The Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary

*Preached at Grace North Church February 6th, 2000*

A friend of mine has a brilliant idea for a comic book plot. The main character is the virgin Mary, but she's in a rather unusual environment. Mary, in this story is a waitress in Purgatory. And she's been a waitress for a long, long time, since the story is set contemporaneously. My friend wants me and another friend who is somewhat theologically astute to figure out the theological whatsits to explain this, which we are greatly looking forward to doing.

This should not be hard, since Mary has occupied a kind of theological no man's land for most of the church's history. The very feast that we celebrate today, the Purification of the Virgin Mary is itself a theological contradiction, the irony of which I think has not been sufficiently appreciated by most Christians throughout the centuries. We shall attempt to rectify that this morning!

The Rite of Purification spoken of in today's reading comes from the Law of Moses. In Leviticus chapter 12, we read:

The LORD spoke to Moses, saying: Speak to the people of Israel, saying: If a woman conceives and bears a male child, she shall be ceremonially unclean seven days. Her time of blood purification shall be thirty-three days; she shall not touch any holy thing, or come into the sanctuary, until the days of her purification are completed. If she bears a female child, she shall be unclean two weeks; her time of blood purification shall be sixty-six days. When the days of her purification are completed, whether for a son or for a daughter, she shall bring to the priest at the entrance of the tent of meeting a lamb in its first year for a burnt offering, and a pigeon or a turtledove for a sin offering. He shall offer it before the LORD, and make atonement on her behalf; then she shall be clean from her flow of blood.

What is all this mumbo-jumbo about? This is a complicated question, going back to the very beginnings of the history of religion, long before the time when this text was written. Scholars tell us that in pre-historic times, the woman was seen as somehow magical. How could she not be magical, after all, new life springs from her body? Even God was seen as a woman, the great mother who gives birth to all things. Little statues of the Goddess have been discovered in prehistoric archeological sites in almost every corner of Europe and Asia. The Cult of Mary has been around a very, very long time, under many different names.

But at some point in history, something changed. When people started farming they became less nomadic, and became interested in claiming portions of the earth as property. Well, once something is seen as your property-well, if my property is not as fruitful as your property, I just might want to take your property for myself. And behold, a warrior class is born. The role of men changed from that of the partner and supporter of women to the conquerors of lands. Mythologies all over the globe record this shift in ancient consciousness with tales of war gods conquering the goddesses, often humiliating them or marrying them. And the war of the sexes was on.

Men, now having the upper hand politically and socially, grew suspicious of women. After all, it is still women from whom life magically springs forth. It is a power which men will never have, and frankly, I think this scared the bejeezus out of ancient he-men. Womb envy has been around a lot longer than Freud ever thought of being, and it has played a significant and painful role in the lives of women ever since.

Men are terrified of anything they can't control-and men, if you don't believe me, ask your wives. They will no doubt make it painfully clear to you with hundreds of examples. And of course, ancient men could not control this magical life-force that was the sole purview of women. So they became suspicious of women. They contain magic, which is scary stuff, because it does not play by man-made rules. From these very earliest times until our own century, any woman who stepped out of her place in society, or about whom there might be anything even slightly unusual, was branded a witch. In medieval Europe, scholars estimate that no less than nine million women died at the stake for the alleged crime of "witchcraft." That is a holocaust to rival even that of the Jews', but tragically, unlike the Jews, we do not remember it.

Well, we are remembering it this morning. Warrior society created all sorts of rules to keep those pesky, dangerous women in their places, including the spurious notion of "ritual impurity."

Now if a woman does not bring forth a baby in any given month, she has a curious practice of bringing forth blood. We understand menstruation today to be a complex and marvelous part of the processes that allow birth, but back then, the connection was not so clear. Women brought forth blood, which had great symbolic import to ancient religion. It was a like a sacrifice that was made automatically, a sacrifice not possible for men. This could afford a woman great ritual power in some cultures, but in most warrior cultures this was turned on its head and made out to be a bad thing, the politics of which are not hard to figure out.

