named--to receive the outpouring of God's Spirit at the birth of the church (Acts 1:14). When Paul makes his one oblique mention of Jesus' mother it is to point to her as a sign that he was indeed born, and so was genuinely human (Gal. 4:4). To cite a more contested passage, her image in Revelation 12:17 as a woman clothed with the sun with a crown of stars in the agony of giving birth to a son who will rule the nations is, at the very least, impressive. Mary's appearances in scripture are indeed limited, but they are tied to crucial moments in salvation history, without which there would be no church.

SCRIPTURE PRESENTS Mary as an important agent in her own right, not just as the mother of her son. If her Magnificat is any indication, she is an extraordinary reader of the Bible, lyrically weaving together Jewish scripture into a new song that is perhaps the most frequently sung canticle in church history. We are twice told that she "treasures" the words entrusted to her by angels and shepherds and that she "ponders these things" in her heart (Luke 2:19, 51). Aged Simeon promises her that her child's destiny to be for the "falling and rising of many in Israel" will cause a "sword to pierce" her own soul too--suggesting that Mary's importance continues in the saga of salvation long after her child's birth (Luke 2:34-35).

Mary's interaction with her son on the cross is striking, since one of his final acts is devoted to naming John as her new son, and her as John's mother. In this and other scenes she is depicted as an image of the church, the mother of believers, and one to whose care Jesus is devoted to his dying breath. Scripture presents a vision of Mary as one whose importance is not limited to the Annunciation and to Christmas, but extends into the life of the church.

At the same time, scripture also portrays Mary, as misunderstanding her son on several occasions. A precocious Jesus seems exasperated with her failure to understand that he would rather be in his father's house than traveling home from Jerusalem with his parents (Luke 2:49). Jesus speaks to Mary harshly at Cana before granting her wish (John 2:4). Later, Mary and fellow family members come to collect Jesus when a crowd accuses him of being crazy in Mark 3:21 and 31-35. Jesus redirects a passerby's blessing on Mary to all those who do the will of God (Luke 11:27-28).