In this advent season, we are exploring darkness. We remember and name the ways that God pierced, and is piercing, the veil between heaven and earth. While Scripture Sketchers have been moving the Christmas story ahead each week, the sermons have kept us waiting in the dark, patiently, rooted in faith. This morning we finally hear a bit about Mary – though not poor Joseph. Mary and Joseph loom large in art and creche sets, but they are rather incidental in the gospels. Perhaps the scandalous origins of Jesus’ birth are better left mostly in the dark?

I will never forget that one morning, when I was a young high school music teacher at a local Catholic school. The student reading the announcements took it upon herself to congratulate one of her classmates, a 9th grader, who had given birth over the weekend.

Swift chastisement ensued for the young woman who dared to speak this shame over the loud speakers. In a school named after Mary queen of heaven, we were not prepared to deal with a real teenage girl who became a mother. In this all girls school, the young pregnant woman had lived with this secret, speaking of it only to a few friends. Her parents and teachers, seemed in the dark until her labor started. Though the student grew up Catholic, and must have at least been familiar with Mary’s song, I wonder if she found any comfort in it.

Mary doesn’t rejoice in song immediately upon finding out she is pregnant. When the angel announces the strange news, Mary is confused and has some questions. Even the angelic “Do not be afraid” does not stop Mary’s questions. What does seem a comfort is the angel’s news that her cousin Elizabeth is also pregnant out of season.

So, the text says, Mary hurries to a city in the Judean highlands to visit Elizabeth. It is about a four day journey, not a trip to be taken by a young woman alone. “When does the next caravan leave for the Judean highlands?” At Elizabeth’s house, Mary is immediately affirmed by Elizabeth’s body, carrying a baby and the Spirit. Then, Mary remembers the songs of her ancestors, Miriam and Hannah. Then she sings of God’s glory.

Mary’s song is not just a hymn of saying yes to motherhood. It is more like a gratitude practice. She names the ways that she has experienced goodness.

          You have looked with favor

                    on the low status of your servant.
From now on, everyone will consider me

                    highly favored

                    because the mighty one

                    has done great things for me.
Holy is God’s name.

                    God shows mercy to everyone,
from one generation to the next,

                    who honors God.

By reciting the ways that God has been good, Mary brings comfort to both herself and Elizabeth in this strange time. I imagine that as she is still in her youth, Mary has yet to experience the fullness of God’s mercy and strength. Yet she sings, like Hannah and Miriam, about how the dreams of the proud are shattered, the tyrants are dethroned, how those who are hungry are filled and those who are rich are sent away empty. (We might observe that parts of Jesus’ “sermon on the plain,” as recorded by Luke, sound quite similar.)

Mary strengthens herself as she recounts this powerful upsidedown world. She will need this courage as she lives into this unexpected pregnancy. Mary holds out these hopes not just for herself and her child, not just for Elizabeth’s family but for all the people that live under the tyranny and lunacy of Herod in the Roman empire. Following in the poetic tradition of her ancestors, Mary sings of God’s mercy and strength for all her people:

You have come to the aid of Israel your servant;

          you have remembered your mercy,

          just as you promised our ancestors,

          Abraham and Sarah and all their descendants forever.

As Mary remembers the story of her people, adapting the songs of Miriam and Hannah (and Isaiah,) she becomes a prophet in her own right. She says yes to this baby – and she says I see new possibilities, a new world. I want more for my child than this ongoing injustice.

And though sometimes now this song is sung with great solemnity in churches and concert halls, theologian Gustavo Gutierrez (may he rise in peace) reminds us that this is a joyful song. Mary rejoices in a God who is faithful to the poor. And he says, Our (own) service of others must be wrapped in this joy. Only work embraced with joy truly transforms. (Theology of Liberation, p 165)

(Here I can’t help but insert the work of Mennonite Action – overnight. Mennonite Action called for local groups to have Longest Night Services – all night, overnight – on the winter solstice, as a “small symbolic act to remain in vigil for the people of Palestine throughout the darkest of times.” Our service here was only an hour, the night before the solstice. But in Goshen, Lancaster, and Harrisonburg they gathered and some people stayed up all night, praying, learning about Gaza, singing, and doing zoom calls with Palestinians. This morning as the sun rose they shared breakfast. In Harrisonburg, the group was joined by the local Muslim group that had also been holding vigil all night. While the occasion for staying awake together is grim and terrifying, the observance was joyful and inspiring. As Gutierrez says, “Only work embraced with joy truly transforms.”)

