Mary, Were You Anxious?

I grew up Southern Baptist, so we didn’t observe the season of Advent, but during this time of year, the song “Mary, Did You Know?” was a staple in my church. Usually, it was sung by a couple of men with the deepest voices. The song consists of a series of questions addressed to a postpartum Mary that essentially boil down to, “Mary, did you know how great Jesus would be?” Even as a child, I found this song to be odd. “Of course Mary knew,” I thought to myself every year, “Sure, he didn’t go over all of the specifics, but the angel Gabriel literally told her.” You’d think that a church that cares so much about inerrancy would have taken Luke at his word. 

Going into Advent with a 9 week old, I’ve been thinking more about Mary than I have in years past. But as I reflect on a young Mary holding a newborn Jesus, I’m not so much interested in what Mary knew as I am in how anxious Mary was, because I’ve learned that caring for a newborn just makes more obvious what we all already know to be true of humanity, that in spite of our pretenses and our self deception, none of us knows what the hell we’re doing, and we’re all constantly anxious about not knowing what the hell we’re doing. With the fate of the world at stake, I can’t help but think that Mary was at least as anxious of a parent as I am. 

Did Mary worry that some of Jesus’ divinity would fall out every time she accidentally bumped his head? Was she ever concerned that he wasn’t eating enough to eventually reign over the house of Jacob? Did she call her pediatrician (or the first century equivalent) at midnight to ask if that flat spot on his head would keep the king of kings from wearing his crown one day? Did she obsess over whether or not he was getting enough vitamin D or meeting all of the infant milestones or pooping the right color? I brought this up to Kilpy last night, and she had a good point. In an age of significantly higher infant mortality, Mary was probably more anxious about just keeping Jesus alive than she was about his vitamin D intake. 

If God was humble enough to entrust Godself to Mary, perhaps we too have permission to entrust ourselves to the care of one another. 

In Advent, we talk about the scandal of the incarnation, the earth shattering, cosmic event of God becoming human, but we rarely talk about the fragility of the incarnation- fragile in the sense that the success of the incarnation rested on a young Mary. We rarely talk about the significance of the fact that not only did God become one of us, but God also entrusted Godself to one of us, and a teenager at that. I completely recognize that Mary grew up in a more communal society where she would have helped care for others’ children and taken on the responsibilities of adulthood much earlier than she would have today, so she probably knew more about babies as a teenager than Kilpy and me combined, but that doesn’t change the fact that Mary was still just a teenager. 

God could have done an incarnation in any number of ways that didn’t depend on a teenager, but God chose to do it this way. Why? Why didn’t God just materialize one day as a fully grown adult that didn’t need to be held or breastfed or rocked asleep? God could have saved the world all by Godself. There was no inherent need to include humanity at all in the plan of salvation. Like a loving parent who invites their child to help rake up leaves or fix a leaky sink, maybe God’s decision to include Mary (and by extension the rest of us) in the incarnation speaks to God’s overwhelming love for and desire to be with us. To come as a newborn and to be cared for by Mary also says something about who God is and how those who follow that newborn ought to exist in the world. If God was humble enough to entrust Godself to Mary, perhaps we too have permission to entrust ourselves to the care of one another. But God also didn’t entrust Godself to one like God, but God entrusted Godself to one who was utterly different from God, one who wasn’t divine but a teenage girl, one who was likely just as anxious of a parent as I am. So, maybe by entrusting Godself to Mary, God was really showing us how to give ourselves to something utterly different from us. In On the Incarnation, Athanasius said that “God became man so that man might become God.” To adopt his famous dictum, maybe God entrusted God’s divinity to Mary’s humanity so that one day we might entrust our anxious, frail, and flawed humanity to God’s steadfast, eternal, and perfect divinity.

Peace, 



The Rev. Blake Singer

The Service of Hope.

This Monday at 7 pm.

While Advent and Christmas are times of joy, they can be a challenging time too, especially if you’re dealing with the loss of a loved one or loneliness or grief of any sort. Solemn, candle-lit, prayerful, and moving, our Service of Hope is a time to slow down, feel supported and loved, and reconnect with our God and others feeling grief. 

The service, which features healing music performed on flute and guitar, will be Monday, December 18, at 7 pm in the Sanctuary. It will not be live-streamed.

umore tha