The Apostasy of Judas

The hymns of Holy Week travel straight like arrows to the heart.  There we learn of the harlot’s gratitude to Christ, she who formerly lived in the dark and moonless love of sin.  We learn of the one who laboured long to serve the Master and increase the talents given to him and who was finally summoned to enter into the joy of his Lord.  And also we learn of the apostasy of Judas.  Judas remains in our liturgical tradition like a shadow, haunting the light.  His fall warns us of the perennial danger of falling, and each time we approach the Chalice we speak his name and tremble:  “I will not give You a kiss as did Judas, but like the thief will I confess You, remember me, O Lord, in Your Kingdom”. 

            The apostasy of Judas, like all acts of sin, presents the mind with a mystery.  Why did he do it?  He could he do it?  The betrayal is perverse, impenetrable.  The New Testament give the barest hints of his heart’s motivation.  It describes him as a traitor, a devil, a thief who pilfered from the money-box entrusted to him.  But even this does not go very far in resolving the mystery.  Surely it cannot simply have been about money?  The Twelve imagined that they were on the brink of entering a new world order with themselves as the new rulers.  Surely in this new political order, money would not be a problem?  Was the heart of Judas already growing cold while he served in his Lord?  Did doubt and double-mindedness seep in, damaging and eroding integrity, drawing him ever more to side with the Lord’s foes?  Did the money he pilfered end up in the hands of the Zealots?  We can never know.  The shadow that shrouded his heart remains, and prevents us from seeing into it very far.

            But apostasy remains a possibility for everyone, and if one of the Twelve could fall, then no one can consider themselves immune and safe from temptation.  I think of this when I sometimes peruse my Church Metrical Book, the record containing the names of all those in the last thirty years whom I baptized and chrismated.  Many, happily enough, remain in the Church.  But others have fallen away, and the joy which shone from the faces in the baptismal font did not serve to protect from subsequent apostasy.  It is another arrow in the heart.

            Some church leaders, knowing this, have taken steps to try to prevent it.  One Greek bishop, realizing that many Greek teens no longer attend Church, wrote to his people and suggested that the problem was insufficient Hellenization, and that if the parents just used more Greek around the home, all would be well, and fewer of these young people would leave the Church.  With respect, I suggest that identifying the Faith with one’s ethnic heritage is part of the problem, not part of the solution.  The answer is not greater attention to ourselves and our background.  The answer is greater attention to Jesus.

            Parents need to help their children see the Lord, to have a living relationship with Him.  It is not enough to know about Jesus, in the same way as one might know about the Battle of Hastings or other historical facts.  They need also to know Jesus personally.  Sadly this is still no guarantee that they will not subsequently choose poorly and abandon their Lord.  But it is the best defence.

            In this matter of seeing and knowing Jesus, I am reminded of a scene from C.S. Lewis’ final volume in his Narnian Chronicles, The Last Battle.  In that world, there were two rival deities, Aslan and Tash, corresponding to our own Christ and Allah.  A devout worshipper of Tash by the name of Emeth who had been taught from his boyhood to hate the name of Aslan, finally finds himself through a door into the other world.  He beholds the bright sky and the wide lands and smells the sweetness, and thinks that he has surely come into the country of Tash.  Then, bounding towards him with the speed of an ostrich and the size of an elephant, comes Aslan, the great Lion.  “His hair was like pure gold and the brightness of his eyes like gold that was liquid in the furnace.  He was more terrible than a flaming mountain, and his beauty surpassed all that was in the world even as a rose in bloom surpassed the dust of the desert.”  “Then”, he said, “I fell at his feet and thought, Surely this is the hour of death, for the Lion (who is worthy of all honour) will know that I have served Tash all my days and not him.  Nevertheless, it is better to see the Lion and die than to be king of the world and live and not to have seen him”.

            This is the voice of authentic discipleship, the song of the Church, the confession of everyone who has known Jesus.  The beauty of Jesus surpasses all that is in the world even as a rose in bloom surpasses the dust of the desert.  It is better to see Him and die a martyr’s death than to be king of the world and live long in splendour and wealth, and not to have seen Him.

