Mary’s Yes
Mother Mary. Our Lady. The Mother of Jesus has many titles. Queen of Heaven. Full of Grace. Dare we say, Mother of God? To the tribal people from the small village perched on a hill in Galilee, more concerned with the daily tasks of baking bread, gathering water, sifting grain, or hitching up oxen to plow a small field, the little girl was simply Miriam. Oh, what a couple of millennia can do. This Galilee girl with the common name is now the best-known mother on the planet.
It could have been different, except for those precious words she bravely whispered,
See, I am the servant of God; so, let’s do this thing!
That may not be precisely what she said. Yet that was the meaning she spoke to that ominous and mysterious figure who lit up her hut and pricked her heart, pronouncing that she was about to notice a bump in her belly. Her consenting “yes,” let’s call it, changed the course of history.
Learning to say yes to those unmistakable sacred callings in our hearts would be invaluable for our growth. God is always, and I mean, always inviting us to go ever deeper into an ever-growing and ever-expanding relationship of love. If only we can answer with a yes.
Before fully understanding Mary’s yes, though, we need to notice what’s most often overlooked. God did not really ask Mary if she wanted to give birth to his Son. He told her she was going to! Let’s look and see.
“… the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, … And the virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, “Greetings, O favored One, the Lord is with you!”
… behold you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High.
…And Mary said, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” (Luke 1)
Notice, that the angel declares “You will conceive a child, you will give birth to a son, you will name him Jesus.” Sounds more like a done deal to me. That hard-to-miss, angelic messenger told her she would get pregnant. God hand-picked Mary for this task and Gabriel simply delivered the news. Yet God—ever the gentlemen—does patiently wait for our consent in life. He did for Mary as well.
This gentle-yet-firm prompting from God is important to notice. Why? For one, it’s a common divine strategy seen in Scripture—God showing up and telling someone they’ve been hand-picked for a task. God didn’t ask Moses, for instance, to venture back to Egypt, you know, the place where he was a fugitive? God said, “I will send you to Pharoah!”
And for Jonah, God said, “Arise and go” to Nineveh. Then there is Gideon. God said, “I’m sending you to fight the Midianites, so Go!” Same thing for Jeremiah. “I appoint you as a prophet!” Done deal. And Mary’s call was said in a similar fashion.
There is one striking difference, however. The difference is in their responses!
You may know where I’m going with this. Each one of these cowardly, pillars-of-faith men tried to squirm their way out of their calling! In a rather hilarious display, Moses and Jonah attempted the “I’m not a good speaker” excuse. Gideon insisted on a few miracles first, so God could be trusted. (I hope you see the humor in this!) Meanwhile, Jeremiah claimed he was too young.
Now before I heap too much unsavory dirt on the graves of these men, I must admit that I’ve used many of these same excuses. Maybe you have as well.
But Mary? She was different. She was very, very different. She straight away said “yes.” “Let’s do this, for I am God’s servant.”
God needed a mother for his son, and he picked the tender, 14-year-old Miriam. She was his chosen one for the task. She was full of His grace. She was very young herself—especially for today—for such a task and could have pointed that out. She didn’t.
Mary was going to get pregnant and angel Gabe simply came to explain how it would play out. So, if it was a done deal, what was the “yes” all about?
Her “yes” signified her acceptance of it. Her embracing it! Mary fully embraced what God asked of her! And, by the way, this embrace of her calling, this “yes” from Mary, this “let it be,” was simply awesome! It birthed Jesus into the hearts of you and me!
Mary’s willing acceptance should speak volumes to us. Why? We all face do-we-embrace-it or run-from-it challenges in life, don’t we?
For starters, God made me a certain way. God made you a certain way. We had little choice in how we started out. God could have birthed us in a myriad of ways, in a different time, in a different family, or in a very different culture. We could have had a different skin tone, body shape, or with completely different aptitudes and skills than what we now possess. But he created us exactly as we are! The question is do we accept who we are? Do we work on embracing our truest self?
But let’s return to Mary. It was certain Mary would get pregnant. God would make sure of it.
But it wasn’t necessarily a given that Mary would carry this Immanuel baby full term. Did I hear you shudder a little? Startling as it may sound, another rarely understood fact about the culture of the day is that Mary could have ended her pregnancy. In Mary’s day, there were ways to induce a miscarriage.
Various herbal recipes existed to end an unwanted pregnancy. Among the most widely used was the fennel plant. In small doses, it was used as a contraceptive. In larger amounts, it served as a “morning-after” pill. The plant would come to be called “the virgin’s plant.” Other herbs used were artemisia (wormwood), berries from the chasteberry bush, or seeds from wild rue. Rue, crushed and brewed like tea, is still used by Bedouin and Indian village women today.
You see, Mary was going to get pregnant, but she wasn’t necessarily out of options. Mary could have done the unthinkable. Yet, Mary answered her divine calling. And she outdid the men by a thousand-fold in doing so! Can I hear a resounding, yes?
Mary deserves our admiration for sure! The “yes” of Mary gave creation their creator. Her “yes” was the beginning of a great love story between the Word and his world!
We surely can’t or shouldn’t say yes to every prompting. The harm in doing so would far out way any good. And when we detect a sacred prompting, it’s ok to think twice about it or even squirm a little. Remember, God is ever the gentlemen. He is patient. He is kind.
But when we’re sure of a sacred prompting—as sure as if Gabriel lit up our hut and called us his favorite—it would do us good to model our response like that of the Queen of Consents.
Like the girl Miriam and her sweet “yes.”
“The only thing keeping us from intimacy is our own self-sufficiency.”
—Samuel C Hughes
