What does Mary look like in your mind’s eye?
Beautiful, clean, the picture of health? Nice and tidy?
The reality? Consider this painting by Henry Ossawa Tanner, one of America’s greatest African-American painters. This is from 1898.
Tanner's portrayal of Mary is marked by a youthful innocence and a gentle vulnerability that resonates with the tender age of adolescence. She is a teenager, probably 13 or 14, getting ready for bed. Notice her toes sticking out beneath her robe. Serene and radiant, and we might add, resolute.
What must be remembered is her social context as well. Mary is a teenage girl living in military occupation.
It is difficult for people who have never experienced occupation to imagine the horror of having your autonomy and the autonomy of your people lost to a foreign military. You walk the streets of your village, and soldiers are standing at every intersection, soldiers who don’t share your language, values, or taste in food; soldiers who view your body as one of the spoils of war; soldiers who can enter your home at any moment, to do whatever they will with your God-given dignity. No move you make or breath you take goes unnoticed by the force that shouldn’t be in your neighborhood in the first place.
- The Reverend Canon Broderick Greer
And she’s not in Jerusalem, Rome, or Athens. But in the backwater town of Nazareth, in Galilee. God has a habit of showing up in the least expected places.
“Don’t be afraid,” the angel says to Mary, and it's what they are always saying. It’s what heaven has to say to earth. Don’t be afraid.
“You have found favor with God,” the angel tells Mary. God says the same thing to you. God has no disposition towards you other than unconditional, unwavering love. As Martin Luther said on Christmas Eve in 1532, “God is not at enmity with us human beings.”
Mary seems to be leaning forward, not away in fear. She gives a little half-smile. “I’m listening,” she seems to say. “You have my attention. Now convince me.”
“You will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him ‘Yahweh’s Salvation’, Yeshua, Jesus… and His kingdom will never end,” the angels say to Mary.
Mary has questions. And her question is very personal. “How can this be since I’m a virgin?”
Even in the Iron Age in an androcentric and patriarchal culture, she knows her body belongs to her. She doesn’t ask what her father will say, what about the shame this would likely bring on her, her family, and their name. Instead, she testifies to the integrity of her body under her control. In her question, “How can this be?”
In a world that did not necessarily recognize her sole ownership of her body this very young woman had the dignity, courage, and temerity to question a messenger of the Living God about what would happen to her body before giving her consent. That is important. Before Mary said, “yes,” she said, “wait a minute, explain this to me.”
- The Rev. Wil Gafney, Ph.D., in an article entitled “Did Mary Have a MeTOO Moment”
And what was Mary’s answer? She says nothing like, “I am not worthy” or “I don’t know how I’m going to do this.” What she says is, “Here am I.” Echoing Abram, echoing Isaiah. It’s a consensual response and a response of faith and courage. It is fierce. A harbinger of things to come.
Look at the painting again. Do you see the cross formed by the angel as the light intersects with the shelf? Mary is looking at the cross she will bear. That yes she gave was fierce. She said yes, not based on the expectation of things being awesome for her but on the expectation that God can create something out of nothing. Can you ask God today for that kind of ‘yes’?
We are all invited to say ‘yes’ to birthing something holy from God in this world that brings healing and restoration. It’s not like Bethlehem is the only place this can happen.
Mary then goes to Elizabeth, where she hears, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.” The Annunciation is followed by what we might call The Validation.
Mary is inspired to sing. And does she ever. The first Christmas carol is A DOOZY. First, the easy part.
‘My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour,
for he has looked with favour on the lowliness of his servant.
Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.
People love this first part of her song. Especially those who are not poor, not hungry, and not oppressed. This keeps Mary manageable and docile. This is how I was raised to view Mary.
But the Magnificat gives us another version of Mary altogether as a revolutionary, depicted beautifully in this woodcut from Ben Wildflower:
His mercy is for those who fear him
from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel,
in remembrance of his mercy,
according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
to Abraham and to his descendants for ever.’
Welcome to Mary, the woman of Holy Rage. The woman who indicts an economic system built on idolatrous ideas about what kind of people do or don’t deserve things like food and shelter.
It’s so disruptive that when the KJV was created, the British crown replaced thrones with ‘seats.’ Many countries outright banned the Magnificat from being recited in liturgy or public. When American slaveholders wanted to produce a redacted Bible for their slaves, as you might imagine, this part of the Magnificat didn’t make the cut because this is an anthem of liberation.
In (Mary’s words) we see a God who is setting the world right. When we see Mary’s song, questions arise about how Jesus was brought up. Questions around what might have been whispered into Jesus’ ear by his mother, the revolutionary, the rebel. We are led to wonder whether Joseph received his proclivity for risk from Mary. We are led to wonder whether Jesus inherited his rebellious nature from Mary. We are led to wonder whether Mary’s rebel anthem moonlighted as Jesus’ lullaby.
- The Reverend Canon Broderick Greer
The lullaby informs the good news Jesus would later preach in his first sermon in Nazareth. Good news for the poor. Good news for those who continue to be crushed in a world that thrives on exploitation and injustice. Good news for those needing liberation. Surely, a few in the crowd stood there, shaking their heads, thinking: “Well, that apple didn’t fall far from the tree.”
But the Magnificat is good news, too, for those who ARE well-fed, rich, or in a position of power and might benefit from systems that oppress others, like me. It shows us that our path of liberation is to use our position and privilege to lean into the values of Jesus, to lift up the poor, to center their voices, to learn how oppression works, to learn from those on the margins, and to find out God has been there all along.
Perhaps no one captures all of this as well as the late Rachel Held-Evans:
With the Magnificat, Mary not only announces a birth, she announces the inauguration of a new kingdom, one that stands in stark contrast to every other kingdom—past, present, and future—that relies on violence and exploitation to achieve “greatness.” With the Magnificat, Mary declares that God has indeed chosen sides.
And it’s not with the powerful, but the humble.
It’s not with the rich, but with the poor.
It’s not with the occupying force, but with people on the margins.
It’s not with narcissistic kings, but with an un-wed, un-believed teenage girl entrusted with the holy task of birthing, nursing, and nurturing God.
This is the stunning claim of the incarnation: God has made a home among the very people the world casts aside. And in her defiant prayer, Mary—a dark-skinned woman, a refugee, a religious minority in an occupied land—names this reality.
Courageous Mary whose boldness was passed down to her son to reveal the loving heart of God and show us a new way of being in the world.
Courageous Mary who proclaimed that her story and God’s story were one, that God’s dream of liberation and salvation was HER story.
Courageous Mary, who just through the act of giving birth, sanctified the holiness and courage of birthing children. Contractions, tearing, bleeding, cracking, trying to get a baby to latch, postpartum depression, perhaps.
We talk about Jesus’ body being broken for us, but we don’t talk enough about how Mary’s body was broken for his. The savior of the world was completely dependent on her most vulnerable and intimate body parts.
- Kat Armas
In my theological tradition, we don’t pray directly to Mary. But can’t you see why most Christians in human history have? If I ever do practice praying to someone other than the God revealed in Jesus, it would be her. So let’s pray to Jesus and ask Jesus to give us the courage of his mom that we might resist where need be, to be agents of God’s joy and justice in the world. Amen.
What a powerful and inspiring reminder of Mary as a rebel. Beautifully expressed, Fred. Thank you ✨
I have a t-shirt of that Ben Wildflower woodcut! Such a great image. My university has another H.O. Tanner of Mary, entitled simply, "Mary (La Sainte-Marie)," also from 1898. https://artcollection.lasalle.edu/objects-1/info/2687