            How can one see the great Lion and then abandon Him?  How can anyone look long into those eyes of fire, and then turn away from His face and pursue other paths?  It remains possible, though the darkness of perversity shrouds such a choice and makes it impenetrable to pious reason.  But seeing the great Lion and knowing Him remains our best defense against the fate the Judas.  That should be our goal in raising our children, and our own continued goal as well.  The hymns of Holy Week warn us of the terrible possibility of apostasy.  Let us tremble, and look to the Lion.

Palm Sunday: Where are You in the Crowd?

Come away with me; let us leave our world and travel back together to the first Palm Sunday in the first century.  Stepping out of our time machine, we see the bright sunshine beating down on us, the dusty road, the jostling, joyful, shouting crowds.  And there, coming down the road from Bethany, with the Mount of Olives towering above on His right, Jesus of Nazareth entering the Holy City with His disciples and a crowd of pilgrims following behind.  He is mounted upon a donkey, which plods along with its foal.  Christ sits smiling royally upon the donkey as the procession proceeds along the southern way into the Holy City.  Multitudes from Jerusalem have come out to greet Him, casting their garments on the road on which He will travel, while others cut branches from the palm trees and spread them also along the path.  Everyone is happy, everyone is shouting, and you can pick out from the noise the repeated chant, “Hosanna to the Son of David!  Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord!”  The Pharisees caught up in the tumult are scandalized at this open and controversial declaration of His Messiahship, and plead with Him, “Teacher!  Rebuke your disciples!”  But He responds that prophecy must be fulfilled, and if His disciples were quiet, the very stones would cry out and give voice to their words.

            Then freeze the frame, pause the scene in mid-movement, and step back to observe everything as it would appear if painted on an icon.  And ask yourself:  if you had to play a part in that scene, which part would you play?  Where in that crowd would you want to be found?  Who would you choose to be?

            Would you be among the shouting crowds, one of those enthusiastically hailing Him as the coming Messiah?  Not a good choice, for within a week the crowds who once cried, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” would be crying, “Let him be crucified!  His blood be upon us and upon our children!”  They hailed Him as Messiah only because of what they thought He was about to do for them.  He would fulfil their nationalistic and military agenda; He would raise an army and with supernatural power overthrow the Romans, liberating Israel and exalting them to a place of power on the world stage.  He would replace the hated Pax Romana with a serene and almighty Pax Hebraica, and make the Romans pay.  When it at once became apparent that He would not overthrow Roman rule, and when they saw Him flogged, bleeding, and abused, trotted out by the Romans wearing an anti-Semitic crown of thorns and the purple robe of mockery, they instantly turned on Him.  So the Pharisees were right after all!  Jesus of Nazareth was not a true prophet, much less the hoped for Messiah, but just another deceiver.  Away with him!  Let him be crucified!  No; one should not choose to be part of that happy, triumphant crowd.

            Perhaps one should choose to be one of the apostles.  On that first Palm Sunday they stood close to their Master, basking in reflected glory.  But that also would not be a wise choice.  Within the same week following, they all would prove their unworthiness.  They would quarrel among themselves over the top places they imagined would be available to them in the coming Kingdom and in the new order, even to the point of quarrelling over seats of honour at their final meal together.  Though each one would loudly proclaim his unshakable loyalty to Jesus, when the test came a few hours later, they all forsook Him and fled.  Peter even denied Him repeatedly, caving in before the pointed accusing fingers of a servant girl. When the Lord finally found them after His passion and resurrection, they were huddling behind locked doors for fear of the Jews and of their own imminent arrest.  No; one should not choose a place among the apostles on that day either.

            I suggest that the best choice, the place of ultimate safety that day, was the donkey.  That beast of burden alone did not ultimately prove itself unworthy.  It was not swayed that day by the joyful acclamations, nor later by the screaming words of hate.  It was chosen to do a particular job and to bear a particular burden, and it did it, not expecting praise or reward.  There it was, front and center, unnoticed and invisible, completely reliable and obedient.  That is where I would choose to be, if I had to pick a place and choose a role that day.  The Lord has jobs for us to do, and burdens for us to bear.  They might be heavy burdens or light, involving prominence and praise, or obscurity and invisibility.  What matters is that we accept whatever load He lays upon us and do not complain.  We do not demand applause or reward in this age.  It is enough that when the Lord says to us as was said to the donkey, “The Lord has need of it”, we just come along quietly and do what is asked of us.  It is true that on Palm Sunday now we called to sing, and exult, and wave our palm branches with joy.  It is good to sing our Hosannas in obedience to our tradition.  It is even better to combine this liturgical exuberance with the calm constancy of ongoing reliable obedience.

