Mary,  More Radical and Challenging Than We Iimagine

Vanilla theologies portray Mary as a passive and obedient “yes” person to God. Such theologies glorify her passive and subordinate role to a male God. Mary’s subordination as a woman has been abusively misapplied by a number of churches to keep women subordinate to men and docile to male church leaders. But there have been other consequences beside religious male domination. Mary has been socially and theologically constructed as a model of women, mother and virgin, an ideal woman that no woman can ever achieve. For centuries, Christian values around Mary claimed that women should not know “carnal pleasure.” She became the chaste icon of sexual morality within a heterosexual economy of grace that damages women as well gender-variant and non-heterosexual. Mary experienced no carnal pleasure in conceiving Jesus and had no labor pains during the birth of Jesus. Christian constructions of Mary supported heterosexuality while denigrating sexuality altogether by holding her as a “perpetual Virgin” and denigrating alternative sexualities and sexuality outside of marriage. Thus, Orthodox, Catholic, Anglican, and a few Protestant churches use Mary for an entrenched sexual moralism. The Spanish and Portuguese conquerors forced indigenous peoples to adopt the sexual mores of Catholic Europe under the banner of Mary, the Virgin Mother. Mary became the sacred representation of how women are to live and subordinate themselves to men, church, and society. She became an icon of a heterosexual economy of subordination of women and indigenous peoples to a vision of imperial Christianity.

In recent decades, there has been a tug of war over the image of Mary– between fundamentalist Christians holding to the above values and opponents who want to recover Mary’s original voice as a real flesh and blood peasant woman in history. I naturally am inclined to the latter position. I think Mary has an affinity to women, gender variant, the poor, the migrants and refugees, folks who are different religiously and anyone falling into a category of “other”, including nonhuman animals on Earth. She is the voice of resistance at this season. Her voice this season may echo ours as we read and listen anew to her story and the words of her song of resistance and envisioning a new world.

Mary comes from a poor family, and she is a teenager when the angel Gabriel announces the offer from God to bear a child. And she accepts the offer without hesitation. God complexifies her life beyond anything she can imagine. And Mary responds with a song of praise, and it is this Canticle (Luke 1:45-55) that I want to focus my Christmas reflections to celebrate Mary as queer model for ourselves this Christmas.

My soul magnifies your greatness, O God, And my spirit rejoices in you, my Savior.

God is bigger than we can imagine, and our God is not bound by male structures, heterosexist power, structures of economic greed, and the fossil fuel lords. God has the ability to surprise Mary and us by coloring outside the lines of heterosexuality and stepping outside of religious boundaries. Mary welcomes a vocation to stigma and otherness, and she takes seriously that God will work through her otherness to transform herself and her world through her child.
Mary’s soul has humbly accepted the invitation of unprecedented grace to carry God’s child, and her acceptance magnifies the greatness of God. Her bodily response over time actually makes God more than God was before. There is something new happening in the life of God: God will embody God’s self in her womb and take on human flesh. And the incarnate one will be born in a cave with nonhuman animals and placed into a manger, a feeding trough. And her spirit rejoices because ultimately it is this transformation within God that will save her and others whose voices have been silenced. .

For you have looked with favor upon your lowly servant, and from this day forward, all generations will call me blessed.

She is from a poor peasant family, a nobody in Palestine and in the powerful Roman Empire. She becomes controversial in her own family and is at risk of rejection and perhaps even stoning to death because she accepted God’s offer and became pregnant while betrothed. I am sure in the midst of her explanations to parents, family, and to Joseph her betrothed that consequences of her acceptance to bear the child of God were not seen as a blessing. Mary carries the stigma of otherness, a pregnant unwed mother from a poor family, and we understand the stigma of otherness among Christian Pharisees.

She made a decision for God, and that choice places her at risk. Elizabeth reminds Mary of Gabriel’s earlier message, “God is with you. Blessed are you among women.” The young teenager comes to see that God is working through her stigma and otherness to transform herself. She accepts her vocation to bear God’s holy word with a glad heart and the challenges from her parents and Jewish society..

