Sticky Labels, pt 3 (Final)

Mary the mother of Jesus: She's more than you thought!

For more on Mary, read Scot McKnight’s book, The Real Mary. It’s my favorite!

Over the last couple of weeks I wrote about Sticky Labels, both my own and those of three New Testament women. The first was the Samaritan woman at the well, and the second was Mary Magdalene. You can read those here: Sticky Labels, Part 1 and Part 2.

This week it’s Mary the mother of Jesus! The ubiquitous Mary is the pregnant young woman, the legendary figure who was visited by the angel Gabriel, bore Jesus in a rough stable, and was visited by shepherds and wise men. For most of my life when I pictured Mary, I thought of the young female actors I’d seen in countless church pageants or commercial films sitting on a donkey or holding a baby as a bevy of visitors and farm animals looked on. Her label was a more comforting one than those of the Samaritan woman or Mary Magdalene; this New Testament woman is the iconic mother who nourished and raised the Messiah. All other information about Mary always seems to fade into the background of this resonant image.

What did Mary do? Mary was betrothed to Joseph the carpenter, was visited by the angel Gabriel, seemed to express fright, and listened to his detailed message from the Lord—she would become pregnant and give birth to Jesus, the Messiah. She accepted the news and sang a song. Mary then left her village to visit her kinswoman, Elizabeth, who was pregnant, and stayed for three months. Mary returned to Nazareth where her pregnancy began to show and traveled to Bethlehem with Joseph for a census, where she gave birth. She was visited by shepherds who had been summoned by angels, and wise men who came from the East after having been summoned by a sign in the heavens. Mary and Joseph presented Jesus at the temple when he was 41 days old, offering a poor woman’s sacrifice. Mary also met both Simeon and Anna, two aged prophets, who shared both warnings and joyful, celebratory prophecies with her. Mary fled to Egypt for a time with Joseph to escape a local pogrom, then returned to Nazareth to raise her family. When Jesus was 12, she lost him in Jerusalem and the found him at the Temple, interacting with the rabbis.

When Jesus was 30, Mary and her family attended a wedding in Cana where Jesus and his newly minted disciples were present. She asked him to intervene in an embarrassing situation and turn water into wine. She looked for him at one point in his teaching ministry, worried about his safety and mental health. Like Mary Magdalene, Mary was present and a close observer at the crucifixion, death, and burial of Jesus. She accepted the protection of John, who Jesus commissioned from the cross before he died. On Sunday she went with Mary Magdalene to the tomb to anoint Jesus’ body and found the tomb empty. She likely saw him there, though the texts don’t say so. Luke records the last sighting of Mary (Acts 1) as she joins over a hundred of Jesus’ followers in prayer on the Day of Pentecost, waiting for the promised gift of the Holy Spirit.

What did she say? Mary’s words are recorded as these:

·      To the angel Gabriel, who delivered the news of her impending pregnancy: "How shall this be, since I have no husband?" (Luke 1:34)

·      Mary’s acceptance of the commission: "Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word." (Luke 1:38)

·      She spoke a greeting as she entered the house of Zechari'ah and Elizabeth. (Luke 1:39)

·      She sang a song/poem/prayer, called the Magnificat: “My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant. From now on all generations will call me blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things for me—holy is his name. His mercy extends to those who fear him, from generation to generation. He has performed mighty deeds with his arm; he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts. He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, remembering to be merciful to Abraham and his descendants forever, just as he promised our ancestors.” (Luke 1:46-55)

·      Upon finding her lost son at the temple: "Son, why have you treated us so? Behold, your father and I have been looking for you anxiously." (Lk 2:48)

·      To Jesus at the wedding in Cana: "They have no wine." (John 2:3)

·      To the servants at the wedding: "Do whatever he tells you." (John 2:5)

What were the results of Mary’s actions and words? Because Mary accepted the angel’s commission, she became the birth mother and custodial mother of Jesus, knowing he was destined to be the Messiah. Because she accepted this monumental (and essentially incomprehensible) task and faithfully completed it, Jesus lived to carry out his destiny: a healing and teaching ministry, the founding and proclamation of the kingdom of God, his death on the cross, his resurrection, and the fulfillment of prophecy. Mary’s decisions and actions laid the groundwork for the founding of the kingdom of God and the Church. Mary was also an eyewitness to Jesus’ entire life, including prepartum, and to his death. She witnessed and participated in extraordinary events with no precedent and carried the memories with her. She told her stories, which likely formed the substance of substantial portions of the Gospel accounts. She was there at Pentecost for the birth of the Church.

Ripping off the label. Mary has been venerated, worshiped, celebrated and portrayed over the millennia in the arts, most often in her role as the mother of Jesus Christ (though it is currently much more “difficult, at least in the West, to visualize Mary ever having been a central figure in Christianity”[1]). Yet, Mary was present, and a participant, for Jesus’ entire life and work. Mary was so much more than a passive womb/nursing mother. She was a woman of great faith and trust, a pre-conception prophet, a witness, a carrier and speaker of stories no one else knew or understood, a commissioner of a miracle, a follower, a supporter, a disciple, and a cornerstone of the Church. The young woman we saw as a mother is so much more. She was there all along and some of Jesus’ last words from the cross, and his last thoughts and concerns, were about this precious woman. Mary’s label has been far too small and lacking in imagination and recognition of her true role.

