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If the Christmas pageant is not enough, how else can Protestants re-connect, without buying into some of the non-canonical doctrines?

I think a good place to start—perhaps the best place for today's Christians—is with Mary under the cross. Many people over the past year have started here, as they have viewed Mel Gibson's powerful movie, The Passion of the Christ. Here we see the events of the passion through the mater dolorosa, the weeping Mary, witnessing her son's death, cradling his corpse. This Mary stands in solidarity with all believers who also live under the shadow of the Cross, including many whose lives are at risk today because of their witness for Christ.

This Mary was the one disciple of Jesus who didn't flee when all the other disciples fled, but who stayed and accepted the burden of being under the cross to the very end. When we suffer or are persecuted, we can look to this Mary who remained faithful and obedient even in that grim moment. That's the Mary that you see in the famous Gruenewald painting, for example.

But Mary at the cross is important even for those of us not under persecution. Wendell Berry puts it well in his poem "The Way of Pain": "Unless we grieve like Mary / at His grave, giving Him up / as lost, no Easter morning comes."

Is this a sense in which the traditional view of Mary as a forerunner and symbol of the whole church is on the right track?

Yes, Eastern iconographers have it right: they never depict Mary alone, but always with Christ, the apostles, and the saints. The New Testament portrays her as bridging the Old and New Testaments at Jesus' birth, and then at the end of Jesus' life, Mary is both among the last at the cross, and among the first in the Upper Room, for the birth of the church at Pentecost.

And it has not been just the Eastern Orthodox or the early and medieval fathers who have seen Mary as a representative par excellence of the church. The Reformers noticed that when all of the disciples had fled in fear, Mary remained true to Christ and his word. Her fidelity unto the Cross showed that the true faith could be preserved in one individual. And the Reformers honored her for this, considering her the mother of the (true remnant) church.

What other traditional moments or characterizations of Mary can be helpful for us today as Protestants?

There are two statements that Mary makes in the Gospels, both of which I think are absolutely exemplary for the Christian life.

The first is this: "Let it be unto me according to your Word." This act of surrender, submission, standing in awe before the presence of the Holy, is the very posture of humility and surrender all of us are called to take before God. And Mary's words anticipate Jesus' statement in the garden, "Not my will but yours be done."

Mary's second exemplary saying comes at the wedding at Cana. First Jesus has this little, almost, tussle with his mother, saying, "Woman, my hour has not yet come"—which sounds a little bit gruff, Jesus speaking to his mama like that. But then she says to the wine stewards, "Whatever he says unto you, do it." Well, again, this is the call to, as evangelical Protestants sing, "trust and obey." So from the lips of Mary you've got probably the two most salient words of counsel for living the Christian life.

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