In the Hebrew warrior culture, the Law of Moses has this to say:

When a woman has a discharge of blood that is her regular discharge from her body, she shall be in her impurity for seven days, and whoever touches her shall be unclean until the evening. Everything upon which she lies during her impurity shall be unclean; everything also upon which she sits shall be unclean. Whoever touches her bed shall wash his clothes, and bathe in water, and be unclean until the evening. Whoever touches anything upon which she sits shall wash his clothes, and bathe in water, and be unclean until the evening; whether it is the bed or anything upon which she sits, when he touches it he shall be unclean until the evening.

Nowhere in the Law of Moses is a man ritually impure for any normal bodily function for more than until evening. Yet once a month, women have to go outside the camp for an entire week until they are "pure" again. I'll wager ancient Hebrew men learned how to cook at a very early age.

This notion of the reproductive cycle being unclean or even evil continued through Israel's history, and of course, into the history of the church as well. It is Eve, after all, who tempts Adam, it is woman who lures a man away from his virtue in the writings of the fathers. So suspect is Mary, in fact, that she must have been born of a virgin as well, in order to insure her purity, and thus the doctrine of the immaculate conception appears in Christian mythology. And yet even this Virgin, who is herself born of a virgin, must submit to the ritual of Purification as prescribed in the Law of Moses. Even the act of giving birth to God is tainted in the early Christian imagination. And ever since, churchmen have been trying to topple Mary from her place. In the fourth century, the bishops of the church met to decide whether Mary could be venerated as a saint. The fact that she was found worthy was a great relief to the many lay people for whom she was the most approachable face of a warrior God. This iconoclastic urge is still felt today, as Protestants vilify the notion of her veneration.

Yet, her cult remains. Why? I think it is because somewhere, deep within us we know that in spite of all this ritual scaffolding we erect, the social proprieties that keep people in their "proper" places, or the Laws we put into the mouth of God, there is something ineffably mysterious, magical, and holy about the birth of a baby, and all the holy and mysterious science that makes it happen. That, like it or not, men, women are the life-givers, with God-given powers we cannot hope to approximate, let alone master.

And just as we can not hope to master birth, men can no longer hope to master women, either. The English Book of Common Prayer preserves a ritual very like the Jewish Rite of Purification in intent called "The Churching of Women" where a woman makes a thank offering after giving birth. She wears a white veil, and is once more allowed into the church. The Alternative Service book has recognized the archaicness of this theology, and has replaced this rite with one called "The Thanksgiving for the Birth of a Child" which includes the whole family, not just the woman.

The purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary may have happened once upon a time in Palestine, but it is continuing even today. We are purifying our ideas about Mary, we are purifying our theology of the archaic notion that our bodies are stained or evil. The Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary will continue until there no longer remains any idea that women are somehow inferior, or that the processes of birth are in any way impure, until the notion that Mary or any mother is impure seems simply ludicrous to us, as indeed, I think it already does.

Okay, it may take us 5,000 years, but, ladies, you cannot say that men never learn. And we are learning. We are learning that women's bodies are not evil agents of Satan as St. Augustine contends. That women are not Eves, hell-bent on bringing virtuous men to their ruin. That childbirth is not a threat to masculinity, but a magic that rightly and in all holiness belongs to women, and which we may not -and indeed cannot-take away, no matter how many rules, restrictions, or mythologies we construct.

And if we men can finally accept and embrace the holiness of women's bodies, we may eventually be able to come out of our heads and discover the blessedness of our own bodies. After all, the body does not lie. And if we stick around long enough and listen, we will all hear the truth of it.

Let us pray.

Life-giving God, you gave birth to all things, and you called it good. You made man and woman, and likewise you were pleased. You called a young girl to carry your son, and you blessed her before all of heaven and earth. And your blessings continue to every woman who participates in the miracle of childbirth, and to everyone who assists those miracles. Help us to not fear our bodies, but to recognize them as the temples and agents of your spirit. Help us to not fear each other, for you have ordained different ways for us all to give birth. Help us not to fear you, for you are a warm and protecting power, who broods over your children like a mother hen. Be with us now, and forever. Amen.