Revelation 12:1-10

And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars....

We read this at Mattins this morning. Stories known by heart (like this passage) remain inexhaustible treasuries of grace, with new details coming to the foreground each time they are read.

These two ideas struck me today:

-- The “crown of twelve stars” can be taken as representation of the twelve tribes of Israel. St. Mary and her son are the consummation of the history of Israel, the crowning glory of her people. It is through her that the latter part of Isaiah (chapters 40 and onward) finds fulfillment, with the grace of God extending through Israel into all the world.

-- The “war in heaven” (v. 7-9): I see now that this cosmic battle is related to St. Mary and the Incarnation. In one sense, “Michael and his angels fought against the dragon” (v. 7) ages ago, before the foundation of the earth. But Biblical time is slippery. The Hebrew language gets that part right; the verbs do not represent past, present, and future in the clear-cut manner of Indo-European languages. My point: the juxaposition of these two stories indicates that the victory of St. Michael and his angels over “that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole earth” (v. 9) is possible only through Christ, and not simply Christ as the heavenly Second Person of the Trinity, but in his person as Jesus of Nazareth, Son of Man, incarnate of the Virgin Mary. “And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.” (Genesis 3:15, the first lesson at Mattins). St. Mary is inextricably bound up into these things, into this story. Nova, nova: Ave fit ex Eva. It is indeed a new thing that has come to pass.

We held our Advent service of Nine Lessons and Carols this evening. We began with Genesis 3:1-15 as we had done at Mattins, and concluded with St. Matthew's account of the Incarnation (ch. 1, verses 18-25, “Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise...”). This follows the genealogy, the “book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham” (v. 1-16). The eternal purposes of God here become focused through all these generations into one time, one place, one child. And through this child, “that old serpent” is finally overcome, as promised to Eve at the beginning:

No more let sins and sorrows grow,
Nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make his blessings flow
Far as the curse is found.