This story is so outrageous, I don’t think anyone would have made it up. Why would you make up an immaculate conception? If the idea of sexual union troubled you, you’d probably want to avoid the whole reproductive system, right? You wouldn’t write it right into the story of God!
But a young woman’s reproductive system is right smack dab in the middle of our story of salvation. The conception may have been immaculate, but nothing after that was. To put it crudely, we get no Incarnation without the messy details of a woman’s plumbing.
"The angel said to her, ‘And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus.' ... Mary said to the angel, ‘How can this be, since I am a virgin?’"
There are certain charges leveled at early Christian thinkers and church leaders, that they were somehow flesh-denying and anti-woman, weaving a conspiracy of suppression. You can’t honestly derive such a view from our Gospels. If that was your agenda, why would you tell the story of the Messiah’s emergence through a woman’s birth canal? Why would all four Gospels agree that the first person to see Jesus risen from the dead was a woman? Why would the Gospels show Jesus’ friendship with and trust in women?
Right here at the heart of our story is a young woman, whom we today would consider still a girl – and she is the agent through whom God is revealed to human eyes. Imagine!
AND SHE SAYS YES! I don’t know if she had a choice or not, but Luke unmistakably tells us that she chose:
“Then Mary said, ‘Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.’”
“Here am I.” That’s a statement of identity and presence. Here am I. What if we started each day with those words? “Here I am, world! Here I am, God!”
“The servant of the Lord.” That’s a statement of missional life. Mary wasn’t asking God what God had done for her lately – she self-identified as God’s servant and proclaimed it proudly. “Let it be to me as you have said.” I accept. I know what you’re asking, I know in part what it’s going to cost me, and I accept. Amen – let it be.
That’s a powerful young woman! That’s an agent of change! Even before the canticle of radical reversal and equality that’s attributed to Mary in the Magnificat (or, if you prefer it sung, here's Rutter's...), right here we see girl power to the nth degree, a formidable young woman who will carry, and bear, and raise, and lose our beloved Jesus – and then receive him back, only in part, and never to keep.
I’ve never thought of the story of the Anunication as an anthem of women’s empowerment, but just writing this fills me with energy. I want to go out and tell every young girl I know: Look at this girl! Look how calm and clear and powerful she is! There is power in serving others, in offering ourselves – if we recognize our own worth in the process.
Maybe you know a young woman whom you can affirm today, remind of her value. Maybe you are aware of forces in our culture that rob young women of their sense of worth, and you can band with others to think of ways to overcome or undermine those forces. (Fashion industry, anyone? Advertising industry? Social media?)
God chose a young girl for God’s greatest mission. She said yes. Girl power rocks the world!
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