But back to Mary. I love this Mary, that reaches out to her older cousin. (And not her mother. While tradition names Anna as Mary’s mother, there is no mother for Mary in the text.) Mary realizes that she needs help, that she needs guidance, that she needs companionship as she goes through this strange yet very common experience of pregnancy and childbirth. I wish that my former student would have had an Elizabeth to offer her that kind of support and strength.

(Let’s take a deep breath, remembering those who labor alone, who struggle alone.)

We don’t read much more about Mary in the canonical gospels. Mark refers to “Jesus’ mother” in chapter 3 (3:31-35) where Jesus says “Who are my mother and my brothers?” Matthew drops Mary’s name in the genealogy and a few other places but records no stories about her. We mostly know Mary because of her appearance in Luke’s birth narrative – and her presence at the cross in John’s gospel. The gospel of James tells a little of Mary’s backstory but that gospel didn’t make it into the bible. (see Black Madonna: A Womanist Look at Mary of Nazareth, p 44)

The pieta, Mary compassionately holding her dead son, is the bookend to Mary cradling the baby by the manger. Often depicted in art, this event does not actually appear in the biblical text. But perhaps it is inspired by the tender scene in John 19. From the cross, Jesus looks upon his mother and the disciple whom he loved, and he says “Woman here is your son.” And to the disciple he says, “Here is your mother.” Mary is silent but we can imagine her grief and her longing to hold her son one last time.

Though it is not strictly biblical, the pieta is important as a visual, and visceral, representation of the suffering that Mary and too many other mothers endure. The mother comforting her child depicts not only Mary’s grief as she weeps over her son. It is a scene that unfortunately continues, in every generation, on every continent, where the mighty wrestle for more and more “power over,” no matter the bodies lost. Mary cradling her son in death reminds us that mothers grieve for their children in Gaza, in Ukraine, in Sudan, in school yards, in the streets, in detainment camps, in refugee camps.

Artist Margo Humphrey, a professor at University of Maryland, has a particularly powerful piece that speaks to Mary’s universality as a suffering mother. (It appears on the cover of Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God by Kelly Brown Douglas.) At first glance, Humphrey’s work looks a Black Madonna, dressed in blue, as Mary is traditionally shown. She’s holding a baby. Both mother and son have halos like in classical western art. But then you notice that this baby is wearing Nike hightops and has in its hand a bag of Skittles. This Black Madonna is also a Pieta. Is that Mary holding Trayvon Martin (murdered by George Zimmerman in Florida in 2012.) Or is that his own mother Sybrina? This Black Madonna/pieta is every black mother who has loved and lost a child to violence.

(Let’s take a deep breath, remembering grieving mothers and their children)

The Black Madonna, the portrayal of Mary as a black woman, has brought life and hope to many. Public theologian, Christena Cleveland writes in her book God is a Black Woman, about encountering the Black Madonna.

…my spiritual imagination didn’t know how to venture beyond the Protestant white male God that colonized and subdued America’s spiritual imagination…. 

In early 2017, I mustered all of the desperate courage I could find and took one single, trembling step away from all I had known and all I had been taught… Just beyond the Protestantism of my origins and from the mystical depths of rogue Catholicism, rose the Black Madonna, a Black female image of the divine who is often claimed by Catholicism but draws seekers of all religions and spiritualities.   

Within seconds of viewing photos of Black Madonnas, my gut shifted from terror to hope… My soul immediately recognized that these photos and drawings of ancient Black Madonnas declared a truth about my own sacredness and gave birth to a new understanding of God. 

How revolutionary – to see herself in the mother of Jesus for the first time and gain a “new truth about her own sacredness and a new understanding of God.”

I admire Christena’s Cleveland courage to go beyond what she had been taught. I also grew up worried about what might happen if I got too interested in Mary. Even after 500 years, Anabaptists are still too often nervous about Catholicism. We focus on Jesus – not Mary. And… I have a hard time with the Mary held up by the church for hundreds of years, the Mary we often see in art. There she is, her pure, virgin, clear, white face, her head tilted just so with her downcast gaze. This version of Mary is too often sold (by many parts of the church) as the model for what a truly good woman looks like, should act like. I couldn’t trust those images when I was young and now as an old Elizabeth, I still don’t buy it. Thank goodness for the Black Madonna.

And thank God for the young Mary of scripture who sings her fierce song, emboldened by her ancestors and an elder cousin. Thank God for the Mary who has courage enough to be present with her son until the end even as he is unjustly killed by the state. Thanks God for the Mary who offers such a powerful vision of the reign of God that her son takes it up and incorporates it into his own teachings.

Christmas is about God with us, even God like us. So this year, while I remember that God was born as a baby, made flesh and lived among us, I also say Hail to that powerful Mother Mary, full of grace. Blessed is she among women.

(One more deep breath of the Spirit, of God with us.)