Ordinary, extraordinary and inconvenient - Mary the mother of Jesus, a role model for us all

 Mary the mother of Jesus is perhaps one of the best known women who has ever lived. She is one of few women from antiquity whose names we know, and she is one of even fewer women whose words are recorded. To give a sense of how few women’s words are remembered from antiquity, as compared to men’s, only 1.5% of all recorded speech in the Bible is spoken by women.

This makes Mary an extraordinary woman, remembered for what she said and did. And at the same time, she was also a very ordinary woman, born into an ordinary middle eastern peasant family, nothing to mark her out as special, chosen by God not for her status but for her willingness to answer God’s call.

And she was an inconvenient woman. She was inconvenient in becoming pregnant while not married. In her culture, this would have been something that brought shame on her whole family. This is why Joseph, who she was betrothed to marry, was going to quietly end their relationship, to avoid the shame falling on him too, until an angel persuades him to stay with Mary.                

Much of what we know of Mary is from these early days, around the time when Jesus is born. The handful of times we see Mary after this, present what seems to me a rather lovely and ordinary picture of a mother – a mother telling off her child for not being where she expected him to be when they left the temple, a mother telling her grown son what she thought he ought to be doing, when they were at the wedding in Cana, a mother trying to get her son’s attention when she was following him as he was out and about doing preaching to the crowds.

She remained inconvenient too – a refugee, fleeing from persecution with her family, forced to find shelter in another country for fear of their lives. Mary was also inconvenient in speaking out these prophetic words that we have just heard. She wasn’t the first woman God called to speak words of prophecy. Miriam, Deborah, and Huldah are all remembered in Scripture as prophets. And so when Mary speaks these words, glorifying God and proclaiming a vision of God’s kingdom, she stands in a tradition of inconvenient women, breaking religious norms and daring to speak as the Spirit led them.

And of course she remained extraordinary. The first disciple of Jesus, answering God’s call to bear Jesus and to bring him up, she remained faithful to the end. Even if at times she didn’t totally get what Jesus was doing, she never left him. And at the cross, when almost all others had run away, including all but one of the twelve, she was there, with just a handful of others. How she could bear to stay there, I don’t know, but then how could she bear to leave her son in that bleakest of moments?

Then came that hope beyond all hopes, when the disciples encountered the risen Jesus, though for Mary I’m sure that joy was tinged with sadness, as the joy of reunion at the resurrection would end with the ascension of Jesus to heaven. And the last time we hear of Mary in Scripture is just after that day, when the disciples in Jerusalem gathered together in prayer, and from this little group is born the church of Jesus, followers of the way, builders of the kingdom.

Too often, I think, the church has constrained Mary, painting a picture of an idealised woman, saintly in an unattainable way, a role model for women to follow that was never achievable. But this does a disservice to Mary as much as it does to the women it was aimed at. Mary was an ordinary woman, an extraordinary woman, an inconvenient woman, and so much more. And if women are to follow her example, we should be just that – ordinary, extraordinary, inconvenient and so much more. And if you’re not a woman, then join us, walk beside us, living your own ordinary, extraordinary, inconvenient life.

(This picture hung on my Granny and my mum's walls, two wonderfully ordinary, extraordinary and inconvenient women!)

In our culture of celebrity, with so much of life performed on social and other media for all to see, the ordinary can seem, well, ordinary. But the longer I live the more I see the blessing of an ordinary life.

In the ancient Greek myths, there is a story that Achilles, that great hero, was foretold to live either a glorious life and die young, and be remembered throughout the ages, or to live a long and uneventful life in obscurity. He chose the former, and we know the story of his glorious and tragic death outside the walls of Troy. And yet the myths also record that years later, when that other hero Odysseus went down into the underworld and met the spirit of Achilles, he said that he had made the wrong choice, and given his time again he would choose a long ordinary life and be happily forgotten.

Ordinary lives are seldom remembered more than a few generations after they were lived. But I don’t think that they are really forgotten. They are woven into the fabric of those who come after, whose lives are unknowingly shaped by what went before.

In the history of our own congregation and the Episcopal Church in Glasgow, Roger Edwards has done a power of work to find the names and the stories of women who went before us, shaping our congregational story. Women like Anna Paterson and Margaret Fleming, who were injured when the Episcopal congregation was thrown out of the cathedral in 1689. Then there is then an unnamed woman remembered in a sermon from 1731 – the preacher, George Graeme says of her “when health allowed her how constant an attendant she was on the public worship of God … with what gravity, reverence and attention she behaved herself in it, how greatly she adorned her Christian profession by her exemplary conversation.”

And of course many women are remembered in the fabric of the building, in the art and the windows, and the bells that greet us Sunday by Sunday, given “to the praise and glory of God and in loving memory of Louise Marian Pearson, a maker of sweet music.”

For each of these women we know of, there were hundreds more who have prayed and sung and worked for the good of this place and its people. Our congregation now has been shaped by them and their ordinary, faithful work, and though we don’t know their names God does.

Then, in the midst of our ordinary lives, there are extraordinary moments. We generally don’t see them coming – I don’t suppose that Mary knew what would come to pass when she said to God “let it be to me according to your word”.  We do know that she treasured in her heart all the extraordinary moments that were to come. Would she have changed her answer to God if she knew what was to come, as Achilles wished he had? I don’t know, but I think not, as she remained faithful to that promise throughout her life.

And to guide us through our ordinary and extraordinary lives we have these words Mary prophesied, calling us to work for a world where the rich are sent to the back of the queue while the poor are fed, where those on the margins make the rules that the powerful have to obey. At times we will be the ones whose comfortable lives are being disrupted, at other times we will be the ones doing the disrupting. None of this is convenient, but then God promised us an abundant life, not a convenient one.

Marilynne Robinson says, in her novel Gilead, there are many ways to live a good life.  May God show you the way to live your good life, your ordinary, extraordinary, inconvenient life. And as you find that way, may you honour Mary, a woman who showed us how to live – ordinary, extraordinary, and inconvenient, all to the glory of God.