"It is Time for the Lord to Act": the Significance of Assembling

          According to the official OCA service book, the Divine Liturgy begins when the deacon “bows his head to the priest and says, ‘It is time to begin the service to the Lord. Bless, Master’”. (The words translated thus are rendered in the venerable Hapgood version as “time to sacrifice unto the Lord”) The Greek original is καιροζ του ποιησαι τω κυριω/ kairos tou poiesai to kurio. In the Septuagint of Psalm 118/ 119 verse 26, these words are translated as “It is time for the Lord to act”. Ideas of doing service or sacrificing are therefore interpretive renderings. The words do not so much inform us about what we should do (e.g. offer service or sacrifice) as about what God is about to do. In these words the deacon tells the priest that the Lord is about to act, and because of this they should do something.
          One may ask why it is the deacon who tells this to the priest. Why doesn’t the priest say this to the deacon? Or why doesn’t the reader say this to the priest? Or the choir director? After all, the service can’t properly get going until the choir director is ready to roll. Why is the deacon the one who says this?
The answer takes us out of the present and back to a time when the deacon, who was supported by subdeacons and door-keepers, was in effective charge of the assembled crowds. “If anyone misbehaves,” Chrysostom advised in his day, “call the deacon” (from his homilies on the Acts of the Apostles). In that day, when the people had assembled, the deacon would be informed, and he then would tell the priest that everyone had assembled. That is what he meant by saying “It is time for the Lord to act”—it was because everyone had now assembled that Christ was about to act and manifest His presence. The Lord had promised that “when two are three are gathered in My name, there am I in the midst of them” (Matthew 18:20), and now that the people had gathered in His name, He was about appear in their midst. “The Church” is not so much an organization to which one belongs as it is an event that takes place when Christians gather together in liturgical assembly. The term “church” in part refers to the experience of Christ manifesting Himself in the midst of His people when they assemble in His name. In the words cited at the beginning, the deacon is telling the priest that this assembling or gathering had taken place and that Christ was ready to manifest Himself. They had better therefore begin to do their part.
          We see the same significance of the assembly in the original opening of the Liturgy as served in Constantinople in Chrystostom’s day, though that opening is now buried further into the service. In Chrysostom’s day the celebrants would enter the church in silence and ascend into the altar area. The main celebrant (the bishop) would then takes his episcopal seat or throne in the high place and greet the assembly saying, “Peace be unto all!” to which they would respond “And with your spirit!” This was not just a way of the presider saying, “Hello everybody, nice to see you”. The exchange was his formal acknowledgment of the assembled Christians as those who have assembled in Christ’s name and who now had Christ in their midst. The mutual blessing set the liturgical seal on the assembly.
           This is obscured somewhat in our present Liturgy, where this mutual greeting which once opened the service now takes place many minutes into the service itself, preceded by the opening doxology, the Great Litany, three Antiphons and their accompanying prayers/ litanies, a series of troparia, the Trisagion Prayer and the singing of the Trisagion Hymn. One would never guess that this liturgical exchange was once the effective beginning of the service, and as it now is, it serves little point. It once sealed the opening assembly. Now it looks like a quick exchange introducing the prokeimenon and the epistle.
           That is probably why in the service book the response is given to the celebrant’s blessing of “Peace be unto all!” not by the assembled people whom he was addressing, but by the Reader. Why the reader? He was not addressing the Reader in particular, but rather peace was offered to “all”. The Reader however now responds because the blessing now serves to introduce to the readings, not to seal the assembly. Given this diminution of meaning it is not surprising that in some versions of the Liturgy (such as in the Antiochian Liturgikon) it is simply omitted or appended as a footnote documenting the odd practice of “some traditions”. It has been effectively emptied of meaning.
           This unfortunate change of meaning is not simply of historical or archaeological significance, but witnesses to a more profound change in our whole understanding of Liturgy. Before the assembling of the people was of crucial importance—it was the sign that Christ was about to act and manifest His presence in their midst. That is, the diaconal signal and the presider’s greeting witnessed to the fact that Liturgy was something priest and people did together, and it was in this cooperative action that the gift of divine presence was given. The assembling of the people is now no longer viewed in the same way. In Chrysostom’s day, the deacon would be told that everyone had gathered and that therefore something was about to occur. The fact of assembly was the precondition for doing everything else, for Liturgy was a corporate action. Now the Liturgy can begin at a set time (e.g. 10.00 a.m.) regardless of whether or not the people have gathered. The deacon now no longer says, “It is the time for the Lord to act” because the subdeacons or door-keepers have told him that everyone had gathered. He now says “It is time for the Lord to act” because his watch tells him it is 10.00 a.m. regardless of who has gathered. (Perhaps this is why the rendering “It is time to begin the service to the Lord” is now used, for this rendering expresses not the thought of God’s imminent action, but of our obligation. It’s 10.00 a.m.—time to start.) The people can come in anytime they like, and drift in throughout the service. Their gathering is now longer crucial or the sine qua non of liturgical functioning. As long as the priest and cantor or choir director are present, things can proceed. We Orthodox may say we do not believe in “private Masses” as in the historical western practice, but this offers a close enough approximation. Like the private Mass, the assembly of the people is no longer crucial. The canonical requirement of two or three people present in the nave (who may or may not eventually communicate) is a poor substitute for the earlier expectation that the people would assembly in their fullness.

