Welcome!
To the Final Week of the Sunday School in a Bag Advent-Christmas-Epiphany and Christmas program – six weeks devoted to Immanuel and the question: What does it really mean to say “God Is With Us”? If you have not already, check out the entire series here.
The Witness
In Luke 2:19, then again in Luke 2:51, the writer of the Gospel does something rather remarkable in 1st century terms: He actually cites his source. Mary, Jesus’s mother, “kept all these things and pondered them in her heart,” (Luke 2:19). Mary, in other words, was Luke’s source.
This is remarkable first because the ancient world had not yet learned the immense value in ensuring accurate citations. Sometimes they cited sources accurately, sometimes only very general or broad citation was given, and sometimes none at all.
It is remarkable also, because back then women could not even serve as legal witnesses in court – and yet, the entirety of Luke’s birth narrative – everything he says about Jesus’s early life – (and possibly more) hinges on Mary’s testimony. Given this setup, it’s possible much of the Gospel of Luke is based on things Mary remembered.
And it happened again. Not just in Luke, but in all four Gospels, God uses women as witnesses to the most important event in all of history. If a group of women had not discovered – and talked about – the empty tomb on that one Sunday morning long ago, we might not today know of the Resurrection.
Many have tried to downplay this. Facts, however, are facts. Without the witness of women, Christianity would not exist.
And the first of those women is Mary. All of Luke chapters 1-2 is likely based on her first-hand experience. Watch the video below.
The Immaculate… Problem?
Christmas is the story of one specific miracle. It is known as the Immaculate Conception – meaning that Mary conceived Jesus by not normal means.
Impossible means.
No human father involved, just Mary and God.
I have always found it telling that the one miracle recorded in the Gospels held in true and utter derision by skeptics is the immaculate conception. In seminary, the most forceful pushback I encountered to any miraculous event was this notion that Mary conceived a child without any male… assistance, shall we call it?
To be clear, I went to a rather liberal seminary. Certainly, a feminist-minded seminary. The kind of seminary where we discussed daily (and a bit obsessively) all the ways in which the church and history may have wronged women.
Even here, surrounded by liberal students who didn’t believe the miracles recorded in the Bible “really happened,” most students could appreciate the theological or thematic meaning behind those miracles. They found beauty and meaning in the multiplication of loaves and fishes, in the resurrection, in Jesus walking on water and healing people…
Just not in the immaculate conception.
This one miracle was a bridge too far. Utterly impossible. Laughable. Gross, even. Perhaps even abusive.
Because this, after all, is how we have all been conditioned to see pregnancy itself, right? As something gross, demeaning, filthy… Some horrendous fate for which Mary’s body must have been used and discarded (even though her consent to the situation is clearly stated in Luke 2:38).
Under this grotesque light, of course my generation fetishizes and discards the immaculate conception as the invention of male minds, unworthy of a feminist’s God, abusive.
Why though? Under examination, I think the roots of all of this run far deeper into far more insidious territory.
Why is the immaculate conception the most impossible and despised of all miracles? Because it is a purely female miracle, perhaps? Because it is an interaction God could never possibly have had with a man, perhaps? Because unlike any other miracle, it depends on complete male exclusion, perhaps?
Is it possible that the root of this distain for the one purely female miracle actually lies in misogyny in its truest form? (Misogyny <– the Greek miso = “hatred” and gune = “woman” –> literally, “the hatred of all things female.” And what realistically, biologically, is more female than pregnancy?)
Again, I find all of this telling. One-hundred-plus years of feminism and much positive social and legal progress later, our society still places no value on any exclusively female contribution to existence. After all this time and progress, our modern cultures still value male examples of strength alone.
Ironically, the ancient world did listen to Mary. Ironically, the ancient world took her story seriously. Let’s do so again.
The Meeting
The meeting between Mary and Elizabeth in Luke 1:39-56 stands out for several reason. Like the immaculate conception itself, it is a moment shared between God and two women, and women only.
The incident shows us two women meeting without a man present. It shows us two women worshipping God without a man present. It shows two women bearing witness to each other (not to a man) about the miracles done for them (not for any man).
It shows us two women celebrating their pregnancies without any male opinions about the situation.
It shows two women using their voices to speak for and to God. One, Elizabeth, even uses her voice to speak for her unborn male child who – being unborn – is himself speechless.
