Editor’s Note: In honor of International Women’s Day (March 8), Women’s History Month in the United States, and the Lenten season, we will be publishing devotions written by women about the women who Jesus ministered to during his time on earth. This series will be called, “The Women Jesus Loved.”
You look at the test result again – it is positive! You feel the wash of realization that your life is set to change forever. There’s that overwhelming sensation where your identity shifts: You become a parent to someone. Even for those who have been trying to conceive, the news of pregnancy is breathtaking.
For Mary, these feelings were likely heightened because her pregnancy was supernatural — of virginal conception. The potential of being rejected by her husband, outed as an adulterer, and exposing her family to shame was real.
To add another layer of complexity, she would be the mom of the Messiah! Mary finds that the anticipation, hopes, and dreams of Israel are being fulfilled through her. What would it be like being the mother of the one who contains everyone’s hopes, who would topple the world order?
And in the midst of this sudden and multilayered call on her life, Mary is obedient.
When we anticipate events — a new Marvel movie, BTS album — there is a certain privilege in being “first”: the first comment on the YouTube video or being in that secret “family and friends” screening or album preview.
Mary was a poor, young Jewish girl, in a minority group under the Roman empire. If she never became Jesus’s mom, she would’ve been another nobody. And yet, this nobody was “first” 1 to the most anticipated event in the universe.
And, it is because (not despite) of her lowly circumstances which make her fit for God’s purposes. As we read the Magnificat, we see that through the Messiah’s coming, God comes to exalt the lowly, with Mary being the first to benefit. 2 God has:
“He has looked with favour on the humble condition of His slave…
He has scattered the proud because of the thoughts of their hearts;
He has toppled the mighty from their thrones, and exalted the lowly.
He has satisfied the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty.”
(Luke 1:48, 51-53)
God chose Mary, someone whose pregnancy and early parental experience contrasts with our more ideal and wise standards:
- Instead of spending the first trimester in the quiet care and support of her husband, close family, and female friends, Mary feels the need to hurry a long distance 3 away to be with Elizabeth, an aunty or “imo”, perhaps the only one to empathize with the circumstances of her pregnancy.
- Instead of a celebratory and aesthetic baby shower, her poor circumstances and potential shame 4 associated with the pregnancy did not have anything to show for.
- Instead of preparing for the birth in the final weeks in the comfort (and boredom) of our homes, Mary journeyed 90 miles to Bethlehem. 5
- Instead of choosing amongst the best hospitals or gynecologists, Mary’s experience was akin to birthing in the corridors of a hospital. The guest room was full (or too small) so it’s likely Mary gave birth in the lower level of David’s family home, with her in-laws and animals. 6
- Instead of confidence in the birthing process, in a culture where even rich Roman women who could afford multiple midwives couldn’t avoid potential death in childbirth 7, Mary likely knew friends who had died and faced childbirth without the best care.
- Instead of an Instagrammable 100-day party post-birth, Mary and Joseph presented at the temple: “a pair of turtle doves or young pigeons” (Lk 2:24), an offering customary for the poor.
The words in the Magnificat apply not only in a spiritual sense, a physical sense too. As uncomfortable as it is, we reading this devotion on our phones or laptops are more likely to be the mighty rather than the lowly. And God has lifted up the lowly like Mary over people like us, the privileged, rich and self-sufficient.
When God calls us to obedience, we often have fail-safe buffers. As I reflect on my ministry calling, I am grateful for my buffers: family a couple of hours plane ride away, the savings of migrant parents, basic Western education, a free and safe hospital birth. But, despite being lowly and without many privileges, Mary is obedient.
A lowly position can free people to be receptive to God’s calling. How might God challenge us, the mighty? What can we learn about the cost of obedience as we reflect on Mary this season and the other lowly people in our communities?
Read more of our “The Women Jesus Loved” series here.
- Ben Witherington III, Women in the Earliest Churches, Online Edition (Cambridge University Press, 2009), 134.
- For a thorough treatment on Mary’s lowly status, see Bauckham, Richard, Gospel Women: Studies of the Named Women in the Gospels (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co, 2002), 69–76.
- Commentators estimate the distance between Nazareth and the hill country of Judea was between 70 to 100 miles.
- There are differences of opinion regarding the social shame of Mary. Cohick’s case is compelling: Lynn Cohick, Women in the World of the Earliest Christians: Illuminating Ancient Ways of Life (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2009), 153.
- Commentators estimate the distance between Nazareth and Bethlehem was between 80-90 miles.
- Scholars now take issue with older suggestions of the Greek word, ‘kataluma’ as ‘inn’. Rather, its usage is in reference to a room in a private house. Contrary to popular depictions of the birth which is devoid of women, a midwife was likely called to assist with Mary’s birth, in addition to other female relatives in David’s family also in town for the census at the time.
- Cohick, Women in the World of the Earliest Christians: Illuminating Ancient Ways of Life, 135–37.