          We observe that in this mentality the performance of the Liturgy has become clericalized—it is now no longer something the clergy do as a part of the assembly and for which the gathered assembly was a crucial requirement. It is now something the clergy do for the people—a product to be consumed by consumers, regardless of the number of them present. The people feel free to come late for the Liturgy in the same way as they feel themselves free to come into a theatre late for a movie, and for the same reason—the movie will begin whether or not they are late, and their lateness will not effect the quality of the movie. The clergy do not feel free to come late to the Liturgy because their presence is crucial to its performance. We need to recover a sense of the significance of the assembly, and of the sanctity of the laity. They must come for the Liturgy on time for the same reason that the priest must come on time— because their presence also is crucial to its performance. That does not mean that Christ legalistically withholds His presence until a certain number have gathered. The Lord is gracious and condescending, and bestows the gift of His presence even when many are tardy and drift into the service after the Gospel. But His kindness must not be received as divine permission to be late or misconstrued that their presence if superfluous. As Paul said, God’s kindness leads us to repentance (Romans 2:4).
           Every baptized Orthodox is called to do his or her share and should assemble on time to make their contribution to the Liturgy. Their presence is not superfluous. It is essential. It is so important that Christ pledged His presence to those who would gather in His name. Our service books tell the deacon to be on the lookout for the fullness of their presence and to announce this fullness to the priest: the Church of the living God has assembled! It is now time for the Lord to act. 

Another Jesus

One is tempted to hearken to the siren song of our relativistic and pluralistic society and conclude that all Christian churches believe pretty much the same thing.  There are differences of course—some have bishops and some don’t; some consider the Eucharist to be the true Body and Blood of Christ, and some don’t.  And of course Catholics have the Pope.  But apart from these incidentals (as the world regards them) all people calling themselves Christians share the same faith and worship the same Jesus.  As long as we confess the same Christ, let’s not sweat the small stuff.

            This approach was not the one taken by St. Paul.  Consider, for example, his approach to his Judaizing opponents.  These were men who followed him about, slandering his character, denigrating his apostolic authority.  In the churches of Galatia, they were preaching that to be saved, one needed more than simply baptism and faith in Christ.  One also needed circumcision—in other words, one needed to become a Jew in order to really be a Christian.  The Galatians were impressed with their arguments, and although they had not taken the definitive step of becoming circumcised, they did begin to otherwise live as Jews, keeping a Jewish calendar of festal days, months, seasons, and years (Galatians 4:10).  These same teachers were dogging Paul’s steps elsewhere, and making trouble for him in Corinth.

