Stepping out of shame - Mary's song
The artist Ben Wildflower's depiction of Mary, based on the Magnificat.
TODAY, 11th October, is marked around the world as ‘Coming Out Day’.
Coming Out Day is based on the belief that prejudice against LGBTQIA+ people thrives in an atmosphere of silence and ignorance, and that once people know that they have loved ones who are LGBTQIA+, they are far less likely to maintain prejudiced or oppressive views.
On Sunday 8th October, Warren Hartley from Open Table Liverpool preached at the Open Table Warrington community on the theme of ‘coming out’:
The song of Mary, known as the Magnificat [Luke 1:46-55] is one of those pieces of scripture that makes my heart race, as a deep ‘YES’ resonates with me.
Warren Hartley is the LGBTQIA+ Ministry Facilitator at St Bride’s Liverpool, home of Open Table Liverpool, and an ambassador for the education charity Inclusive Church, encouraging and resourcing churches on all issues of inclusion. PHOTO: Mark Loudon.
It wasn’t always so. I grew up in an ardently Protestant church and family, which was deeply conservative, theologically and socially. Mary was never a topic of sermons beyond the Christmas nativity play, and Catholic devotion to her was dismissed as heresy and idolatry.
As I’ve aged and (hopefully!) matured, I’ve put aside such childish thinking and begun to see the depths of scripture and the stories of the people portrayed within them. Most of the popular images we hold are two-dimensional and domesticated. Yet Mary was a human being, with all the joys, pains and complications that brings with it. So how do we enter into what was happening? What brings Mary to the point where she sings?
“I have figuratively occupied the space where I was, and am, culturally and religiously shamed. I’ve feared, and still fear, violence if I’m seen to be who I am. Some still wish I would occupy that place of shame, be quiet and go away, and not be an uncomfortable truth in their midst.”
Mary has just found out she is pregnant. We all know the story, but let the reality sink in for a moment. Put yourself in Mary’s shoes. You’re young. Some scholars say very young, around 13 or 14. You’re engaged to be married in a conservative rural village, and you’re pregnant. No-one will believe your story about an angel - do you even believe it yourself?
Yet there you are. How do you feel? What are you thinking? What will you do? Luke describes Mary as going “with haste” to see her cousin. Another woman, a relative, someone who might understand… or will she judge you too? Professor Jane Schaberg, an American biblical scholar, points out that the Greek idiom ‘with haste’ carries overtones of alarm, flight and anxiety.
Here Mary is alone, pregnant, shamed and anxious seeking out understanding and comfort from her cousin who lived a long way away. Travel was risky, what drove her to take that risk? Perhaps Mary was even fleeing potential violence, since the penalty at the time for the seduction of a betrothed woman was, at worst, death by stoning, or a lighter sentence of divorce, leaving her socially shamed and excluded as well as financially destitute.
Mary visits her cousin and Elizabeth’s heart leaps within her as she sees her cousin approach. Here is recognition, here is love - not judgement but a joyous and prophetic greeting. So Mary reaches into her cultural tradition and sings a new version of an ancient song. Mary’s song echoes the song of Hannah, the mother of the prophet Samuel [1 Samuel 2:1-10].
Mary’s song reminds us that revolution, liberation, and transformation do not trickle down from those with worldly power. They are a rising up, a ‘coming out’. God is not one to bring about change from a distant heaven - God brings about change from the heavens within us:
In wombs.
In hearts.
In minds.
In bodies.
In coming out.
God doesn’t wave a magic wand, God births – birth, and coming out, are messy and risky.
We can’t all give birth to another person, but when it comes to God’s moving in the world, there is no one that cannot birth new life from God if they so desire. If we, like Mary, are paying attention, are open to God’s desires, and are courageous enough to say ‘yes’ to partnering with God in the risky, the scandalous, the unimaginable, God can birth new life through us!
Mary’s story and Mary’s song invite us to ask:
Where do we expect change to come from in the world today?
Who do we turn to when we hunger for wisdom about change - what it looks like and how we create it?
Do the stories and voices of transformation we hear - of growing churches or of organizations seeking change - have to do with people and places that have a great deal of access to money? If so, what does Mary’s song invite us to think about that?
In her song, Mary says this is a promise that God makes forever. She is inviting all of us into this irresistible revolution. Her song begins with rejoicing, but it is nothing if not political in nature and in delivery. We’re not just hearing about a God that is dismantling systems and pulling people from their thrones - we’re hearing about it from a girl who is pregnant and unmarried, who becomes a refugee along with her family. In the midst of a book of stories that raises up men as heroes, prophets, and warriors after God’s own heart, we find the Magnificat, a young girl’s blueprint for how to rise up as prophetic voices in the midst of grief and waiting. Oh, how we need that in our current political climate!
One thing that strikes me in both the songs of Hannah and Mary is that they speak of things as if they have already happened;
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.- Luke 1:52-53
Where did that prophetic confidence come from? Mary didn’t live to see all those things come true, nor did Jesus, nor did my grandparents, yet this song echoes through the ages because it captures the longings of the human heart - for justice, for equity! These are revolutionary ideas - too revolutionary for many.
During the British rule of India, the Magnificat was prohibited from being sung in church. In the 1980s, Guatemala’s government discovered Mary’s words about God’s preferential love for the poor to be too dangerous and revolutionary. Mary’s words inspired people in poverty to believe that change was possible, so their government banned any public recitation of Mary’s words.
This is why I think I respond so strongly to Mary’s song. I have figuratively occupied the space where I was, and am, culturally and religiously shamed. I’ve feared, and still fear, violence if I’m seen to be who I am. Some still wish I would occupy that place of shame, be quiet and go away, and not be an uncomfortable truth in their midst.
I think this is Mary’s ‘coming out’ story - stepping out of the shame of what people may think or say about her and living into authenticity, into truth! Being courageous enough to say ‘yes’ to partnering with God in the risky, the scandalous, the unimaginable. That sounds like coming out to me. Mary travelled with haste in the hope that she would be seen and recognised, not judged, and in the recognition and love of her cousin is released from shame, fear and anxiety, and comes out in song.
I also long for what Mary longed to see - justice, the hungry fed and the humble lifted up. I long for it in my very bones, and yet I know my bones will be one day be dust and I won’t see all of it come to pass, and it makes me angry!
So, what do we do? We come out and we sing anyway. My hero Maya Angelou, angry at injustice, said:
‘You should be angry. You must not be bitter. Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. It doesn’t do anything to the object of its displeasure. So, use that anger. You write it. You paint it. You dance it. You march it. You vote it. You do everything about it. You talk it. Never stop talking it.’
Mary sang it! So, I invite you to ‘come out’ and join in the song and to never stop singing. Sing it long enough and loud enough so that others join in, and you pass it to the next generation, and the next, and the next.
