Courage Unparalleled

My photo from  Ein Karem, in The Holy Land

Elizabeth’s cousin, Mary, of Nazareth in Galilee was engaged to a man named Joseph, who was of David’s lineage. In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, Mary heard a voice that said, “Shalom, favored one! The Spirit of God is with you.” 

A radiant light filled the room. She was frightened and confused. The angelic presence said to her, “Do not be afraid Mary, for you have found favor with God. You will bear a child, and you will name him Jesus. He will be called God’s child, for he is the one whom God has promised.” 

Mary said, how can this be, for I am without a husband?” The angel replied, “The Spirit of God will encircle you, and the power of the Most High will enter you. The child to be born is holy, for he is the child of God. Now your relative Elizabeth, in her old age, has also conceived a child. The one who was said to be barren is already six months pregnant, for nothing is beyond God’s power.” 

Then Mary said, “I am fully open to the will of God. Let it happen as you say.”
(Luke 1:26-36. Translation by M. T. Winter in The Gospel According to Mary: A New Testament for Women)

An excerpt from “The Annunciation,” by Denise Levertov

This was the moment no one speaks of,

when she could still refuse.

A breath unbreathed,

                                Spirit,

                                          suspended,

                                                            waiting.

She did not cry, ‘I cannot. I am not worthy,’

Nor, ‘I have not the strength.’

She did not submit with gritted teeth,

                                                       raging, coerced.

Bravest of all humans,

                                  consent illumined her.

The room filled with its light,

the lily glowed in it,

                               and the iridescent wings.

Consent,

              courage unparalleled,

opened her utterly.

Exactly nine months from today we will celebrate Christmas. And because Jesus would, naturally, arrive on time, today is the Feast of the Annunciation: the day when the Church remembers Mary’s “yes.” Or what Denise Levertov has called, Mary's “courage unparalleled.”

There’s something about Mary, for sure. The Song she sings in this moment—the Magnificat—is about what is possible for all human beings, female and male, young and old—with God’s help. About what is possible for this tired world that God yearns to make new. 

Her soul magnifies the Lord. Think about what that means. I think it means something like, with God we can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine. I think it means that when we do a little thing in the name of Christ it ripples out to change the world, magnified to the nth degree! It turns out that this new song is really a riff on an old song: Hannah’s Song. (That song can be found in I Samuel 2:1-10.) In other words, even as Mary says yes to a new world she draws strength from the past. 

Mary prefigures Pentecost, the day when Holy Spirit breaks down all walls that divide. For the Holy Spirit there is never “them” and “us” - only us, from every tribe and language and people and nation. Only beloved children of God. Mary models for us what it might mean to let the Holy Spirit blow through our lives and make us new in spite of the dominant culture’s expectations. She knew, as Hannah knew, that God cares about justice and cares especially for the poor. She knew that the deck is stacked and that in this world kids attending inner-city schools do not have the same opportunities that kids going to private schools or affluent suburban schools do.  

God loves all the little children of the world. But God wants the playing field to be more level and so somebody has to take the side of the underdog. That is what the liberation theologians mean when they speak of God’s preferential option for the poor and I think Mary is doing liberation theology in the Magnificat. When she riffs on Hannah’s Song, she stands in a long line of Biblical prophets, male and female, who know this. God knocks the proud and arrogant and powerful down a few pegs and brings up the lowly and fills the hungry with good things and sends the rich away empty, not because God hates the rich but because God really does love the poor, the anawim: God’s little ones. All lives matter to God. But in a world where black lives are devalued, God insists that black lives matter. 

Our Lady of Ferguson, icon written by Mark Dukes

In this dog-eat-dog world the anawim need God on their side because the privileged generally do pretty well taking care of themselves Mary will teach her child, Jesus, to love the least among us as God loves them, and as she loves them. She will teach him how to read the prophets so that when his public ministry begins his first words will sound a lot like the song we heard his mother singing today.  The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. His soul, too, proclaims the greatness of God.

Mary is called by God through the very same pattern that we find throughout the Old Testament whenever God needs to have a job done: from Abraham to Moses to Samuel to Isaiah with his “unclean lips.” The angel says, “I’ve got a job for you.” Like those who have gone before her, she is initially fearful and confused. “How can all this be?” she asks. The angel insists that it can be, because with God all things are possible.

And that’s when Mary sings: I am fully open to the will of God for my life! Like all call narratives, including the calls that come to us in our own lives, Mary has a choice. She chooses “courage unparalleled.” Like all of those called by God, Mary is free to say, “get lost angel!”  She freely chooses to say: Here I am! Send me! In so doing, she is the first and model disciple of Jesus. 

She is bold and courageous and strong in this moment, and not this one only. She will have to be bold and courageous and strong to raise a son like the one she raises. And she will have be bold and courageous and strong when her son walks the Via Delarosa some thirty years later, as her heart is pierced and her son dies on a tree. Mary has to bury her child, something no parent should ever have to do. But she had courage unparalleled. I think of Malala Yousafzai and Greta Thunberg who also possess that kind of courage. And they give me hope for this world. They magnify my own soul, just by their witness.

So let's be clear: there is nothing passive about Mary. And while she may not have a starring role in the Bible, her role is crucial in the deeper, wider, tradition. Mary says “yes” to God and the world is changed. She is Christ-bearer, which is precisely the ministry to which you and I are called: to make room in ourselves for Christ to be born; so that the Word continues to be made flesh in this world.  

An authentic, courageous life of faith is not without its questions, struggles, uncertainties and fears. But with God, all things are possible. God comes to us, as to Mary, not because we are perfect, but because we are willing to open our lives to the radical transformation that the Spirit offers. May Christ be made manifest—and even magnified—through us, for the sake of this world. And when our time comes, may we find the courage to say yes.