Mary as Person
The Boy Jesus in the Temple Luke 2:41-50
“Now every year his parents went to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover. And when he was twelve years old, they went up as usual for the festival. When the festival was ended and they started to return, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it. Assuming that he was in the group of travelers, they went a day’s journey. Then they started to look for him among their relatives and friends. When they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem to search for him. After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. When his parents saw him they were astonished; and his mother said to him, ‘Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.’ He said to them, ‘Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?’ But they did not understand what he said to them. Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them. His mother treasured all these things in her heart.”
I love this image of Mary. I like to celebrate her on Mother’s Day, just so we all remember that Mary, the holy mother, forgot her kid in the Temple…at least once. She is real, full of joyful relief and a touch of rage at finding her teen, Jesus. This Mary is never enshrined in stained-glass windows or lifted up in high art. There is no Cathedral named Our Lady of Teen Mom. The Mary of art and culture is perfect, like super-human perfect, her skin, no matter the hue is without bump or blemish and she has zero need for the anti-acne, anti-wrinkle moisturizer. We most often see her after giving birth in a manger and there is no mess, not one hair out of place, there seems to be no hormones out of balance or worry or anything but calm and cool and collected…even when a kid with a drum shows up to solo. The images of Mary make her not only the Queen of heaven but the queen of breastfeeding…that baby clearly latches right away, there are no lactation consultants and she never is vomiting from mastitis. Mary is perfect. So perfect that I feel like we don’t even know her, at least not the way she actually shows up in scripture. In scripture she speaks up, shows up, asks questions, looks you in the eye and is a badass mama raising her kids.
In this story Mary the Perfect Mother forgets her child in Jerusalem. They leave town..it’s not like they forgot to pick him up from soccer practice. They travel a whole day before that Mom-sense must perk up in Mary, and she and Jospeh begin searching for Jesus among their family and friends. To be fair to Mary, Jesus has some autonomy - it’s not like an ancient Home Alone, Jesus stays behind. They would have made this annual pilgrimage with the whole family, cousins and friends and aunties and elders and since Jesus is not a baby swaddled against her chest or a toddler under foot, it’s fair to assume he is running around with cousins and friends, testing his boundaries. He is becoming a young adult and like a real human young adult maybe not every decision is optimal. We perhaps can imagine Mary searching for this child in the big city and finding him. She must have felt the joy of relief with a touch of rage.
She finds him and says, ‘Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.’ Then he replies in what I imagine to be a snarky teen voice that implies his mother is stupid, ‘Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?’” And he lives. This is not the quiet Mary from the Mantel who sits silent, in her turtle neck, never making eye contact. This Mary shows up and has the courage to say what needs to be said and does want needs to be done. I love this Mary. She is all human and all sacred at the same time. She is filled with grit and grace and is perfectly imperfect. This Mary matters, at least to me.
But somehow this Mary isn’t the Mary we see most often. Most often we see the super human, not speaking, perfect Mary. Generation after generation of church leaders have made her into least interesting most modest wonder-woman. At the core of this transformation, I believe, is how we have come to understand the “Virgin Birth.” The story of the Virgin birth even became her name, She is never just Mary she is the BVM, the Blessed Virgin Mary.
This language emerges from a context, which is not ours and not even really the same as the early church fathers. A passage from Isaiah about a maiden or young woman birthing a leader was translated into the greek virgin. Which we take to be all about the body and the onset of sexual activity. But that’s a wholistic understanding, virgin carries a richer understanding of Mary as a Woman Belonging to HERSELF.. That’s right a woman belonging to herself. It matters because most women even today don’t belong to themselves. They belong to a father’s house or a husband’s household but not Mary. That’s why the Angel can ask her for consent because she is in charge of her own body.
Mary’s story is shared in a rich and diverse religious landscape, Athena is a virgin goddess, a woman belonging to herself. And the story of Mary and Jesus leans into the langue of the context. Other leaders of the day have divine involvement in their births, God in fleshed, or a child born of divine and human substance is not really strange…there are many God-Kings and special births. It’s just that they don’t usually happen to peasants like Mary and Jesus. Alexander the Great’s mother heard thunder and saw a bolt of lighting. The emperors of Rome were born sons of the divine, even while they had powerful Dads. Their mother’s have visions of their wombs open to the heavens or a snake representing Apollo is involved in the conception of Augustus Caesar. And not just the rich and powerful kings but folks like Pythagorus and Plato have heavenly fathers. This language is so common that the early church might have found it an easy way to invite the hellenistic world into conversation. It also helps when detractors attempt character assassinations to detract from the Jesus moment, John Dominic Crossan speaks of early Christians responding not just an attack that Jesus is a “bastard” but that Jesus is born out of inappropriate sex like assault or incest. No matter the reasons the story of the Blessed Virgin Mary becomes mostly about her being a virgin.
