Giving Birth to Jesus!

There’s always expectation around the birth of a baby: When will it come? Who will it look like? Will it be healthy? A boy or a girl? And just as there are expectations about the baby, there are also expectations about the mother: Will she be a good mother? Will she cope with the baby? Does she know what she’s in for?

There are all sorts of myths about motherhood and babies: motherhood comes naturally; if you’re a proper woman, you don’t have to work at being a mother; good mothers do this, that or the other; if you don’t do this, that or the other, you’re not a good mother; if you’re not a mother, you’re not a proper woman; whatever problems the child may have, it’s all the mother’s fault. You could probably add some of your own.

All kinds of messages are played in our heads about what motherhood should or shouldn’t be, is or isn’t, especially for those of us who are women.

Most of these myths are simply untrue: images created by the idealisation of both babies and mothers. Motherhood isn’t any easier than any other parts of women’s lives; neither for that matter is fatherhood for men; nor is being a parent a compulsory act. Just as marriages and all our relationships require decision, commitment and hard work so too does parenthood—even a very part time stepmother (and grandmother) like me knows that.

Yet in our world, we are swamped by pictures of perfection in parenthood. Gaily smiling, very together women swan platters of elegantly prepared food onto tables surrounded by perfect families to the strains of the margarine jingle “You oughta be congratulated, Mum.” Whiter than white clothes are produced immaculately ironed straight from the washing machine so that Joan and John can make the next sporting fixture just in time. Again you can probably fill in some more examples for yourself.

Even our images of Mary, the mother of Jesus, have been tainted by our unrealistic, ethereal mythical pictures of motherhood. The pristinely clean Mary sits immaculately dressed in blue and white in the middle of a stable full of contentedly lowing animals: no dirt or manure to be seen, the straw is fresh and clean. Can you think of any more unlikely scene than that? This woman, the legitimacy of whose child was seriously in doubt, having just arrived in Bethlehem after travelling along unsealed roads and borne her child in a stable, sitting immaculately and serenely? She is pictured as bearing her pregnancy and the birth of Jesus almost without a hair out of place and, of course, how could she have ever had trouble with such an angelic child who apparently never cried (well, at least according to the Christmas carol if nothing else).

But the biblical picture of Mary as the mother of Jesus is not that type of frivolous, froth and bubble falsity of our modern media nor of the immaculate and pristine woman of sixteenth century Italian painters, from whom most of our popular images of Mary come. The biblical picture of Mary is far more down to earth.

She is a Jew living in a land ruled by Romans. She is a woman living in a time in which women were not considered to be as important as men. Her status in the society is somewhat ambivalent. She is betrothed but not married, in transition from the “protection” of one man to another, her father or other significant male in her family of origin to her future husband. She becomes pregnant without the complete legitimacy of marriage. She endures the birth of her first child in a difficult set of circumstances denied the usual support of her family.

It’s certainly not the stuff of margarine advertisements and yet it is a picture of beauty and of strength, but not because Mary is a carbon copy of a supermodel or because she endures everything while remaining sparklingly clean; but because in this simple yet profound everyday experience of the bearing and birthing of a child, Mary participates in a deeply prophetic action. She expects and brings to fruition the coming of Jesus in all the pain and joy, mess and disorder, that a birth can bring.

Mercy Amba Oduyoye, an African woman theologian, writes about such a birth:

At the age of sixteen I watched an eighteen year old woman having her first baby. From that time I understood why an Akan woman was said to have returned safely from the battle front when she had successfully pulled through that whole experience and returned with herself and her baby.

In this culture into which I was born, if news gets to a woman that another woman has not returned from this battle, she is expected to shake the words off her ears. They are not words that a woman should allow herself to hear—defeat at child birth spells the presence of evil. Birth pangs should result in joy, not sorrow.

For the biblical Mary, the pregnancy and birth are joyful experiences, but not because there is no pain, discomfort or difficulties. For Mary, the new life in which she is involved in bringing to birth, is a sign of life not just for one family but for a whole community, in fulfilment of a prophecy given a long time ago. And that new life was indeed birthed in pain as well as in joy, in the earthiness and ambivalence of human life itself.

