Thursday, December 02, 2010

Could the real Mary please stand up?


I began a 3-week series with our adults last night on Mary. Advent is a great time to look at her story and hope-filled life. Along with Scripture, I’m using The Real Mary by Scot McKnight for fodder. Great book! Scot is a great New Testament scholar and friend to the church.

In this book Scot presents to us evangelicals a Mary we appreciate and learn from. To be honest, when I think of Mary I think of a young woman kneeling beside a baby. It’s the classic nativity scene Mary. This book has caused me to look again and dive into the scripture to see the real Mary.

This book does a great job of laying out the historical context to Mary’s story along with the overall mindset of those in the First Century. You’ll get a great amount of easy-to-read exegesis on passages pertaining to Mary in this book.

One thing unique to this book (at least I thought it was) is the emphasis on Mary’s role as Jesus’ teacher. Of course she was His mom, but have we given much thought to the fact that Jesus was fully human and had to learn in the same way we learn? His mom played a key role in his upbringing and training in the Old Testament stories. If you doubt Mary knew much about the Old Testament compare her song in Luke 1:46-55 to Hannah’s song in 1 Samuel. Mary had a huge influence on Jesus and His teachings.

Well, I’ve still a couple chapters left in this book and will post more about Mary next week. If you have any thought would love to hear them.

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