The meeting also culminates the running narrative point of Luke chapter 1. Both women in the story, Mary and Elizabeth, immediately accept and rejoice at God’s unexpected arrival in their lives. The man in the Luke 1 narrative, Zachariah, does not.
The contrast here is no coincidence. The narrative theme of Luke 1-2 is that God empowers the weak while humbling the powerful.
In his own way, Matthew’s version of the story (Mat. 1-2) conveys much the same theme.
In the ancient world, women were usually disenfranchised, voiceless, and all but powerless. It’s just one of those historical realities you have to get over if you want to understand history. Peter himself (you know, Jesus’s right-hand apostle) blatantly calls women “weaker” than men (1 Peter 3:7). In their own time and context, though, even such blunt statements were actually meant to elevate women in their eyes of their husbands and the entire Christian community.
It was a simple, forgone conclusion throughout the ancient world that women were “weaker” and “lesser” than men. It was also a forgone conclusion in Christianity that the weaker, the lesser, the disenfranchised, and the voiceless were exactly the type of people on whom God called. In Christian theology, to be the stronger person has NEVER been a sign of divine blessing – or seen as a particularly good thing, even. (See, for example… The entire New Testament. I could list out a bunch of prooftexts, including but not limited to Mat 5:3-10, 1 Cor 1:21, Lk 18:25… but really, it’s the entire New Testament.)
Into this backward-to-the-worldly perspective Luke’s Christmas narrative fits like a hand into a glove. Mary does hesitate to believe the angel at first, but quickly overcomes that doubt and agrees to the divine plan (yes, consent police, consent is in fact given – Lk 1:38). Likewise, Mary and Elizabeth both quickly acknowledge what’s happening, and raise their voices in praise over it all.
In contrast, for his hesitancy to believe, Zachariah’s voice is taken from him until his son is born. Slow to believe, the powerful is humbled, and through humility, brought to see God’s more perfect plan. Meanwhile, faith empowers the voiceless to speak of how God “has done great things for me!” (Luke 1:49).
The message is clear: True strength lies in faith, in reliance on God, and in the acceptance of God’s plan.
The Turning of Eve
No discussion of Mary or her place in theology would be complete without bringing up her foremother, Eve.
The Genesis 2-3 creation narrative presents the woman as the pinnacle of creation. As humanity is the last thing created in Genesis 1, and therefore the greatest creation – a creature to rule all other creatures – so the woman is the last and arguably greatest thing created according to Genesis 2. She is called the etzer (usually and unhelpfully translated “helper”), a word used elsewhere in the New Testament to describe God as the “helper” (in other words, savior) of Isreal. Etzer conveys the idea not of one forced to help, but of one strong enough to help – because, by implication, the one being helped is not strong enough to do it themself.
In Genesis 2, Adam (the male human) is the firstborn of the earth (Hebrew adamah, “ground,” in which God forms the adam). The woman is the firstborn of humanity (eesha, “woman,” because she was taken out of eesh, “man,” in the same way “the adam” was taken out of adamah. It’s worth noting that “adam” is not a proper name in Genesis 2-3, but rather a description, Hebrew ha’adam = “the human.” Adam is used throughout the Old Testament as a generic word for humanity or humankind).
A respectable argument can be made for the notion that the woman, as the culmination of creation, was originally the more powerful partner in the Genesis 2-3 narrative. A respectable argument can be made that this is why the snake engaged with her, not with Adam.
But remember, in Christian thought, to be the person with power is not good. The woman’s fall in Genesis 3 to be “ruled over” by her husband (Genesis 3:16) might well echo Mary’s words about the mighty being “pulled down from their thrones” (Luke 1:52).
And yet, in one way, the woman does retain her power. AFTER the fall, she is named Eve (Hebrew, Havvah = “life”). Many claim this just means she was the one ancestress of all humans. That explanation, though, does not do justice to the scope of the actual Hebrew words (mother of all life), or explain why she is given this particular name immediately after the Fall and immediately before God forces the couple to leave the Garden of Eden.
In the story, God forces the couple to leave Eden not because they sinned, but because, now that they have sinned, God wants to prevent them from eating from the Tree of Life. Now that they have sinned, God fears what might happen if the couple becomes immortal (by eating from the Tree of Life).
