Mary

As an introduction, the title. I'm not calling her St. Mary, the Blessed Virgin, the Theotokos or anything else that might come to mind. I believe in a church with only one real titled position. Jesus the Messiah. That's it. There are not really any Father Stephens, Pastor Bills, Popes Francis, etc. Jesus explicitly told us this himself. If we had ears to hear we would have heard. We didn't and generally don't. And the following is to explore some of why specifically Mary doesn't deserve and presumably doesn't want the titles inflicted on her by an inexplicably adoring church.

Ever Virginity

The virgin birth from early times had a functional necessity in the story of the incarnation, both as a signal miracle of the uniqueness of Jesus and a vehicle of his sinless nature. What it didn't have was any value in and of itself. That was imputed to it later when the Romans got their grubby paws on the story. Romans involved virgins in their worship of deities. Jews did not. Catholic Mariology reports that Mary grew up in the temple as one of a cadre of virgins, but apparently Jewish historians don't think much of this idea. (I need to research that more) Jewish Christians did not add asceticism and monasticism as enhancements to their spiritual lives. The Romans did. When Paul talks of celibacy, he mentions it as a gift equal and different to non-celibacy. When he counsels couples to not deprive each other for long, he includes no parenthesis about Mary depriving Joseph for the whole of their married life. This tells us one, maybe two things. One, that it wasn't common knowledge in the early church, (which makes it strange that it should be so well known in the later church and what's Mary doing disclosing this anyway?) and two that if he knew about it, it wasn't nearly as important to Paul as it would be to later church leaders. 

With this as well as other bits of Mariology, one has to ask what purpose does it serve? And actually the answer seems to be same in every case. The story of the Incarnation is not enhanced, rather weakened. Along with Immaculate Conception, how can Jesus be really "tempted in every way we are" if he had a perfect mother and his parents never had sex? But what it does strengthen is the Catholic status quo.

Queen of Heaven

When the idea of Mary's majesty as heavenly queen developed, we were not as aware as now as to the size of the universe. At this time we know of approximately 125 billion galaxies and have discovered 16 possibly habitable planets in our own. Assuming there are no more and that our galaxy is typical, this makes for 2 trillion possible locations for beings similar to ourselves with a God story of their own. Surely a creative God such as we believe in would have created life on any number of worlds. What could possibly make our story (potentially one in trillions) so much superior to theirs (maybe they never even had any 'fall'?) that one of the main characters in our story would be promoted to be their queen? The only way such a story makes sense is if God is not the God of the universe, but a solar deity, with a heavenly court not greater than the universe, but merely greater than the universe that we are able to dream of travel to. But then no other Christian story makes sense.

The stable

The Christmas narrative we know well is probably not true. Animals were housed with people in Bethlehem. The Inn was not a Gentile travelers stop. It was a guest room in a family home in a culture so hospitable that thirty years later, Jesus horrifies his audience with the tale of a neighbour who had to be actually begged to assist his friend with an unexpected guest (using the cultural pressure the neighbour is under as one of several analogies for God's own motivation to hear and act when we pray) Even if you factor in gossip filtering south from Nazareth to Bethlehem, Mary is at this time a married woman. People got married after pregnancy back then as they do now. Even for a sanctimonious outsider a marriage is always an acceptable way of patching everything up. The kinswoman of the Joseph's home town would not have consigned their new relative to the barn, a distant cave, etc. to go through the trauma of a first childbirth. Makes no sense. The only purpose it serves to isolate Mary, to make her superhuman and as above, to bolster the myth at the centre of so much Catholic practice.

Well, you get the idea. Mary was one of us. And is still one of us. God asked much of her and she said yes. An absolutely incomparable example. But that's that. Anything more is just a distraction from the one that this whole thing is about.

Lessons from Living Among Charismatics

 I was perusing my blog and I found this unpublished bit. I like it.

1. It's always been this messy
1. If we accept that God still pours out his Spirit on the Church, we have to accept that there are not different eras in the history of this outpouring. People have always "seen through a glass darkly." Prophecies, miracles and such like have always contained some element of imperfection. It's a mistake to revere the Early Church times as something we need to get back to. It's a mistake to revere the writings of the Early Church as 'the perfect Word of God.' What we are saying if we take that view is that some workings of the Spirit are forever lost... And that runs counter to any ideal of the Church growing in power as, speaking intuitively, is God's obvious intent.
2. God has never stopped inspiring his people. 
1. We are the people of the Holy Spirit. God has never stopped speaking or acting through us. Yes, it has come in waves. Yes, we have quenched the Spirit through sin or through lack of faith. But every time we get together, God is present and we experience his speaking to us. We are the people of his inspiration. 
3. No word, action, decision is perfect
1. Everything we do has an aspect of our imperfection. This imperfection was just as present at the beginning as it now. Therefore all of the works of the church, the New Testament, are subject to it. Human character flaws work their way into the way we do any ministry. It's all at once blessed and open to question in the same way as what you see on 'any given Sunday' is blessed and open to question.
4. Leaders do not have divine right status and can be disagreed with.
1. Abuse is still abuse in whatever form. When leaders demand that you come under their 'authority' or never allow themselves to be disagreed with, they are in error. When you read that kind of thing in Paul's writings, you take it with the same grain of salt as you would a present day leader. Just because patriarchal authority was accepted in Early Church times, doesn't mean it needs to be kowtowed to today. Christ declares you to be equal. One Father. One Teacher. Compare Matthew 23 and 1 Corinthians 4:15. Paul is clearly in error here, though understandably. Leadership is not a top down, God ordained thing. It's a functional thing because large groups of humans need some form of delegated management.
5. Our primary relationship with fellow Christians (past, present, future) is familial not positional
1.  Carrying on from Matthew 23, we are all brothers. Therefore in the presence of divinely blessed imperfect ministry, our default is to smile affectionately and recognize each style as unique. For instance, Paul in his letters, loves lists. It's his favourite way of fleshing out a concept. This does not mean that it's always the only way of looking at that concept and it certainly doesn't mean that the lists are exhaustive. It's just the same as certain prophets and healers like to raise their voices 'just so' when they are doing their stuff. It doesn't mean it's normative. It's just them. We stand up for them because they are our brothers and sisters but we don't have be like them or obey them in every particular.
6. The simplistic survives.
1. Nuances will always get lost from one generation to the next. Well reasoned theology and practise will be subordinated to crass formulaic mumbo-jumbo. This is not a good thing. It's a human thing. You can't stop it. People who weren't there won't get it. 
2. There are two obvious solutions, neither of which work
1. renewal, will probably go even farther in wiping out the nuances of the past. Renewal is very desirable but cannot bring back an understanding of what you once had.
2. Over-training to try to transmit nuances will probably just kill the precious thing you are trying to preserve by making it dry as dust.
7. Earnestness isn't always the answer
1.  So, let's try harder. Let's pray longer. Let's worship louder. Let's... It really doesn't always work. It's not inherently futile. Sometimes God just lets us run out of steam. Relax. Try again when it's the right time. Hopefully you'll know.