When we place our ideas about Mary in the biblical context of the story of Jesus as expected, anticipated, joyful, painful birth and trial, then the words which are recorded as Mary’s song of praise in the Gospel of Luke (the song known as the Magnificat), those words become a powerful and prophetic affirmation. They do not come from the mouth of a television representation of a mother whose only concern is that of the appropriate margarine to serve her family. Nor from the mouth of a woman who seems unaffected by the realities of human life. They come from the mouth of a woman who is involved in the struggle of the reality of life.

The words of the Magnificat are not the platitudes of Christmas carols praying “God rest you merry people all, let nothing you dismay.” They are precisely the opposite: disturbing words announcing something new and different, heralding God’s new action in the world for God’s people, and echoing the words of the prophets uttered many years before:

My soul rejoices in God who is doing many wonderful deeds. God feeds the hungry and sends the rich away to fend for themselves. God scatters the proud and remembers the humble. God remembers those whom nobody thinks are important in fulfilment of the covenant promises.

It is the song of someone with great joy in her heart, joy from deep within, a profound sense of wonder and awe at the graciousness of God being brought to fruition and a profound understanding of the pain that is involved in that action: God becoming present through an ordinary woman and the dangerous, precarious act of the birth of a child.

Mercy Amba Oduyoye writes of the uncertainty of the birth of the child in Akan society:

The new life is waited for with prayers, sacrifices and medicaments. But no material preparations are made for the expected child. No amount of that will ensure safe delivery of mother and child from this encounter between life and death. The mystery surrounding the arrival of life cannot be resolved or even minimized with busy buying of pink, blue and white ribbons. It is awaited with fascination and wonder and, above all, with prayer and right living. The birth itself is in the hand of God. The woman, the bringer of new life, is at this point severely alone with her God and the hope of the new life. Others, especially the leaders of the family, are expected to be at prayer, calling all the relations in the other world to join in interceding for her. Others will stay by to encourage and guide but the parting is between mother and child alone.

The labouring mother, as Jesus observed, is at her most vulnerable and miserable, but her suffering is the prelude to the birth of a new life, a new beginning.

As the people of God, we are called to bear the Christ child into the world again and again (and not just at Christmas) but every day. If we were to imagine that we could do this with froth and bubble, or without getting our hands dirty, we would be mistaken. The birth of the Christ child in the hearts of God’s people again and again is exactly like the birth of Jesus two thousand years ago, and exactly like that of the birth of any child. It is painful, it is filled with expectations, it is joyful, it is worrying. God enters the world in vulnerability: a mother bearing a child; a child needing the protection of its mother; a follower of Christ coming to grips with the vulnerability and ambiguity of human life.

It is a story and an event which demands wonder and awe, and a deep sense of joy from within which is only possible from the other side of pain. But it is not quite the sort of entrance that most people envisage for God. Many people will still ask for the froth and bubble. Many people will still search for the immaculate Mary. They will be disappointed.

When the baby finally arrived, Mercy Amba Oduyoye was disappointed:

Is that all? She was neither beautiful nor cuddly; in fact, I did say that she was ugly. That is birth. But what potential! The mother smiles. “The ugly bundle” will be nursed into a beauty, with a pair of hands that may one day design cathedrals or perform experiments that will result in health for all [or become the saviour of the world].

This is the miracle of the birth of the Christ child, that God came and comes in pain and with joy, that God came and comes in the vulnerability and ambiguity of human life, that God came and comes to each one of us again and again in the earthy, messy, painful, joyful reality of our lives in Jesus. Is it any wonder that Mary sings with such courage and strength and joy in the midst of Luke’s story of the birth of Jesus in ambiguity and vulnerability? This is a real birth, and in that birth, new life has surely been stirred. Mercy Amba Oduyoye concludes her account of the birth of the Akan baby:

For the present at any rate, the labour pains vanish. God who mysteriously breathed the breath of life into her will supervise and direct that life. The chaos and darkness of the labour ward, the screams, sweat, swearing and the piercing cries are given a new quality. A new Adam has been stirred into life.

And the last word goes to the writer of our Gospel for today: “But Mary kept all these things, pondering them in her heart.” (Luke 2:19).