Mary was a Joyful Revolutionary

There’s a pink candle in the middle of all the purple ones! What is this? It represents a joyful respite on the way to Christmas, now less than two weeks away. Joy has a more nuanced meaning than happiness. For whatever reason, joy can be elusive. You may feel financial pressure or worry over the general state of things. You may have deep concern for a loved one’s health or for your own health. You may be going through a season of grief or depression. You want to be joyful but feel an inner gnawing anxiety. All these feelings are valid. They seem to rush at us all at once at the holidays.

The pink candle’s symbolism is to focus attention on the joy of Mary, the mother of Jesus, as she anticipates the birth. One wonders what she had to be joyful about! Time and tradition have muddied the waters.

Here are a few basics. Mary was a Palestinian Jew living under crushing Roman occupation. Her Galilean family and friends were mercilessly taxed and exploited by Roman leaders and those within their own community who collaborated with them. She lived a life of subsistence while others lived in luxury. As a young woman, she had no relevant social status. The Jewish faithful had long been praying for relief from this oppression. Could a desperate prayer for one to help deliver her people from their circumstances offer a glimmer of hope and joy?

Tradition has described her as “meek and mild.” She is thought of as a vessel, not as an agent. Recent popular songs like “Mary, Did You Know?” reinforce the stereotype.

Danielle Shroyer​, a contemporary author, speaker and blogger, writes of Mary differently:

“When we read about Mary through millennia of men telling us about her, she becomes a symbol of servitude and chastity. But other traditions read her story as a powerful figure not beholden to patriarchal power structures. Mary reinscribes what joy and hope can mean in their fullest sense. Here joy and hope are countercultural, not just a personal feeling but an embodied promise of what life can be outside the confines of conventional societal expectations.”
~ from "A Complicated Pregnancy."

I recently heard a song by Amy Grant with a somewhat different take on her humanness called “Breath of Heaven.” Here is one verse:

I am waiting in silent prayer. I am frightened by the load I bear
In a world as cold as stone, must I walk this path alone?
Be with me now, Be with me now, Breath of Heaven
Hold me together, Be forever near me, Breath of Heaven.

Here is an even bolder description of Mary. 

This brown-skinned, brown-eyed, vibrant Mary contains all the stars of a sparkling universe.

Her creative power is linked to that of all creation itself. She is one who questions her role as a chosen one. “How can this be?” she inquires of the heavenly messenger. She then acts, rushing to the side of her cousin Elizabeth, who she learns also is surprisingly pregnant. Then she sings of an alternative worldview in the Magnificat, which echoes back to the words of Moses’ sister Miriam after the Hebrews crossed the Red Sea. Her song upends the power dynamics of her time as well as ours. It is quoted in Luke’s gospel, chapter 1.

In case you are not familiar with it, here it is in a contemporary English version:

Mary said: With all my heart,​ I praise the Lord and I am glad because of God my Savior.

God cares for me,​his humble servant.
From now on,​ all people will say God has blessed me.
God All-Powerful has done great things for me,​ and his name is holy.
He always shows mercy to everyone who worships him.
The Lord has used his powerful arm to scatter those who are proud.
God drags strong rulers from their thrones and puts humble people in places of power.
God gives the hungry good things to eat and sends the rich away with nothing.
God helps his servant Israel and is always merciful to his people.

The Lord made this promise to our ancestors,​ to Abraham and his family forever!

A bolder Mary imagines a world with different societal structures than the hierarchical ones with which we are familiar. Doing this takes imagination indeed! During the darkest days of the Nazi tyranny – when the church capitulated and Germany descended into barbarity – Dietrich Bonhoeffer drew strength for his resistance activities from Mary’s song: “the most passionate, the wildest … the most revolutionary Advent hymn that has ever been sung.”

May the light of this pink candle serve to spark our imaginations of a more just world.