VICTORIA’S SECRET SUPERMODELS . . .

and Mother Mary

By the way, what’s Victoria’s secret? Anybody know?

For the second year in a row . . . no Victoria’s Secret Runway Show! Of course, I’m not going to miss it because I never watched it. Although I wanted to. Most men wanted to watch, but knew they shouldn’t and therefore didn’t, so no more show. But let’s be honest here—men are pigs! I told my daughter this, and now I tell my granddaughters as well. Men. Are. Pigs!

(I know I am blatantly generalizing here, but do I at least have your attention?)

College-aged men and hormones

When I worked as a campus minister, I talked daily with young men about all kinds of stuff, but mostly we talked about sex. The hormones of these college-aged men caused them to think about sex pretty much all the time.

Once a group of four or five of them showed up at my office door. “What are we supposed to do about the mall windows of Victoria‘s Secret? We look, we lust, we know that we shouldn’t lust. What do we do?” They’re thinking about the Matthew 5 deal where Jesus declares that if you look on a woman and lust after her in your heart, you have committed adultery.

Jesus, however, didn’t have to deal with a daily dose of Victoria‘s Secret, so easy for him to say, right?

Yoda like, I replied, “For two seconds, you look; for one second, you lust; away, you look and look back, not; and then into a pillar of saltpeter you turn.”

“Salt-what?”

Okay, saltpeter doesn’t really decrease male sex drive, I know that. It’s a metaphor—kind of.

Then I told them the truth: you are pigs, boys, pigs. The advertisement world knows you are pigs and therefore plays to your pig-ness. “Channel the force,” I tell them. “Resist!”

Skating on thin-ice

The sober truth to all this Victoria‘s Secret talk is not just the damage it does to men, but also and more so, the destructive messages being sent to women, especially young women—and little girls. I’m not a woman and I know I’m skating on thin-ice here, but on-thin-ice is where I think we all need to spend a bit more time.

So allow me, as this COVID-Advent season begins, to introduce a different kind of supermodel—Mary, the mother of Jesus.

But first, a story

I’ll begin with a story out of Sally and my time in Israel/Palestine. Back in 2007, we were living in East Jerusalem (the Palestinian side of town). On a Sunday afternoon, Sally and I made a trek to West Jerusalem (the Jewish side of town). Our goal was to get a cup of Starbucks-style coffee not found in East Jerusalem and to just walk around on streets more like Holland, Michigan.

We passed a jewelry shop and stopped in to browse. Behind the counter was a distinguished-looking, elderly Jewish man—seriously distinguished-looking—groomed gray hair, perfectly clipped beard, sport coat, tie.

Sally was seeking a gold ring with the Jerusalem cross on it. This was a Jewish shop, and the old man told us that he didn’t display items with Jerusalem crosses on them due to their association with the Crusades. “However,” he said. “I have some in the back.”

He returned with a display case of about twenty rings with a variety of crosses on them. They were beautiful and mostly expensive—beyond our price range. But there was one that wasn’t, and Sally liked it so we bought it.

Now—his story

Then the man asked if he could share his own story. He was a seventh-generation Jerusalem Jew, meaning that his family had been living in Jerusalem for well over a hundred years, long before the modern state of Israel was established. “I was a Palestinian Jew before 1948 and proud of it, too. Jews and Palestinians peacefully lived together here. My grandfather and father opened this shop in 1938. The only reason I have these rings is because I know that the [Palestinian] Christians here are trying to reclaim a heritage that challenges the evil of the Christian Crusades. For them, the Jerusalem Cross is about reaching the world for Jesus.” (Yes, he said it just like that—I wrote it down.)

Then the old man said this: “Remember, your Jesus lived under occupation too.” The “too” referred to the current Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza—a startling thing for a Jewish person to say.

Mary and her son—rebels with a cause

When the angel Gabriel came to Mary with the birth announcement, he came to a young woman who was living under oppression and with daily injustice.

Jesus was born under occupation.  We forget that don’t we? In fact, Jesus lived his entire life under Roman occupation. To top it all off, Jesus was executed by Rome with the support of the Jewish Temple establishment. 

Back to the annunciation (the announcement to Mary). Let me ask you this—would you sing if you were her?  After all, Mary’s being “great with child” is not something she could explain or understand, not something Mary had chosen or planned.  This pregnancy put Mary in a bad way with her fiancé, not to mention everyone else in her little town of Nazareth.  The angel told Mary to “fear not” (Luke 1:30), but old Simeon later told the truth of what it meant for Mary to be “blessed among women”: “a sword, will also pierce your side” (Luke 2:35).  Motherhood would not be easy for Mary.  Yet Mary sang, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior . . . ” (Luke 1:46).