            Here we must be clear:  both the Judaizers and the people to whom they were preaching were baptized Christians, members of the church, Christians who confessed Christ.  According to our modern model, should not Paul have simply accepted them and agreed to disagree about “the small stuff”?  After all, they both worshipped the same Jesus.

            Not according to Paul.  To the Galatians he wrote that such “Christians” were preaching “a different Gospel” (Galatians 1:6).   They were “severed from Christ”, “fallen away from grace” (Galatians 5:4).  They were preaching “another Jesus” than the one Paul preached, and offered “another Spirit” in their counterfeit baptisms (2 Corinthians 11:4).  All this, just because some Christians insisted on circumcision as necessary for salvation!  So much for first century ecumenism.

            But it was not just in the first century that the Church “sweated the small stuff”, and declared that such deviance from the purity of the faith constituted apostasy from Christianity.  In the fourth century St. Athanasius also insisted that his foes were proclaiming another Jesus.  Both the presbyter Arius and the deacon Athanasius confessed that Jesus of Nazareth was the Son of God, and both could sign on to some sort of the faith in the Holy Trinity.  But they differed on the tiny detail of what the title “Son of God” actually meant.  Athanasius said that it meant the full and undiluted deity of Jesus; Arius said that it meant that it simply meant that Jesus was created by God as the first and noblest of His creatures, and that it was through the Word that God made the rest of His creation.   Couldn’t they agree to disagree?  After all, both considered themselves Christians, and both could confess Jesus as the Son of God.  Even the emperor Constantine initially considered the dispute a merely verbal one and thought they should simply chill out and not fight over much minutiae.  But for Athanasius, the dispute was not over minutiae, but over the basics, and he declared that deviance in this matter of Christology meant that Arius had forfeited any real claim to be considered a Christian.  Accordingly Athanasius called him and his followers not “Christians”, but “Arians”.  The label contained Athanasius’ denunciation of Arius as no real Christian at all.  Arius of course considered himself a Christian, but it was just this label that Athanasius denied him.

            We come now to the twentieth and twenty-first century.  The front line has now shifted from Christology to anthropology, and we now debate matters of gender.  In the fourth century the question was, “Is Jesus the Word as fully divine as the Father?”  In our day the question is, “Is homosexual activity blessable or damnable?  Is it something to be celebrated and accepted, or to be repented of?  Is it legitimate as part of God’s will for His creatures, or is it an abomination?”  Or, put another way, “Does Jesus bless homosexual activity?”  Our news casts and Facebook posts are full of the cultural warfare in North America as people give varied and opposing answers to this question.  Some churches and denominations are answering in the affirmative, and saying, “Yes, Jesus does bless homosexual activity and finds nothing wrong with it.”  Other churches are answering, “No, Jesus does not bless homosexual activity but calls His disciples to repent of it as sinful.” 

Of course other questions are asked in this long and complicated discussion of gender, just as other questions could have been asked about the nature of Jewish Law in the first century, and the Christological debate in the fourth century.  Yes, it’s all very complicated.  But the basic questions still remain:  Does Jesus insist that His disciples be circumcised in order to be saved?  Is Jesus less divine than the Father?  Does Jesus bless homosexual activity?  Answering the first two questions in the affirmative resulted in the Church declaring that you were not a Christian in the first and in the fourth centuries.  I suggest that answering the third question in the affirmative results in forfeiting a credible claim to be a Christian now.  For in all three cases, the person answering in the affirmative is thereby proclaiming another Jesus. 

Think back, for example, to the heresy of the Nicolaitans, a “Christian” movement in Asia in the late first century which tolerated eating food offered to idols and fornication.  Small stuff, right?  After all, there is no reason to think that their Christology was weird.  Like St. John, they also confessed Jesus as the Son of God.  But Christ Himself, speaking in the Book of Revelation, declared that He “hated” the works of the Nicolaitans (Revelation 2:6), and would “war against them” with the sword of His mouth (Revelation 2:15-16)—i.e. pronounce judgment against them.  The Nicolaitans of course did not think that they were doing anything wrong, and that Jesus had no problem with people who ate food offered to idols or with casual sex.  But actually, Jesus did have a problem.  The real problem was that the Nicolaitans were proclaiming another Jesus. 

