Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells and cockleshells
And pretty maids all in a row.

What does this nursery rhyme mean? Like many nursery rhymes out there that we’ve said time and again over the years, nobody really knows. Some say that it refers to Mary I of Scotland. “How does your garden grow,” refers to her reign; “Silver bells,” refers to Catholic cathedral bells; “cockleshells” insinuates that her husband cheated on her; and “pretty maids all in a row,” is talking about her babies that died.

Now, if that’s true, then it’s right in line with the borderline inappropriate dark humor of the English nursery rhyme, “Ring Around the Rosey.” In that nursery rhyme, of course, “ashes, ashes, we all fall down,” refers to mass deaths caused by the plague.

Heartwarming stuff to talk about on Christmas Eve morning, right? I share this with you because I’ve been looking forward to this morning. I’ve been looking forward to talking about Mary: the mother of Jesus, because she is often overlooked in the Christmas story. Like most preachers, I found myself struggling with the message of Mary’s meaning—her place in the story—and in that world of inner homiletic struggle, preacher’s can get a little loopy. That message rattles around in any preacher’s mind to the point of that preacher doing things like I found myself doing in moments of solitude these last few days. I started muttering to myself, “Mary, Mary, quite contrary.”

Well, a couple of things: 1) Some scholars suspect that nursery rhyme wasn’t written until long after the time of Mary I of Scotland. 2) What’s certain is that it has nothing to do with Mary, the mother of Jesus. And I offer this third suggestion from a juxtaposed preacher’s standpoint: Mary, the mother of Jesus, is quite contrary. Think about it: With all our focus on Jesus, Jesus is a Divine paradox, right? We talk about how the people hoped for a Messiah, and God sent Jesus, and the contradiction is that Jesus was not some mighty warrior, who, like King David before him in his family lineage, would smite and destroy the oppressors of the day. He was instead a humble servant of God, a loving servant of you and me, and he couldn’t even pull himself off of a cross to save his own life in the end; which makes the cross a symbol of that paradox that we never forget: the vertical connection with heaven above, and the perpendicular line that holds the outstretched arms of Jesus, outstretched as if to offer a constant hope and prayer for God’s constantly changing world, full of the very indifference and death that put God incarnate up on that cross in the first place. Jesus is quite the contrary.

So is Mary. Mary lives in a biblical time when barenness gives women a negative mark. Women of Mary’s day are given social worth based on their ability to provide offspring. And this is why the stories about angels sharing good news of children being born to older women is so amazing. Zechariah and Elizabeth are getting up there in age. They’re thinking retirement, not crib-building and painting the baby’s room. And that’s when the miracle comes: “Zechariah, your wife, Elizabeth, is going to have a kid. Your prayers have been answered.” And just like that, Elizabeth is blessed. She is so blessed.

Quite the contrary with Mary. Mary is an unwed teenage virgin. She might want to have a child some day, but her thoughts of childbearing are like a young girl’s thoughts of her wedding day: She can’t wait for it to happen, but she can’t imagine being in a relationship with someone else. That’s just icky. It’s a hope, but it’s one that realistically has to wait. And this is when the news comes from the Angel Gabriel, “Mary, do not be afraid, for God has found favor with you. You shall bear a son, the son of the Most High, and you shall name him Jesus.”

Elizabeth’s social blessing. Mary’s social curse. Why then does Mary say in Luke 1:48 when she’s singing in response to this news from the angel: “From now on every generation will call me blessed”? Blessed? Everyone will ostracize you, Mary. Everyone will talk about you behind your back. And your curse will spread to your boyfriend, Joseph. Now he’s just going to be seen as a pushover: the guy who’s pining after his pregnant girlfriend. You’re lower than a barren woman. You’re a teenager with no husband and a baby in your belly!

Still, she sings: “Every generation will call me blessed.” I think that social stigma has lasted through the years, and we still have a hint of it even when we remember the Christmas story. We know why Mary is blessed: we, the readers of recipients of the Christmas story. But we’re part of every generation that Mary sings about, and I seriously doubt that all of us exault Mary as blessed.

When you look at a nativity scene, what is your focal point? Some sticklers for detail might look to see if all the characters are present: the wisemen, the shepherds, the angel, the animals. But eventually our eyes focus on the centerpiece: the infant Jesus lying in a manger (or in more contemporary depictions, like the one I have at home of children re-enacting the nativity scene, you might be focused on the baby Jesus resting on some straw and lying in a Radio Flyer red wagon). We look at Jesus, but do we ever look at Mary? Do we ever think about Mary, the one who announced in Scripture that all generations would call her “blessed”?

Here is something for us to think about on this Christmas Eve morning, a time when we’re waiting for a blessing: Without Mary there can be no blessings. Without Mary, blessings do not exist. St. Anselm said it like this in the first century: “All nature is created by God and God is born of Mary. God created all things, and Mary gave birth to God… So God is the Father of all created things, and Mary is the mother of all re-created things.” A blessing, a true blessing, is anything that is made new, anything that is reborn, anything that was lost but becomes found; a blessing is anything that is re-created.