This is no lullaby that Mary sings. The words thunder forth like a battle chant: “He has shown strength with his arm, he has scattered the proud in the imaginations of their hearts, he has put down the mighty from their thrones; and the rich he has sent away empty” (Luke 1:51).

Gentle Mary, meek and mild?

The Magnificat—not too sweet of a Christmas carol.  It’s a song about someone low rising up and someone high being brought low. Gentle Mary, meek and mild—yeah, no!

Yet, she is in a humble state—pregnant before married, living under occupation. But let me ask you this: do you think humility is some kind of weakness?  If so, then think again.  Here we are in first-century Judea, in the December darkness, no Magi’s star in the sky, people shut up in their darkened houses for fear of Roman soldiers, streets deserted and fearfully quiet.  One way to handle an oppressive situation in a place like Nazareth—where Luke’s Gabriel comes to Mary— is to keep your head down, your mouth buttoned shut.  But in this dark silence, a pure, clear, feminine voice cuts through the night:

“My soul magnifies the Lord. . . . [H]e has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted those of low degree” (Luke 1:52).

Mary, did you know?

Two millennial later, a teenage Palestinian girl from the little town of Bethlehem waits in the early morning darkness at an Israeli checkpoint with American-armed Israeli soldiers delaying her effort to simply attend school. You think she’s not singing a resistance song under her breath?

Or if you are willing to go where this hurts, imagine a 13-year-old undocumented Mexican-migrant girl laboring in an American tobacco field as it turns dark, raising her fist to the heavens and singing this song.

How about the desperate, rage-filled battle cry of a twelve-year-old Indian girl in Calcutta stumbling out of a brothel in the first light of day after an excruciating night? Can you hear her? You think she doesn’t know that men are pigs? You think someone has to tell her that basic fact of life? Did you think I was just being cute, metaphoric—overstating and generalizing simply to get your attention? No!

This sex-slave scenario is worldwide, including right here in South Dakota hunting lodges, at Super Bowl parties, and all over this country. And the ones who make it possible are men!

Mary, did you know? Yes, I think she did. But do we?

We can change this, but first . . .

Since the very beginning of human existence the imbalance of power between men and women has resulted in either men as protectors or men as abusers—but either way, women land in a subservient position. Whenever there is an imbalance of power, the only way to bring up those in low estate is for the powerful to come down. In the incarnation event that we celebrate during this time of the year this is exactly what God did—God came down!

Over the past 50 years of my life I’ve been a part of many movements—Promise Keepers, Wild at Heart, Focus on the Family, etc.—all well-intentioned and each influential and transformational to many men and their families. Men have been encouraged to step up and take leadership in their homes and churches and communities. But why? Why this almost all consuming need, this overwhelming drive to hold on to male authority as if it is a divine right?

It’s hard to come down, that’s why. It’s hard to give up power—just ask President Trump.

I realize that I harp on the election of Donald Trump, and I can imagine many are weary with my obsession. However, for me, the exalting of Trump by so many men of all races, but especially white Christian men, is a huge red flag—one I cannot ignore. This is a man who declares “nasty” any woman who dares to stand up to him, who talked of a woman who refused to cow tail to him as someone “bleeding from somewhere.” Is Donald Trump all bad? No, of course not. But he is not a role model for what a real man should be. I beg all men, whether you voted for him or not, to at the very least, stand up and say you agree.

It is our problem, men!

We men are the abusers and also the refusers. Mostly, we refuse to acknowledge our part in the problem and refuse to confess our complicity in the ongoing abuse of women and girls. The idea that any man in any circumstance has authority over any woman simply because of his gender is a destructive idea for both sexes. And we ought to say it plainly and loudly. What I wish is that when Jesus gave the command to “go into all the world and make disciples,” he would have added a phase like “who make waves.”

Speaking of making waves . . . what kind of a mother raises a child so dangerous to the powers-that-be, so politically in the face of the status-quo, that such a child needs to be executed to shut him up? Yeah, not a Victoria‘s Secret kind of supermodel, this mother! But a super model? Absolutely.

And men, she’s our role model—this mother of God. “Change this water to wine, son” (John 2:1-11). And he did it! What’s that tell you?