Origin of Alexandrea (184-253 CE) writing some 200 years after the death of Jesus comments on the birth of Plato saying, “People just fabricate such things as this about a man whom they regard as having greater wisdom and power than most others. So they say he received at the beginning of the composition of his body a superior and more divine sperm, as if this were appropriate for those who surpass ordinary human nature.” And yet he will argue that Jesus however is of this superior composition and argues for Mary’s perpetual virginity (at conception, during birth and postpartum). Origins arguments are translated into Latin by Jerome and Mary’s body and being becomes the topic of debate…so much so Cambridge published a paper last year that dives into Origin’s understanding of Mary’s hymen.
The people of the Christian faith, particularly the ones impacted by imperialized Christianity began to celebrate Mary and her presence, they lean into the feminine face for the Christian divine and not because she is quite but because they sense she is powerful and present. She inherits the grit and grace of the feminine Goddesses displaced in Roman might. People begin to celebrate her feast day and the Eastern church names her as, God Bearer.
But the Western Church, caught up in the debates of male leaders who can’t quite manage their understandings of sex and sexuality, body and being develop what Eddie Isard rightly calls, “a hellish idea,” ORIGINAL SIN. And the more church leaders worry about original sin the more they worry about Jesus being touched by it and their only salvation becomes Mary’s virginity and not in the woman belonging to herself way but in having a magical baby way. The science of the day makes women to be more like incubators, fancy ones that can walk and do laundry but they don’t contribute to the baby they birth, at least not genetically. So Virgin Birth makes Jesus all Divine.
The church continues to debate original sin and virgin birth and the nature of Jesus. Narratives develop and feasts and painting and statues and celebrations fill everyday life. As Enlightenment dawns over Europe, science catches up with Midwifes and Grandmas and everyone realizes that Mary is more than an incubator, she had to contribute to the baby Jesus. And so in 1854 Pope Pius the IX will confirm a previously debated doctrine of Immaculate Conception. They lift up narratives of Mary’s birth and her mother Ann waits for a child like Hannah and then gives her sweet baby to the temple at the age of three, just like Samual. Mary the golden child of the temple is fed by angels. The church goes to such length and effort to make Mary a virgin. Why? Why! Such mental gymnastics to maintain her silent perfection. Every doubt has an answer, James the brother of Jesus is Joesph’s child from a first marriage. How is perpetual virginity possible, well Mary had a gross postpartum vaginal exam, ,mm to prove it.
Why such effort to keep Mary a virgin, in a literal physical sense and not in the woman belonging to herself sense. I believe there are twin reasons. The first is the churches continual efforts to keep women in their place. The conversations about original sin and virgin birth come as the church eliminates women’s ordination. Mary presents an image of faith that shows women to be present at everything, give of themselves even their body and never say a word. Mary the woman who sings about throwing the mighty from their thrones and sending the rich away empty becomes their tool of oppression. The second reason we keep the Mary as the BVM is because her humanity is what scares us the most. If she is human and if Jesus is human we are more accountable to live like they did. And that is terrifying. It’s so much easier to imaging them as super human hero because if we actually have to live into God’s dream it’s risky and dangerous. Faith puts you at odds with powerful people, just like Mary and they will use their power to silence you, just like Mary.
Mary was blessed to be a blessing long before 2000 years of theological Mansplaining made her the modest mantel piece. And she is more powerful when she is real; all human and all sacred. Her power is in saying, “Yes” to the hard work and showing up with grit and grace. She is the Blessed Virgin Mary and not because she has magical anatomy but because she is a miracle of humanity, showing us what it means to live.
May we have the courage to be human just like Mary.
May it be so. Amen
Key Resources
Documents for the Study of the Gospels Edited by David Carlidge and David L Dungan.
A Feminist Companion to Mariology, Edited by Amy-Jill Levine