And here’s something else for us to think about: We are the agents of God’s re-creation. We are the hands and feet of God’s re-creation in the world. You and I are the ones whose responsibility it is as people of faith to re-create God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. And every time we chisel away at that re-creation, it’s like pulling something beautiful out of nothingness; kind of like Michaelangelo chiseling away at a simple rock until the creation of his greatest sculpture, David, was revealed. Each of us in our own way can do that. We can. We can serve as God’s re-creaters. We can bless the world. But without Mary, my friends…without Mary there can be no blessing.

And I don’t say this just because Mary was the mother of Jesus. If we look at it like that, then we miss the blessing of Mary. We tend to think that Mary said ‘yes’ to God, and the result is that Jesus was born, the world was saved, and, to that extent, Mary is to be thanked. She was part of the plan. But to leave it at that is to belittle Mary. If we look at Mary as the teenage girl who said ‘yes’ to God, played her part and disappeared, then we’re not only doing her a disservice; we’re doing a disservice to all women.

This is that social stigma that I mentioned before. It’s the social stigma that we carry even today, and it’s no wonder women all over the world are treated as less than. It’s no wonder women receive lower compensation on average than men in this country. It’s no wonder gender inequality is at the heart of anything from politics to family values to homophobia.

And look at schools. I attended a meeting of community workers at the rape crisis prevention center last week, and one of the folks around the table mentioned that schools welcome the DARE program, where speakers come to visit with students about drug and alcohol prevention and resisting those temptations. Great program and a very necessary one. But superintendants shy away from any mention of rape prevention. We don’t want our kids hearing about that. The language is too sexual. And read into it what you will that of the 20 people gathered around that table to talk about rape prevention in our community, I was one of two males.

Mary is the mother of all blessings, not just because she served her calling to conceive and bear the son of God; not just because she said ‘yes’ to God. Mary is the mother of all blessings because she also teaches us to say ‘no’ in ways that protect all things, trust all things, hope all things and endure all things. Mary teaches us blessed defiance.

In the canticle that Ruth sang for us this morning, we hear Mary say ‘no.’ She says no to the mighty on their thrones. She says ‘no’ to the misers of our world. She says ‘no’ to anyone who would exploit the poor and hungry. That is blessed defiance. So, here is our message for Christmas Eve: Mary, the mother of all blessings, teaches us how to say ‘yes’ and how to say ‘no’ in ways that build up the kingdom of God. We all know how to say ‘yes’ and ‘no’, but we can spend a lifetime saying ‘yes’ and ‘no’ to the wrong things, can’t we? We think we have it all figured out even in the little things we teach our children.

Our son Mac is learning how to nod his head for ‘yes’, and he’s learning how to say ‘no.’ The other night Stacy asked him, “Mackies, are you ready to go ‘night night’?” And he nodded his head. So, she did what’s part of the correct routine. She took him into his room, put him in her lap and started to read him a book to make him more tired. But he started squirming, pointed at his bed, and defiantly said to her, “No! Night night!”

We all know how to say ‘yes’ and ‘no’, and we know the intensity of those words’ meanings. But what do we say ‘yes’ and ‘no’ to? We say ‘yes’ to credit cards, more responsibilities at work, making as much money as possible, competing with each other, and having the space and time in which to enjoy the fruits of our labor at the end of it all with retirement; so we say ‘yes’ to our plans and our goals. But do we say ‘yes’ to helping others become everything within their potential. Do we say ‘yes’ to empowering the entire world with resources, education, healthcare, food and shelter? Do we say ‘yes’ to forgiveness, be it forgiving friends who have hurt us or forgiving ourselves for the wrongs we’ve done against the ones we love? Do we say ‘yes’ to a life of prayer? Do we say ‘yes’ to God…like Mary did?

And do we say ‘no’ the way Mary did? Do we say ‘no’ to anything in our world that oppresses those who cannot defend themselves? Do we say ‘no’ to the discrimnation of other ethnicities, other religions, or different representations of families? Do we say ‘no’ to the Church in our country wasting its time and money on condemning the full participation of women and homosexuals in the Church? Do we say ‘no’ to anything that would compromise the Gospel. Do we say ‘no’ to the powers in our world that work to destroy everything that Mary said ‘yes’ to?

Friends, God is a giver of life, yes, but sometimes life cannot be granted enough room to grow unless we look at those things in the world that kill and say ‘no.’ God in Christ Jesus is our Savior, and the gift of Jesus is our invitation to spend our lives in service to this life-giving truth. And Mary is our guide for how we do that service. Mary is our blueprint for servant-living. No Mary, no blessing.

St. Thomas Aquinas said, “As sailors are guided by a star to the port, so are Christians guided to Heaven by Mary.” Along the journey, sisters and brothers, and especially during this time of Christmas, let us model our lives after a woman who said ‘yes’ to God and ‘no’ to hopelessness. God bless you, and Merry Christmas. Amen.