Those welcoming the gay cultural steam-roller also proclaim another Jesus—one who blesses any sexual union as long as the partners love each other.  This Jesus presumably would have no time for the proscriptions in the Law which denounce homosexuality as “an abomination” (Leviticus 21:13); nor would He thank St. Paul for writing in his epistle that homosexual behaviour was “against nature” (Romans 1:26), and that practising homosexuals were among those who would not inherit the Kingdom (1 Corinthians 6:9-10).  Instead, His anger and indignation would be turned on those who denounce such behaviour and refuse to celebrate it.  This Jesus is a nice Jesus, harmless, sweet, emphatically open, inclusive, and non-judgmental.  There is nothing sinful that He would provoke His condemnation, with the exception of course of fundamentalists and people from the American Religious Right.  This Jesus is of course at odds with the mindset of the early Church and the Fathers; and He would have nothing but derision for the traditional stand which condemned homosexual behaviour.  This Jesus is therefore radically incompatible with the Jesus the Church has been proclaiming for two millennia, and is at least as different from Him as were the Nicolaitan Jesus and the Judaizers’ Jesus of the first century, and the Arian Jesus of the fourth.  If the Church values its traditional past at all it should regard groups which confess this new Jesus as it once regarded the Judaizers, the Nicolaitans, and the Arians—namely as non-Christian groups.  

If it did, this would have immediate consequences for the Church’s ecumenical conversations.  Groups that preach another Jesus and another Gospel are rightly regarded by us now as heretically non-Christian, and thus the Orthodox Church does not have an official ecumenical dialogue with Mormons (that I know of) or with Jehovah’s Witnesses.  Our message to them is simply “Repent and believe”; we do not meet with them for wine and cheese to discuss Christology at conferences or produce scholarly papers at symposia about the thought of Joseph Smith or Charles Taze Russell.  In the same way, any church group or denomination which officially commits itself to blessing homosexual activity or gay marriage is preaching another Jesus, and Orthodoxy should also suspend any official ecumenical dialogue with them.  We badly misread the homosexual debate if we regard it simply as another moral issue (like abortion), and a debate over whether or not a particular activity is sinful.  It is more basic than that.  It is not simply a moral issue; it is a Christological one.   If we continue ecumenical dialogue with groups that bless homosexuality, at best we are wasting our breath.  At worst we are adding credibility to what Paul called “another gospel”. 

The problem, of course, is a perennial one.  In every age there are Christians who compromise with the standards of their age, and accept the world’s values as their own.  These people always call themselves “Christians”, and denounce those who disagree with them as rigid and wrong.  But the Christ whom they preach is not the real Christ.  They in fact misrepresent Him, and preach a Christ made up by themselves, one who conforms more closely to their own secular age.  St. Paul, St. John, and St. Athanasius pulled the mask off them in their day, and denied them the label of “Christian”.  It is time that we Orthodox follow in their footsteps now and do the same to those who offer a counterfeit faith and another Jesus.

Annunciation: Exalting Those of Low Degree

In most Orthodox churches, the image of the Mother of God towers over us—sometimes literally, as her icon fills the upper apse of the church temple, proclaiming there how she united heaven and earth by her willing assent to the Incarnation of the divine Messiah.  In all her icons she is a majestic figure—regal, composed, serene, the Queen of Heaven.  Many icons of the Annunciation portray her as seated on a throne, and with a small footstool, as befits royalty.  In all her images, she is a person of power.

            This is as it should be, since icons portray the eschatological reality, and present not a naturalistic perspective, but a heavenly, hieratic one.  An icon is not a painted photo or a portrait, but a proclamation of the person’s heavenly glory.  Thus it is appropriate that Mary of Nazareth be presented as the Queen of Heaven, exalted by God to a place more honourable than the cherubim and more glorious beyond compare than the seraphim. 

