Mary

So tomorrow is the fourth Sunday, a day many Protestant preachers dred...or at least bury their heads from. It's the day we're supposed to talk about Mary. (gasp)

I must admit I have done the basic Protestant Mary sermon several times: "Mary's fiat/yes/willingness to to God's will is an example for all of us and we should be thus open to God as well." Yay. Sermon preached. Let's all go enjoy a nice potluck.

The problem is, the immaculate conception (which involves Mary's conception, not Jesus') and such aside, Protestants do share many views about Mary with Roman Catholics. We may not want to talk about it, but that only further confuses things. What's more, some people have some really crazy ideas that we never address because we don't want to talk about it. And some people have some really good questions we never discuss because we're perfectly happy to put in our few words about Mary on this day and then move on...and talk about Biblical literalism or homosexuality...something, anything else.

When I was in seminary, for my intro to theology class, I wrote a paper on the immaculate conception. What can I say, I bore easily. I think I was just still stunned that the immaculate conception was about Mary, not Jesus, and I was a bit frustrated no one ever told me that before. But, you know, we never talked about it, so I was like most Protestants.

This year, I'm going to walk head on into this Mary thing. Spice things up a bit. I've got a variety of people in my congregation, and they know even a wider variety of folks. Somewhere mixed in all of that are people with really serious and important questions that we so seldom address. What is up with this whole virgin conception thing? Is it different from the phrase "virgin birth" people use? How can the Bible make such a point of saying Jesus is descended from David then make this family tree pass through Joseph who the Gospels say is not Jesus' biological father? What would have had to be necessary for Jesus to be born without sin? What was God really up to anyway?

And all of this tied up in the fact that Christmas isn't really a very significant Christian holiday anyway. Lent and Easter, those are the big ones. Christmas? Well, we all know a little about the complicated traditions of Christmas.

Does Christmas shape our understanding of Easter, or vice-versa?

I haven't even scratched the surface on these questions well. Continue on into whether the infancy stories are a pandering to Greek culture or not, and on and on, and it's honestly pretty incredible we just bury our heads in the sand.

I'm interested to see people's thoughts after tomorrow's sermon...we'll see. Mostly, I'm trying not to be too much of a theology nerd and make some sort of lineal progression...