The Virgin Mary, Mikhail Nesteroz

As a Protestant, my view of Mary was a relatively sanitized one for much of my life. First, I saw her as the wholly submissive teen who offered up her life with Behold I am the servant of the Lord; may it be done unto me according to your word.  I imagined that she uttered these words with her head bowed, her hands clasped in prayer, and her heart in peaceful consent. Second, I saw her as the flushed, bright-eyed mother–the pain and mess of childbirth altogether gone– the Madonna who gazed wondrously into the eyes of the swaddled son of God. Certainly, I regarded Mary as an essential character in the Christmas story, but for years, sadly I had consigned her to the role of a flat, two-dimensional character. Mary got a supporting role, and she looked really good playing it.

A month ago, I spent three mostly silent days at an Ignatian retreat during which I lived, worshipped, read, and prayed as one of few Protestants among a group of about 60 Catholic women. One day as I heard their unison voices pray the traditional prayer to the Blessed Virgin, the Hail Mary, I joined them. And as I prayed these words, I began to find it difficult to regard Mary as the pretty blue-robed woman who often got thoughtlessly shoved into the corner of my nativity set. I began to think about Mary as a woman of genuine dimension. I began to see her as so much more than a supporting character.

Consider the Magnificat (Luke 1: 46-55) And Mary said,

“My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant.
For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
for he who is mighty has done great things for me,
 and holy is his name.
And his mercy is for those who fear him
 from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts;
he has brought down the mighty from their thrones
 and exalted those of humble estate;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel,
in remembrance of his mercy,
as he spoke to our fathers,
to Abraham and to his offspring forever.”

In a recent Washington Post article, “‘Magnificat’ in the Bible is revolutionary. Some evangelicals silence her,” D. L. Mayfield writes that the Magnificat is “the longest set of words spoken by a woman in the New Testament (and a poor, young, unmarried pregnant woman at that!).” She cites Dietrich Bonhoeffer who claimed that this prayer is “the most passionate, the wildest, one might even say the most revolutionary hymn ever sung.” And although many have found strength and solace in these words, there are countries such as India, Guatemala, and Argentina that have regarded the Magnificat as so dangerous and revolutionary that they have banned it from being recited publicly or in liturgy.

Mary’s words are soul-turning words, world-turning words. For as Mary magnifies the Lord, she sings not only of his holiness but of his might, how he brings the proud and the powerful to their knees and how he sends the rich away with nothing. She sings of how God, in his mercy, exalts and provides for the humble and hungry. And as she sings, she cradles the baby in her arms who has come to turn the world on its head.

The artist Ben Wildflower understands the power of this canticle. “She’s a young woman singing a song about toppling rulers from their thrones. She’s a radical who exists within the confines of institutionalized religion,” he said. His block print features a Mary who is more warrior than Madonna:

In Rory Cooney’s song “Canticle for the Turning” (1990), the chorus heralds the power of Mary’s words:

My heart shall sing of the day you bring.
Let the fires of your justice burn.
Wipe away all tears,
For the dawn draws near,
And the world is about to turn.

Mary’s prophetic words lived, died, and were raised in Jesus. They turned and are turning the world with each heart that receives him. There have been–and will continue to be–dark days that threaten to defeat us, to convince us that the time for turning has passed and that the path ahead is tragically, singularly straight. For a time, we may walk, unyielding, our heads to the ground, our hearts wrapped in stone. We may forget that we have a Father who has blessed us and promised that he will not forget or forsake us. We may forget Mary’s song and in forgetting, lose our way.

But as we prepare to celebrate the birth of Christ tomorrow, we can turn our hearts today. Any day is a good day for turning, but today would be especially good, I think. On the eve of our Savior’s birth, we can remember the courage of his mother, Mary, and turn from fear and hopelessness. We can sing the words of the most passionate, the wildest, the most revolutionary hymn ever. We can turn our hearts toward home.

Bethlehem, through your small door
Came the One we’ve waited for
The world was changed forevermore
When love was born.
                   Mark Schultz, “When Love Was Born”

During college, I worked at McDonalds and just missed the super-size-it promotion, which burst upon the scene months later with thousand calorie fries, drinks large enough to hydrate entire villages, and sandwiches that clogged your arteries if you merely looked at them. The McDonalds Corporation was simply capitalizing on prevailing ideas: large is good; large says you’re worth it; large means success; large is always better.

