The Fourth Sunday of Advent: Delusions of grandeur?

2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16; Luke 1:46b-55 OR Psalm 89:1-4, 19-26; Romans 16:25-27; Luke 1:26-38

I thought about titling this blogpost/meditation on the lines of something like "making the impossible possible" or "the glorious impossible" or something like that. But I fear that the emphasis on the impossibility of the Incarnation are quickly becoming trite. So I am searching for a different metaphor, a different way of talking about this in order to keep it fresh in my own mind. That is, admittedly, part of my goal in writing meditations on the Revised Common Lectionary texts for this year: to increase my own creativity and thinking about the mysteries of the Christian faith.

Recently I watched on YouTube videos related to the heretic Catholic sect the Palmarian Church. I had been looking at various of the "Habemus Papum!" videos relating to the last few popes and this stuff was in the "Related Videos" section. I am of course not endorsing anything related to this sect, but it was interesting. For the present purposes, one of these videos was a five-minute-long (claimed, unprovably, to be "unedited") video of the former head of the sect, the Anti-Pope Gregory XVII apparently having a vision of the risen Christ in the Palmarian Cathedral at Seville.

Many of the comments on this video are, typically, the kind of vulgar trash one expects from comments on the Internet. But one I found suggested that all Anti-Pope Gregory would need to do is kneel, cross himself, and look up toward the ceiling a few times and then say later that he had seen a vision of Christ. No one else, of course, later said they had seen the same thing the Anti-Pope had, but none of them denied the authenticity of the vision later. Orthodox Christians are in general agreement that it was a hoax and a delusion of grandeur, but the Palmarians are in similar general agreement of the opposite.

A possibility which must be admitted, particularly in the current climate among the biblical studies guild, is that the assurance King David receives of the permanence of his dynasty is just this sort of posturing. In other words, especially since no one but Nathan the prophet sees or hears this promise of God to the king, there may be some unreality to it. Come to think of it, the vision of 2 Sam 7 is one step further removed from the YouTube video of Anti-Pope Gregory. In the latter case, the one having the vision of success is the leader himself, whereas in 2 Sam 7 the promise is given as a command to the prophet to promise these things to the king. All this is to say that I have begun to pay more and more attention to the details behind dialogues--and especially divine promises--as they appear in the Old Testament. Lots of people have already done this, so it's not like I'm blazing any new trails here. But it is at least possible that the writers of 2 Sam have some sort of ideological interest in the preservation of the Davidic dynasty, which in view of later events comes to frustration anyway.

The easy thing to do here is to draw a contrast between David as the powerful ruler and Mary as the humble servant of the Lord. For Mary in the Gospel lesson is given a great promise as well. In fact, her promise is even greater than the one commanded of Nathan to give to David--she will bear the Son of God. And she is not of a high position to begin with as opposed to the king, such that the greater promise is given to the one who begins with a lower position. There is something to be said there about Jesus' oft-repeated dictum that in the Kingdom of God the last will be first and the first will be last. But, more still, there is no mediation of a prophet here. Mary's conversation with God has a mediator, sure, the angel Gabriel, but at least we have a direct report of the conversation, rather than, like 1 Sam 7, a command to go have a conversation. And Mary is in no position to have delusions of grandeur; in fact, in the tradition of OT prophets, she initially resists the divine word, only to have reassurance that God will be with her (see Jer 1, Exod 3, Isa 6, Judg 6, among many others).

Am I approaching something like a veneration of Mary here? Well, yes and no. Along the same lines that I suggested above, namely that the story of God's promise of a forever-enduring line to David could have been a later insertion for the purposes of theological propaganda, so also could the calling of Mary (and this language should in fact be used here) be seen as a later insertion by someone interested in giving theological justification for the veneration of Mary. But, like a lot of scholarly investigation, this kind of thing also teeters on the edge of sophistry. How far do you push the argument that just about everything in Scripture was put into Scripture to serve certain theological and ideological interests?

Of course, the opposite argument can be made, namely that the experience of Mary (leaving David aside for the moment) was genuine, which does not make necessary any sort of veneration of Mary. Mary may rather be considered as an example of how one ought to act in the presence and in the promise of God. In that way, she is a prophet, one who has been admitted, at least after a fashion, into the counsels of the Most High and given a special task through that experience. By reaching out to the lowly, the humble servant of God, the foundations of the revolution that would be accomplished through Jesus were laid. Even if I do not agree with the position of some that this puts Mary into a privileged position in our devotion, it does say something significant about how God acts in the world.

King David may have had delusions of grandeur. Anti-Pope Gregory may have had delusions of grandeur. But Mary had no grandeur with which to delude herself. And that is precisely how she as a prophet brings us to God. "With what shall I approach the LORD?" asked Micah. "Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly before God," is the answer. God does not command things that cannot be fulfilled, only to punish people for failing to keep his commands. If he did so, then he would be a tyrant, unworthy of worship.

In the calling of Mary to bear the Son of God, and so to change the world, God reached out to the lowly and lifted her--and them, and us--up to himself. And this is the glorious impossible. Amen.