Thousands and thousands of icons, frescos, statues and paintings illustrate the story of an angel coming to Mary and directing her future – the Annunciation. You might even have one. Often, the angel glows with light, Mary is submissive and the annunciation is just that – an announcement of what will happen, like it or not. A messenger from God tells a woman what God is going to do with her. 

Because the child is destined to change the world, it is too easy to see this reading simply as a good starting point to the overall story.
I suggest it is more important than that.

STARTING OUT

It starts out exactly as Luke’s first readers would have expected. Before giving the woman a name, Luke tells us the important stuff – how she relates to men. She’s
a young woman or virgin; Luke tells us that twice. She is engaged to be married to a man called Joseph. Her ancestor is David. It’s all a bit like the news announcement that named Archbishop Sarah Mullally’s husband before her. Despite being the first woman archbishop, her relationship to a man came first.

FAVOURED BY GOD 

Then, though, Luke stands things on their head. This woman, defined in relation to men, is favoured and blessed by God. Not blessed because of what she is going to do, but already blessed. It’s remarkable. Patriarchal power and clerical clout disregard everyday women, but God does not. If the many thousands of images made of the moment have led you to believe that Mary was regal, studious, submissive, blue-eyed, blond or white, remember this: she was an ordinary Palestinian peasant woman. In the earliest image that remains of this moment, she is doing an everyday task – drawing water. An ordinary woman, doing an ordinary job is favoured by God. As you carry out all the preparatory tasks for Christmas, remember you are favoured by God. As you wrap gifts, write cards, order food or cook dinner, you are favoured by God. In your everyday life, you are favoured by God.

A PLACE IN HISTORY

At first sight, the angel’s words seem problematic. Annunciation sounds as though Mary has no choice. She is a handy womb for the Son of God. But that isn’t Luke’s story. In the pattern he chooses – an angel’s appearance, a fearful woman, a statement, an objection and a reassurance – Luke links Mary directly with other mothers from Israel’s history; Sarah, the mother of many nations, and Hagar, the first person in Scripture to name God, for example. Mary is significant, and is placed in a long line of women important to God’s plan. She has a part in the history of the whole people of God.

CONSENT

And perhaps the most important element of this story for the times in which we live, when presidents speak of women as though they are garbage, when abuse of women is television entertainment, when women always have less money and less power than men: God asks Mary’s consent. Mary is not only favoured and blessed; she matters. Her will is her own. She is not commanded, controlled or instructed by God, her consent is sought.

REIMAGINING MARY

Paintings often depict Mary as a medieval lady, well-dressed, in plush surroundings, reading. Occasionally she is seen in prayer, at the kind of prayer desk owned by the gentry. These images were commissioned and paid for by the wealthy, and they imagined Mary as one of them. She was not. If artists down the ages had looked for someone a bit like Mary, they would have looked among the serving girls, not among their mistresses.

So let’s retell the story. There was a young peasant Palestinian woman, Mary, who had a vibrant faith and understood her faith well. God was looking for a suitable mother to raise a son. A mother who was faithful, strong and courageous. A woman who would teach her son the faith, help him learn about life, and encourage his ministry. God noticed Mary. ‘She’d be ideal,’ thought God, and sent a messenger to ask Mary for her consent to participate in the next stage of the plan for the world. Mary agreed, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Mary is important, not as a handy womb to bear God’s son, but because her faith, her courage and her character meant she was favoured by God. Jesus is the Son of God, but he is the Son of Mary too.