Her great faith was ready to break new ground in the power of the Spirit
This series of Bible studies seeks to retell the stories of women who were divinely called and empowered to do great things. Many of them rose to the occasion, and a few very famously did not. Often, the tragedies and triumphs in their lives are missed, and their stories are told from perspectives other than with the honor and dignity they deserve.
After excavating their narratives from millennia of obfuscation, now meet the freshly restored, valiant, vivid (and sometimes villainous) women of the Bible.
Virgin Mary: Mother Meek but Never Mild
Virgin Mary, the most written about woman in the whole Bible. What is your impression of her? There are thousands upon thousands of images of Mary, the beatific and holy Madonna, mother and child, otherworldly in her serenity; and the grieving mother holding her crucified son, again beatific, serene, otherworldly.
This thirty-page book includes the retelling of Mary’s story, a fifteen-question Bible study, and link to a twenty-minute multi-media presentation of the virgin Mary’s account. We might get the impression that as a young girl, being visited by Archangel Gabriel she was soft, submissive, gentle, meek. And certainly, she had these qualities, but is it possible we have missed the real person underneath the patina of two thousand years’ worth of iconography?
Mother Mary, Meek and Mild?
When I first studied Mary’s story, I knew there was more to her narrative than what I had been taught. Stories tend to take on a certain ritualistic quality when they are told and retold, especially over the course of thousands of years. But since I produced the “Virgin Mary” a few years ago, I’ve done more studying, and there are a few things I think I didn’t quite get right. So this book, based upon my latest research, nuances a number of stories concerning Mary’s relationship with Jesus.
Jesus’s inner circle numbered 120 women and men. After their forty days of intensive teaching from Jesus, they had spent the ten days together waiting and praying.
Mary is the only person named besides the disciples, and the only woman named.
Now Pentecost had come, and the sign they had been waiting for came like a rushing wind and tongues of flame. Mary, and the other women among them, would make history when they came streaming out of that upper room, proclaiming the gospel in every language present. As Joel had prophesied and Peter would then explain,
‘In the last days it will be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams.
Even upon my slaves, both men and women,
in those days I will pour out my Spirit;
and they shall prophesy.Acts 2:17-18 (NRSVUE emphases added)
Once again, even as an older woman, Mary’s great faith was ready to break new ground in the power of the Spirit.
As one author I read put it, “this is Mary meek, but not Mary mild.”[1] A woman of towering courage and of great faith, rather than imagining her as a little momma chasing after her famous son, it is better to see Mary as she was in Cana: tall, dignified, a woman of authority and intelligence, honored and respected by the Lord Jesus Christ.
[1] Amy Peeler, Women and the Gender of God (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2022).
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