Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Revelation 12:1-6

In John’s account of the crucifixion Jesus looks down from the cross at his mother and at the beloved disciple and says to Mary “Mother, here is your son,” and to his friend “[h]ere is your mother” (John 19:26-27). Because of this moment of radical openness to the other, theologian Hans Urs Von Balthasar wrote that “Mary cannot be Mother of the Messiah without becoming Mother of all the brothers of the Messiah (Rev 12:17), without therefore being the co-origin of the Church...”*

Many commentators have associated the woman in today’s passage from Revelation with Mary. This would especially have been the case in times like the middle ages when devotion to Mary was a significant aspect of popular spirituality. Others connect the woman with Israel (the crown of twelve stars representing the twelve tribes), the Church. Others point out a more general use of language and imagery that we find in the Bible and other myths of Near Eastern cultures.

Today I’m meditating on this passage thinking about what it means to associate Mary with the woman. Von Balthasar, as I referenced above, seamlessly links Mary with the Church. It's a powerful image, if we identify the child with Jesus, death, personified as a dragon, eager to swallow the child up. The resurrection and ascension also come alive for me too, being described as God “snatch[ing] away” the child and taking him to God’s throne (Rev 12:5). And what about the woman/Mary/the Church? We are told that she is nourished for 1260 days (three and a half years). That likely represents incompleteness, as seven is typically used to denote wholeness. Maybe those three and a half years represent our liminal (transitional, in-between) time as Church labouring on the earth, simultaneously working to build up God’s Kingdom in the here and now, while also looking with anticipation for God’s consummation of that work. 

This consummation is mysterious and beyond our comprehension. So we have books like Revelation and parables like those used by Jesus that capture our attention and imaginations. I’m wary of preachers who flatten prophetic and apocalyptic scriptures into a neat and tidy package. To do so is to do them a disservice, usually in the name of a nationalistic, imperial agenda (which is ironic considering that Revelation is, at least in part, a denunciation of the Roman Empire). I’ve shared a few ideas of what the text might be pointing to, but I definitely haven’t exhausted it. Revelation is notoriously confusing, but by spending some time with the book, it can engage our hearts and minds in powerful ways.

- Matthew Kieswetter

* Hans Urs Von Balthasar, Priestly Spirituality, trans. Frank Davidson (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2007), 46.