In keeping with my Part 1 and Part 2 Sticky Labels question for the Samaritan woman and for Mary Magdalene, what if Mary the mother of Jesus had been a man? Thinking about Mary the mother of Jesus as a man feels a bit silly, but what if we made him a close relative—perhaps Joseph, or an uncle, or a brother (maybe even a twin)—for this exercise? This male relative would have been a trusted witness to all of the events of Jesus’ life, and would likely have been acknowledged as the source of large percentages of the Gospels; perhaps he’d even have his name attached to one. He would be considered and celebrated as a pillar of the Church. He would be seen as the most faithful disciple, cradle to grave and beyond, and the prophet of all prophets for the Magnificat (next to Jesus himself, that is). He would be remembered as the only man close to Jesus who received a personal and detailed message from God (via Gabriel) about the future of humankind, the fate of the world, and the promise of the kingdom of God from God’s personal messenger, the angel Gabriel.

There’s much to be said about why these labels were applied, and why they have remained and been re-applied over and over and over, but the truth is this: the labels applied to the Samaritan woman, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of Jesus were related to their gender, and these labels have diminished what these women did, what they said, and as a consequence what happened in their worlds, and in ours, as a result. Susan Hylen writes that being born a female in the ancient world meant growing up and living with the measuring stick of feminine virtues being used to calculate the worth of a woman, and this followed a woman into the halls of power, as women “could be praised for bold leadership as well as domestic virtue.”[1] These three women leaders were seen then, and now, through the lens of traditional female virtues.

Claudia Camp notes that NT women existed in a culture built on a framework of honor and shame, and that female honor came from existing essentially as a commodity, which bestowed honor on those who bore healthy children to their husbands, and shame on women who did not.[2] Jamie Clark-Soles notes that women who appear in the Bible without a man or with money are often suspect: “it is important to break the habit of reducing woman after woman in the Bible to a prostitute.” She attributes the problem to the bulk of commentaries being written by male scholars, who lack convincing evidence of their assumptions.[3] Yet, when we consider the results of these women’s lives, they were undeniably leaders. Jesus himself modeled diakonos leadership;[4] he came to serve and give his life for many, but this kind of leadership is not often valued, or even noticed, by those who see these three female leaders through the lens of their gender.

Dorothy Sayers writes about the label of woman, and the inestimable and yes, sticky, power of that label with this critical observation: “Probably no man has ever troubled to imagine how strange his life would appear to himself in terms of his maleness, if it were unrelentingly assessed in terms of his maleness … if from school and lecture-room, press and pulpit, he heard the persistent outpouring of a shrill and scolding voice, bidding him remember his biological function.”[5] Sayers’ answer to the sticky label problem for women is to bid us, all of us, to look to Jesus who took women “as he found them and was completely unselfconscious. There is no act, no sermon, no parable in the whole Gospel that borrows its pungency from female perversity.”[6] Referencing these labels and allowing them to remain, and even calcify into something strong and difficult to remove and correct, is lazy and damaging not only to women, but to the kingdom of God.

Dorothy Sayers’ answer to the sticky label problem for women is to bid us, all of us, to look to Jesus who took women “as he found them and was completely unselfconscious. There is no act, no sermon, no parable in the whole Gospel that borrows its pungency from female perversity.”

Human avenues of power today are treated as something elite, “coupled to public prestige, to the individual charisma of so-called ‘leadership’, and often, though not always, to a degree of celebrity … women as a gender—not as some individuals—are by definition excluded from it. You cannot easily fit women into a structure that is already coded as male; you have to change the structure.”[7] So, not only must we remove the labels from these three women, but we also need to scrub off the residue left behind, and the possibility of remaking and reapplying those labels, by changing the structures that allow for them. It’s not enough to speak up as lone voices; women need to enter into the decision making and take seats at the table of the power structures that maintain these labels. Thankfully, biblical scholarship has “expanded to include the concept of gender, enhancing our understanding of the portrayal of both male and female figures, as well as of God, in the biblical narrative.”[8] This gives me hope that there is, indeed, a brighter and less sticky future for these three women carrying these labels for oh so many years, and for us, their sisters, as well.

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QUESTION GIRL QUESTION: How have you seen Mary the mother of Jesus over the years? Have you ever thought of her as a leader in the Church, and a supporter of Jesus’ ministry? For more on Mary, read Scot McKnight’s book, The Real Mary. It’s my favorite!

By the way, this Substack is all about asking questions about women in the Bible or the Church. Do you have any questions? Email me at questiongirlsusy@gmail.com and your question may appear anonymously here on Question Girl!

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[1] Ally Kateusz, Mary and Early Christian Women: Hidden Leadership (Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 14.[1] Susan E. Hylen, Women in the New Testament World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), 166.

[2] "Understanding a Patriarchy: Women in Second Century Jerusalem Through the Eyes of Ben Sira, by Claudia Camp, in Amy-Jill Levine, ed., “Women Like This”: New Perspectives on Jewish Women in the Greco-Roman World, vol. 01, Early Judaism and Its Literature (Atlanta, Georgia: Scholars Press: Society of Biblical Literature, 1991)., 1-39.

[3]Jaime Clark-Soles, Women in the Bible, Interpretation: Resources for the Use of Scripture in the Church (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2020), 197–198.

[4] Michelle Lee-Barnewall, Neither Complementarian nor Egalitarian (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2016), 106.

[5] Dorothy L. Sayers, Are Women Human? (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1971)., 56.

[6] Sayers, p 68-69.

[7] Mary Beard, Women and Power (New York: W.W. Norton, 2017), 86–87.

[8] Federica Francesconi and Rebecca Winn Winer, Jewish Women’s History from Antiquity to the Present (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2021), 31.

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