Mary the Revolutionary

History provides scant evidence about her, and what we do know seems to be fictionalized. Mariam of Galilee was born during the violent and oppressive reign of Herod the Great. One of a number of countless rabble eking out a meager existence on the fringes of the Roman Empire, she was a poor subaltern silenced by a system built on her disenfranchisement. Worse, like so many powerless young girls throughout the centuries, as a teen she suddenly found herself pregnant, only exacerbating her fragility. 

The picture you probably have of Mary was created by medieval artists, glazed in soft hues and sitting in silent repose. In countless renditions of the Madonna and Child, Mary comes to us through the ages meek and mild, silenced by sentimentality. But in Luke’s Gospel we meet someone else altogether. In what we now know as Mary’s Song or the Magnificat, we read the longest set of words spoken by a woman in the entire New Testament. And what we hear isn’t the voice of a compliant little girl, but rather the defiant cry of a rebel bent on overthrowing injustice:  

He has stretched out his mighty arm and scattered the proud with all their plans. He has brought down mighty kings from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; He has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away with empty hands.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer called this “the most passionate, the wildest, one might even say the most revolutionary hymn ever sung.” Her words have been a threat to dictators, power brokers, and would-be autocrats for two thousand years.The Magnificat was banned from being sung or read in India under British rule, as well as pronounced illegal by the Guatemalan government in the 1980s. The powerful have always wanted to silence Mary, to forget her and her prophetic claims. And we the privileged have so often joined them by taming Mary into a sweet figure in a quaint nativity scene. But she persists. 

There is nothing cozy about Mary. She is a woman to be reckoned with. During Advent, we sing her song, remember her story, and reclaim her message of resistance by announcing with her the great reversal of all things—that God is turning the world upside down (or maybe right side up) through unflinching solidarity with the forgotten. Mary is putting the people, powers, and principalities that continue to sow injustice on notice. And when we look at who is most impacted by systemic oppression and social injustice, it is disproportionately poor, brown, forgotten, and marginalized women. Is it any wonder, then, that God would choose to save the world through the body of a poor, brown, forgotten, and marginalized woman? 

Mary’s story needs to be told, her song must be sung. But to do so will require conversion, an authentic metanoia [change of heart] in those of us whose privileged place at the top of society blinds us from seeing her in the faces and hearing her in the cries of the oppressed who beg for mercy and justice. She will not be silenced, she will not be forgotten as long as we remember that salvation—for her then and for our world now—requires liberation, a specific deliverance from every social, political, and economic system that continues to oppress the marginalized in our midst. 

This Advent, remember Mary the revolutionary. Sing her song of hopeful defiance not only from your candlelit (home) services, but in the streets and halls of power. God has turned history on its head, not through the power of a narcissistic tyrant, but rather through the nearly forgotten voice of an unwed teenage girl. Amen. 

Announcing Our New Podcast, Holy Heretics: Losing Religion and Finding Jesus

We created this podcast to be a place to discuss the state of religion in the 21st century and what it means to follow the Way of Jesus in our modern world. Equally provocative and deep, it's sure to get you thinking about your faith in fresh ways, challenge you to delve deeper into the roots of your beliefs, and get you out of your comfort zone. Click the button below to listen to Episode 1 now! Be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform, too! 

WHAT WE'RE READING/LISTENING TO

Melanie

• Reading: Jesus for President: Politics for Ordinary Radicals by Shane Claiborne

• Listening to: Learning How to See and Truce podcasts

Gary Alan

• Reading: Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time by Marcus J. Borg

• Listening to: The Bible for Normal People podcast

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