Even separated now from the Tree of Life, thought, Life still follows the couple out of the garden into the world. Life tied now to Eve, who like the Tree now bears Life’s name through her power to literally bear children – that is, humanity’s future.
Ancient humans were very aware of the fact that their own futures depended on them having children (that is, people to take care of them in their old age and continue their name and their work after they died). Which means that ancient men were very aware of the fact that their own future security was dependent on women. In fact, the Greek poet Hesiod (a true misogynist) bemoans this fact, making it the tragic focal point of the myth of Pandora (Hesiod, Theogony 507-613, esp. 590: “whoever avoids marriage and the sorrows that women cause… reaches deadly old age without anyone to tend his years, and… when he is dead, his kinsfolk divide his possessions amongst them.”)
In the Old Testament (which was not written by misogynists, whatever some may say), humanity’s dependence on women to bear the next generation is not some curse inflicted upon men by the jealous gods (Hesiod), but rather a blessing – the shadow of Eden and the Tree of Life which God sends out with Adam and Eve when they are forced to leave the garden and the Tree behind.
In a sense, by the end of Genesis 3, Eve has become the Tree of Life. A lesser version of it. A reflection or a shadow. Bound to bring hope forth in pain and through that pain remember the truth of broken human nature. But hope brought forth in pain is still hope. Life is still Life.
So, enter Mary
Christian teachers have long seen Mary as the second coming of Eve. Eve’s second chance at facing the serpent (Revelation 12) and choosing God’s plan over the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
Mary, a woman. A mother. Another Tree of Life.
Eve’s name (Havvah = “Life”) is a promise, that the spirit of Life remains with humanity, that hope endures beyond the walls of Eden. It is a promise that can only come true in women. Men have a role to play, yes, but ultimately, the promise is carried out in partnership between God and womankind.
Nowhere is this point more clearly made than in the Old Testament infertility stories. Abraham had other sons by other women. God’s chosen people had to come from Sarah. Isaac could have had other children with other women. God’s chosen people had to come through Rebecca. Elkannah had a second wife and many children with her. God’s prophet, Samuel, came from Hannah, because she asked God for him.
Zachariah could have had other sons with another woman – so the story assumes, at least. John the Baptist must come from Elizabeth.
[Note: The ancient world did not understand that men could be infertile. Think it through for a second, and you’ll see that their assumption, though of course untrue, makes sense. All biblical infertility stories assume that the woman was the one who could not conceive. Which, as shown in the above examples, actually highlights the importance of the women in these stories. They are “chosen mothers” as much and in some ways even more so than their husbands are “chosen fathers.”]
And Mary…
Mary is the ultimate fulfilment of the promise made in Eve’s naming. The ultimate example of God’s partnership with womankind. The ultimate display of an exclusively female power. No man could do what she did. No man had any part in it at all. That’s kind of the whole point.
And it’s not just a “miracle” point. The immaculate conception is not just there to heighten the impossibility of Jesus’s existence.
The point of Mary’s story has roots dug back into the very beginning of the Bible. The point begins with Eve. Eve who did not understand God’s plan in denying her the fruit of one specific tree and so followed her own plan. Eve who, despite her sin, was still the proveyor of hope into the fallen world. The point is made again in every infertility story along the way to the New Testament.
Anthropologically, the point is that women are not sideline players in the divine narrative that is this universe. Rather – from fall, the motherhood, to Mary – ours is the role that drives the entire narrative of humanity forward. There is, in Scripture, an exclusive partnership between God and women for which men do stand mostly on the sideline.
Theologically and narratively, Mary turns Eve’s story on its head. Presented with the same choice – her plan or God’s, doubt or faith, Tree of Knowledge or Tree of Life – Mary chooses the Tree of Life.
This partnership between God and women is one of the most important and longest running themes in the Bible. Only slightly more important is the other theme in Eve/Mary saga – this idea that all humanity is presented with a choice between good and evil, right and wrong, blessing and curse, God’s plan or ours…
Tree of Life or Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
Not only are we presented with this choice, but we are all capable of choosing for ourselves one way or the other.
So, let us follow Mary’s example as we leave Christmas behind in this new year, to face increasingly uncertain futures.
Let us choose the Tree of Life.
Well, we’ve made it through the Christmas season. If you missed any of the characters or lessons along the way, check them all out here.