And in keeping with these prevailing notions, the entrances to all the biggest places are often substantial ones, super-sized doors framed in neon and over which signs beckon come in, come in, come in with incandescent glory. For such doors should be as grand as the places and experiences that lie behind them. Shouldn’t they?

How often I’ve wished that God would create super-sized doors for me, clearly marking the passage ways into experiences and relationships I was destined to have. Oh, that He would send a million watts of light to blaze through the murky midst of my doubt and eliminate any error of choosing the wrong door! It only seems fitting that God would make large, conspicuous doors for his wayward, short-sighted sons and daughters.

In Mark Schultz’s “When Love Was Born,” however, he writes that Bethlehem was a “small door” through which the “world was changed forevermore.”The stable in which Christ was born offered no breadth, no width, no neon splendor. Just a small and ordinary doorway into the most extraordinary event the world has known. Super-sized love in a tiny package.

About small doors, I think Shultz has it right. Their size and appearance give little to no indication of the riches that lie beyond. Bethlehem is, perhaps, history’s greatest paradox.

In his Reflections of the Psalms, Christian theologian and writer C.S. Lewis writes: “For the entrance is low: we must stoop till we are no taller than children to get in.” Perhaps this is point. Too often, we search for grand doors that we might enter with bluster and bravado, tossing our coats and hats confidently aside. When instead, we should kneel so that we might see and pass through even the smallest doors, so that we might enter with a child’s wonder and humility.

For the past year, my mother has asked if I might write about my father’s death, that is, the experiences we shared in the days that preceded his death. And I have been reluctant. Not because I don’t revere those experiences or find them worthy of written record but because I found myself unworthy of recording them. And yet in the days before we celebrate Christmas, before we enter that still, small door of Bethlehem once again, I have been thinking about my father.

I once believed that death might offer sizeable portals, monumental corridors through which individuals would shed their aged or diseased bodies, like well-worn coats, for eternal ones. These would be doors of real stature and beauty. Doors with electronic eyes that opened graciously at the last breath. Custom doors whose artistry reflected each unique life and soul. And perhaps, in the days before my father died, I was waiting and watching for such a door through which his remarkable life would pass. For my father seemed so much larger than life, and it seemed altogether right that death’s door be commensurately grand.

How wrong I was. For days, friends, colleagues, students, and family members came to offer what words they had to express their gratitude for the presence my father had been in their lives and for the legacy he would leave behind. With each visit, a small and intimate door opened into the communion of their souls.  These intimate openings would foreshadow another—I like to think a simple door with planks hewn from local cottonwoods—through which my father would quietly enter one night as we slept.

All along, I believe that my father understood how he would enter his death quietly and humbly as a child. Like Lewis, he knew that stooping was required. As I sat by his beside one night when my mother and sister were sleeping, he told me of a vision he had when he was a teen. In this vision, Christ was standing before a group of laborers in a field that had recently been harvested. My father told me that Christ’s arms were open as he beckoned the dirty and worn workers, saying, “Come to me.” This was the humble image he had held in his heart for seventy some years: walking into Christ’s arms with no adornment or fanfare but the final beating of his servant heart.

I had it wrong, you see. It was never the door that was intended to be grand and glorious but rather the life passing through it. Jesus entered the world inauspiciously in a small stable and left it flanked by common criminals. Neither his entrance nor his exit would define his immeasurable impact on the world.

And it would not be my father’s entrance nor exit from this life that would reflect the magnitude of the love, the wisdom, and the life he had shared. Did I feel his small door opening that night as lay in my bed trying to sleep? Did I hear God’s still, small voice urging me to rise and go to him? Did I know, without seeing, that my father’s door had closed?

In the center of our living room, I stood alone at the head of my father’s hospital bed and took his hand one final time. There was no one to see or to mark the time of his passing, but I felt my universe shift as I looked out into the black August night.

I’ve learned much about small doors. So, when my time comes, I’d like to think that I will rely on muscle memory as I bend and duck to clear the transom. I’d like to think that years of stooping will prepare me for this final door. And like a child, I’d like to think that I will pass through it expectantly into the open arms of my Father.

I am the door. If any one enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture.  John 10:9 ESV

                                              The honeysuckle bush has not lost its berries,

                                               and their round, red selves punctuate the timber

                                               like crimson ellipses.

                                               Oh, let us not forget the lovely omission

                                               that breathes here!

                                               Bright and expectant, it sings Emmanuel

                                              through the dark rooms of December.