Unconventional and inconsequential (Kaya Oakes)

    In Elizabeth Johnson’s book on Mary, Truly Our Sister, [the author] has a very different view of Mary, reframing her as a radical visionary who sees a more equitable world as God’s desire for humanity. 

    During the pregnant Mary’s visit to her older but also pregnant cousin Elizabeth, Mary sings the Magnificat, which Johnson describes as the prayer of a poor woman. In the Magnificat, Mary speaks of a world where God raises the lowly and sends the rich away, where the social order is upended and the poor and vulnerable are the most beloved. Mary, being young, female, and living under the oppressive rule of the Roman empire, is chosen by God because she is unconventional and inconsequential. 

    And she sings this song not to an audience of powerful men, but to another pregnant woman. 

    Mary is a reminder that the least likely person is sometimes the one who will wind up changing the world, even if that world is just the world of the family we grew up in.

--Kaya Oakes        

Image source: Romare Bearden, The Visitation (1941), https://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2015/04/22/a-homecoming-for-romare-beardens-the-visitation/
Quotation source