            But these heavenly images of her present power should not blind us to the low degree and powerlessness that she had while she lived and walked in Palestine.  At the time of the Annunciation, Mary was not a person of power, but a simple peasant girl in a small town in Galilee, far from the halls of the mighty down south in Jerusalem and further afield in Rome, and unconnected with the movers and shakers of the world.  It would be hard to exaggerate her powerlessness as far as this world was concerned.  She was a member of a despised race, the Jews, a nation which had lost the last bit of its national sovereignty when the Romans took over in 63 B.C.  In a world which respected age, she was young; in a culture which valued marriage, she was single; in a society which revered wealth, she was poor.  She lived in Galilee, derisively called “Galilee of the Gentiles” by those in Judea, and the town of Nazareth was looked down upon even by others in Galilee.  “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” was a proverbial taunt uttered by Jews in neighbouring Cana (Jn. 1:46).  And we must remember that at the time of the Annunciation she was of the usual marriageable age—that is, about thirteen years old.

            Later loving devotion would adorn her story with other details, like tinsel on a beloved Christmas tree.  The so-called Protoevangelium of James, written in the second century as a kind of devotional attempt to fill in the blanks of her life, supplies a number of biographical details not strictly historical.  But the sober history of the Gospel preserves a picture of what we might expect—a young girl, unknown and poor, coming face to face one day with the eternal and the incalculable.   Luke’s Gospel presents her as a young girl “betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph”, and when the angel Gabriel informed her that she had been chosen to bear the Messiah and was about to conceive Him, she was naturally “greatly troubled” and asked to know how this was possible, since she had “never known a man” (Lk. 1:27f).  When it came time to offer the sacrifice required from those who had given birth, she and Joseph offered “the sacrifice of the poor”—two young pigeons (Lev. 12:8, Lk. 2:24).  Neither does Matthew’s Gospel present her as a celebrity:  when Joseph receives news of her pregnancy he is minded to divorce her quietly (Mt. 1:18f).  In neither of these accounts is Mary presented as famous or rich and powerful.  And later in our Lord’s ministry, when people stumbled at His claims, they invoked His family with no suggestion that they were special:  “Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas?  And are not all his sisters with us?  Where then did this man get all this?” (Mt. 13:55f).  It is clear enough from the Gospel records that Mary was not considered a celebrity by the world around her.

            This is her greatest boast, for her “low degree” was rooted in her invincible humility.  She herself said it first and best:  God’s plan was to scatter the proud in the imagination of their hearts, to put down the mighty from their thrones, and to exalt those of low degree (Lk. 1:51f).  Her Son echoed His Mother:  “Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted” (Lk. 18:14).  Mary was humble, of low degree, powerless in this age.  And because of this, God exalted her, making her honourable and powerful—indeed, more honourable than the cherubim, and reigning with her Son in heaven:  “The Queen stood at your right side, arrayed in golden robes all glorious” (Ps. 45:9). 

            Her exaltation from low degree was the first of many such exaltations.  We find this divine delight in exalting the humble playing like a theme-song throughout the New Testament.  “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong, God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to nullify things that are” (1 Cor. 1:27f).  “Has not God has chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the Kingdom?” (James 2:5).  The world utterly misunderstands the nature of true greatness, and equates greatness with outward strength and self-assertion.  In the world, the one in first place is the one who rules, who exerts his will, who makes a big splash.  God overturns all this, for in His Kingdom the one in first place will be the one who serves as the slave of all (Mk. 10:44).  It is the humble, and self-effacing, and powerless servant who is truly great.  God’s Kingdom inaugurates a revolution, and the revolution began with the Annunciation. 

            Mary is an image of the Church, and her exaltation prophesies and prefigures ours.  It is important therefore that we see and appreciate her humble estate and her powerlessness during her life, for they form the basis for her exaltation after her death.  It is right that our icons dress her in the robes of royalty and place her upon a throne, for these images simply acknowledge in art what God has done for her in heaven.  But as we venerate these images, let us not fail to appreciate the revolution they portray:  that God took a humble, young girl from a small town, and exalted her to a place unmatched in the cosmos or the Kingdom.  He exalted her who was of low degree, so that we and all generations may see His work, and call her blessed.