Mary queers the patriarchal economy that understands women’s bodies as not belonging to themselves. She is free to answer as an equal to God’s invitation to bear Jesus; she has ownership of her body and remains an active agent in making a decision for herself and a decision to accept God’s offer. But she models for us authentic queer discipleship, for she accepts her otherness not as a burden but as a grace.

God and Mary break the patriarchal and exclusive economy of grace, for Jesus is conceived without male agency and outside of marriage by the Holy Spirit overshadowing her. These two points are backgrounded by many churches in the idealization of the Virgin Mary and Christmas. Both Judaism and early Christianity perceived the Holy Spirit as the feminine principle in God. Some early Christians genderized the Holy Spirit male rather than female because of the implications of same-sex conceptualization of Jesus. Yet if God’s Christ was conceived in a non-heterosexual manner and born out of wedlock, what does this say about narrow regimes of Christian marriage and sexual morality? What does it say to the many who are excluded from heterocentric economies of grace?

For you, the Almighty have done great things for me, and holy is your Name. Your mercy reaches from age to age for those who fear you. You have shown strength with your arm; you have scattered the proud in their conceit; you have deposed the mighty from their thrones and raised the lowly to high places.

After accepting God’s invitation to bear the messiah, Mary prophetically sings how God will upset the social world, bringing down the mighty and elevating the lowly. God’s action will literally queer the world by turning it upside down, for Mary will bear a child who will challenge the world, disrupting the social world and conventional notions of God. God will disrupt through her pregnancy the notion of compulsory heterosexuality as the only means to salvation. God scatters religious bigots who pride themselves upon their excluive privilege or even their Christian privilege but exclude the infinite diversity of sexualities, gender variances, or other religious traditions found in their midst. God disrupts fundamentalist Christians who promote that there is no salvation outside of Christianity as they fire-bomb mosques and harass women in their Islamic garb. .
You have filled the hungry with good things, while you have sent the rich away empty. You have come to the aid of Israel your servant, mindful of your mercy—the promise you made to our ancestors—to Sarah and Abraham and their descendants forever.

Mary’s song is a radical proclamation of good news for women, indigenous peoples, undocumented, those outside of heteronormativity, and for the Earth and the community of life, for she now praises God for turning the world upside down. She praises God who has promised compassionate solidarity with those who suffer from personal, political, racial, and environmental injustice.
Mary’s vocation is a thoroughly queer vocation; she stands with the underside, the marginal, and the outsiders—those yet unimagined as outside
A twelve or thirteen year girl lifts our eyesight to the profound realization that God breaks boundaries of male power and agency. God breaks the boundaries religious people build. Mary conceives Jesus outside of marriage and religious values. She realizes the grace of otherness and how God uses her otherness to transform her and the world.

But moments of grace generate other moments. Author Nick Page writes, “The story of Jesus’ birth is not one of exclusion, but inclusion…Joseph’s relatives made a place for Jesus in their heart of their household. They did not shun Mary, even though her status would have been suspect and even shameful (carrying an illegitimate child) they brought her inside. They made room for Jesus in the heart of a peasant’s home.”

Mary is not the passive but a pregnant virgin, chosen to bear God’s child, not as constructed by many Christians as the bearer of Christian sexual morality. The real teenage Mary bursts into song–singing about the end of human oppression and religious tyranny in the name of God. She anticipates the powerful will be brought down, the hungry fed, and the rich sent away empty. God will turn the heterosexist world upside down by the baby growing inside her womb.

Mary anticipates that God’s promise of Jesus’ birth will continue to turn the world upside down and that those who are excluded will have their rightful places in God’s reign. As Jesus preached and challenged religious bigotry and oppression, a woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, ‘Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursed you!’ But Jesus said, ‘Blessed rather are those who hear the Word of God and obey it!’” (Luke 11: 27-28)

Blessed are we who take the model of Mary’s courage and otherness to thank God for our diversities as transformational grace, for she truly became a breath of heaven when in all her humanity boldly said “yes” to God’s grace of Jesus the Christ. . But blessed are we who hear God’s Word and live it with the boldness and courage of Mary. May heaven continue to breathe through us that queer grace that Mary carried to birth and transform countless lives.

This Christmas I finally share this youtube video with you: “Breath of Heaven.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icilgwdHiZg