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Mother of God

Mary Mother of God : 18 August 2013  : Luke 1: 39-56

When new clergy first arrive they are often keen to sort out what they perceive to be liturgical or theological irregularities. A Syrian monk by the name of Nestorius certainly felt that way when he became Patriarch of Constantinople in 428. He wasn’t happy about the way many of his parishioners referred to Mary as Theotokos, or as we would say, the Mother of God. Devotion to Mary was rapidly developing in the Church of the day, and this was one of her popular preferred titles.

When one of the junior clergy preached an enthusiastic sermon on the subject Nestorious decided that it was time to put the record straight. He weighed in with a sermon of his own which was to have momentous consequences. In it he argued that while you could legitimately say that Mary had given birth to the man Jesus, it was quite wrong, and really almost blasphemous, to say that she had given birth to God.

The sermon caused uproar amongst his new parishioners, but Nestorius might have survived this in house row if word hadn’t got out to the wider Church about what he had said, and been picked up by the Patriarch of Alexandria, Cyril, a heavy weight theologian with a considerable appetite for conflict. What would follow was one of the biggest rows in the Church’s history that would result in two ecumenical Councils being called, two breakaway churches coming into existence – the Nestorian and the Monophysite – and Nestorius being driven into exile. They played for keeps in those days.

So what was the fuss all about? As usual a disagreement about Mary was in fact an argument about her Son, and the way in which he had come among us as true God and true Man. By now the Church had agreed that Jesus was on a par with the Father, he was indivisibly one with the Godhead. But what was still to be worked out was how his Divine and human natures co-existed within him. Nestorius had come out with a strong opinion on the subject, and this was the neuralgia point he had struck in his audience, local and in Upper Egypt.

Christians are making a staggering claim when they say that God has come among us as a human being, because that means that two utterly dissimilar modes of being have been united within him. Nestorius wanted to make it clear that God’s unique Divine privileges and nature hadn’t been compromised, watered down, or subverted by such a union with human frailty, vulnerability and limitations. The Divine and human natures hadn’t as it were been smashed together, freely intermingled, and mixed together in a confused manner. They existed side by side in separate compartments united by a narrow bridge of connection. So what Mary had given birth to was the human component of this remarkable union, but in a separate and distinct manner. He felt extremely uncomfortable with the notion that pure divinity, the essence of God, had resided for nine months in a womb. Surely such a union couldn’t be that intimate – the gestation and birth process of mammals was something that God could only be involved in in a reserved and detached way.

Cyril asked – whom are we dealing with in Jesus Christ as the centre of our religion? He is the divine Word of God, the second person of the Trinity, who is the centre, the subject, and the operating principle of Jesus of Nazareth. He modified his being to come among us. He formed a close and intimate union with a human nature. He was not separated into two components. In him a common frontier exists with the Divine and Human natures but in such a way that neither is compromised. It is vital that he entered into the lowest and most vulnerable features of the human condition because if he didn’t assume those hurting bits of our situation then he couldn’t heal them.

So what Mary had supplied was the human medium of this remarkable combination, the stuff of his incarnate existence, which he wouldn’t discard at the end of his earthly life like an actor’s costume. In her womb was assembled the union of Divine and human natures in close consortium. She had given birth to a one off, unique creature, in whom was united all things earthly and heavenly.

Nestorius had worried that if humanity and divinity had become so close up and personal then this would result in God suffering in the events of Good Friday, something that would be an absolute no-no for an all powerful and omnipotent God. But Cyril made it clear that while you could use the language of paradox about that extraordinary event, and say that Jesus the Son of God had suffered on the cross, he had done so in his human nature. The suffering hadn’t as it were broken through into his Divine nature. While Jesus had emptied himself of divine privileges in order to come among us, he hadn’t done that in such a way as to limit the ability of his Divine nature to conquer the powers of suffering, sin and death. The light in him was not extinguished by the heart of darkness he entered into on the hill of Golgotha.

Cyril’s view on the matter has now become the orthodox faith of the Church. And it is no idle theological opinion of little relevance to our Christian walk.

When Jesus entered the human condition he did so to rescue it from the sorry state it had fallen into. The very structures of human existence, the inner characteristics of the human condition, had suffered a loss of internal integrity. We had been diminished in our capacity to live well and wisely. The texture of our humanness had been thinned out, and reduced.

The close and complete union of Divine and Human natures of Jesus, united in a single subject as one coherent identity, meant that he not only provided the link between divinity and humanity, he also became for all time the junction point of our dynamic participation in the divine life. He was now the conduit and reconnection point between God and us, through which God could pour his renewing life into us. Through Baptism and the Eucharist, by inwardly saying yes to God, through a life of love in action, we could now become through participation in that Divine life, raised in value as human creatures. Sure we would still die a biological death, but as beloved sons and daughters, already on the road to recovery of our full grandeur and stature, we would live forever with him in the life of the Kingdom.

Maybe Nestorius’ parishioners couldn’t spell all that out in full theological detail when he riled them up by denying that Mary was the Mother of God, but that was what had been at stake in this contretemps, and Mary as symbol and emblem of the real identity of her Son, had pointed the way to our eternal destiny.