By Jennifer McKenzie

“Open the eyes of our faith, that we may behold Him in all his redeeming work…” –Book of Common Prayer, pg. 224, Collect for “Third Sunday of Easter.”

Close your eyes. Just for a minute. What is it like to sit in that darkness? When I do this it’s not exactly total darkness that I experience. Sometimes there are these weird little flashes of light or color. I can usually sense contrast in my environment –where light is coming from, where the shadows are. But I can’t really see. I can only imagine what’s in front of me. I have to trust my intuition and my memory of my environment. I have to make decisions in my mind’s eye about where obstacles are and how to navigate to where I’m trying to go.

We’ve all had that experience, one way or another. You get up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, curtains drawn and you leave the lights off so as not to disturb your partner. It’s a challenge, but not too much of one. After all, the terrain map is safely stored in your memory. You’ve inadvertently trained yourself by walking this way so many times before in the light. So what, it’s dark now. Big deal. You just use your hands to guide you – palms out, fingers pulled back slightly, shuffling slowly around trying not to bump into the doorframe…it’s an odd feeling of determined confidence under-girded by modest fear.

But there’s another version of this experience that we’ve probably all had, too. The one where you’re going along fine at first, only to discover that you are ever-so-slightly off course. You thought you were poised to walk right through the center of the open doorway when in fact your foot catches the nightstand and you realized in that instant of yelping expletives with your lips clamped tight that you were about a foot off course. Ouch! The problem with walking in the dark is that we can usually go along fine for a while – sometimes a good while – dependent on our own instincts and the path we’ve carved in our minds. So we deceive ourselves about how accurately we’re navigating our way, and suddenly we’re caught up short – we miss the mark.

The New Testament Book of Acts, Chapter 9 recounts the conversion of Saul, whom God renames Paul. St. Paul. Paul thinks he knows the way. He has that determined confidence that he is doing what is right in God’s sight. But ironically he is walking in spiritual darkness. And he’s been going down the wrong path long enough that he gets blinded by the light. God covers his eyes with scaly-somethings so that he must be still for three days in physical darkness. And there he sits in the “house of Judas” on the “road called Straight.” And while he has no vision, he has A Vision. A Vision of sight regained. A Vision of regained sight.

This Saul, who had been “breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord…who belonged to The Way” is a zealous lover of God and of God’s law. The problem was that he was blind to the fact that God could be doing a new thing. That just didn’t fit in with his religious worldview. But this Saul is the very one who founded new churches – communities of faith called ekklesia – all over the Mediterranean world, and risked his own life, several times over to do it. This Saul had his sight restored and a new vision grafted into his heart. This Saul, God said, “is an instrument whom I have chosen to bring my name before Gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel.” It’s a wonderful thing, isn’t it, that while clearly God doesn’t always call the qualified, God is always able to qualify the called…and to open the eyes of our faith, so that we can see our lives anew.

The Rev. Jennifer McKenzie, assistant rector at St. David’s, in Washington, D. C., recently accepted a call to be associate rector for Evangelism, Mission/Outreach, and Adult Discipleship at Christ Church, Alexandria. She blogs at The Reverend Mother.

How should we think about her today, this little Middle Eastern woman called Mary? Different times and cultures have interpreted her in different ways and she could easily be the Lady of a Thousand Faces. Let’s see why.

The first thing is to look in Scripture and, in particular, the Gospels. Not surprisingly, she doesn’t get much court-time: in Matthew, Mary doesn’t say anything and is kind of beige, neutral; in Mark, she’s like the cocky on the biscuit tin, an outsider; in Luke, she’s a woman of faith; in John, the only name she gets is “the mother of Jesus”, which says a lot, particularly if you’re a clergy spouse.

Certainly, there’s no consistency in the Good Book. However, we can say some things about her, this one who has intrigued and fascinated people for centuries.

Mary ( Miriamin Hebrew) was, start to finish, a Jewish woman. She had inherited her faith from her family line, one that stretched back to Abraham and Sarah. Her prayers were to YHWH, the God who set people free, the One who established covenant with his people.

Mary followed the Torah (Law) by reciting the prayers, keeping Sabbath and Festivals and lighting candles. She was a typical Jewish woman who also believed that the Messiah had come. This didn’t mean that she stopped attending synagogue; far from it, she continued that practice.

While Mary was one of the original Jewish Christians, she was never a Gentile. It does her no honour, therefore, to take to her Jewishness with a bottle of White King Bleach. Don’t think we haven’t done that, believe me. We have.

We’ve turned her Jewish complexion into that of a blond, blue-eyed Caucasian. Not content with disfigurement, we’ve also taken to her spiritual life and made her into a 20 th/21 stcentury version of a Christian woman, which she ain’t.

Mary lived in a rural village, Nazareth , whose population consisted largely of peasants and tradies. Married to a local chippie, her life consisted of taking care of her large household. Besides Joseph and Jesus, Scripture tells us there were four brothers: James, Joses, Judas and Simon and some unnamed sisters.

Her days were filled with the hard, unpaid work of women of all ages: the feeding, clothing and nurturing of a growing household. Like other village women of her day, she was, most likely, illiterate.

Times were tough in l’le old Nazareth . This village was part of an occupied state under the heel of imperial Rome . Revolution was in the air. The atmosphere was tense. Violence and poverty prevailed.

To our shame, it’s only in recent days that we’ve even noticed the similarities between Mary's life and the lives of many others. The Flight into Egypt and the death of her son Jesus by execution compares with those who, among other horrors, have had their children and grandchildren disappear or murdered by dictatorial regimes.

Whatever else Mary is, she is a sister of the marginalized women in every oppressive situation. It does her no honour, then, to take her out of her dangerous historical circumstance and transform her into an icon of a peaceful middle-class, western woman dressed in a blue robe.

Mary walked by faith, not by sight. She had a relationship with God that was profound. In her days, people's hope for the coming of the Messiah included the hope that he would liberate the poor from oppression. That was her hope, too.

Her “Here I am Lord” in Luke is a response to the call of God on her life to be God's partner in the work of redemption, a vocation that still eludes many of us today. As I say, she walked by faith, not by sight.

God stood beside this young woman who was pregnant outside of wedlock and in danger of her own life. God stood with her to fulfil the divine promise. Mary's faith-filled partnership with God in the work of liberation is sung out in the Magnificat(Lk 1:46-55). It's the longest set of words placed on the lips of any woman in the New Testament.

In this song, she sings of the future, when peaceful justice will take root in the land among all people. She’s a prototype of many others – Martin Luther King and so on – and, like his speech, her song is great too; a revolutionary song of salvation. Not only is Mary full of grace but she’s also full of political opinions, which is a Good Thing in anyone.

It does no honour to her to reduce her faith to a privatised level. What’s worse, though, is to reduce Mary’s faith to that of a doting mother/son thing. Before Jesus was born, Mary had her own deep relationship with God and it’s a relationship that isn't focused on Jesus.

Mary, the mother of Jesus, is someone whose life we ought to try to copy; she’s a friend of God. It’s good to find her and to let her dangerous memory inspire and encourage our own witness as a partner with her in that same hope.

(Note from Ian: Reflections this week is an edited version of a Sermon I’m planning to deliver at St Mary’s Atherton on Sunday. It’s their Festival Day. I’m indebted to Sr Elizabeth Johnson CSJ for her insights.)

The Rev. Ian McAlister is the Ministry Development Officer in the Diocese of Queensland and blogs at Reflections from the HIll