The following is a sneak peek especially at Advent of “Miriam, Mother of God,” a profile from the upcoming book Holy Troublemakers & Unconventional Saints, Volume II by Daneen Akers (more on volume II details coming in 2024).
Miriam, Mother of God
A teenage girl yawns and stretches as she leaves her small house early in the morning almost 2,000 years ago. She steps onto the dirt path that winds through her small village, Nazareth.
She has already done the morning’s first chores—starting a cooking fire, milking the goat, and feeding the chickens. Now she’s off to her family’s grove of olive trees to check if they are ready to be harvested.
Early morning sunlight begins to peak over the horizon, and within minutes, the full brilliance of the sun is on her face. She pauses for a minute to feel the warm sun. She smiles and says a little prayer of thanks for a beautiful morning and for the birds who are beginning to sing their dawn chorus of welcome to another day.
This is Miriam. Life isn’t easy for her. Her family does not have much, and her days are full of many chores. She cares for her family’s animals, draws water at least once a day, grinds wheat and barley into flour, helps make simple meals, tends the vegetable garden, weaves clothing from wool, sweeps her family’s small mud and clay brick house, beats the bedrolls clean, and helps with the various harvests.
Miriam loves harvest times, when all of the women in the village work together to gather the grapes, olives, figs, and pomegranates that grow happily in the sunny, warm Mediterranean climate. She and her family speak Aramaic. She loves listening to the women chatting and telling stories while they work. The work is hard work, but it feels less hard when she can laugh and listen with others.
Illustration by Loveis Wise
Miriam’s family—like all of the Jewish people of Judea—live under Roman occupation. This means that they aren’t free to do as they wish. Miriam’s family and other Jews are allowed to observe their religious practices, but Roman soldiers brutally punish anyone who tries to speak out against the unjust occupation.
But the biggest burden for Miriam and most people is how much they pay in taxes. Her family, and the vast majority of other peasant farmers, are taxed three times: once for Rome, once for Herod (a local ruler who keeps a very strict eye on things for Rome), and once for the temple. So, for every bag of grain they grow, they have to surrender three more bags in taxes. They often have barely enough food for themselves to get by. And various rulers always seem to have another big project like an amphitheater to build, which means even more taxes.
But back to the beginning of this particular day.
What Miriam doesn’t know as she walks through Nazareth is that her life is about to change dramatically. Miriam is about to become a mother. Being a teenage mother wasn’t uncommon in Miriam’s time, but this still isn’t going to be a typical pregnancy or a typical child.
Her child will be one of the most influential teachers in history. She will see thousands of people listening to him teach. And, in time, she will know the deep sorrow and loss too many mothers also face.
But on this particular morning, Miriam has no idea how history will remember her. What she does know is that she’s had a strange and powerful dream telling her that she is going to have a very special baby. In fact, God is offering her a partnership in co-creating something beautiful and revolutionary.
And Miriam wants to accept this partnership with the Divine because she knows that a change is needed. She listens to the holy scriptures being read, and she knows that God envisions a different kind of world.
The world God imagines is upside down from her current life. It’s a world where the poor finally get a chance for rest and peace, and the rich have to work hard for a change. It’s a world where God’s dream is for a huge table where all are invited to eat until they are full, and walls that separate people are torn down and turned into gardens where new life grows.
But right now, Miriam has more timely worries. She believes she’s going to have a special baby, but she also knows her life is about to get very complicated because she is not yet married. Everyone knows everyone else’s business in her small village, and having a baby without being married in first-century Palestine is a very big scandal. Her life could even be in danger.
Being alone in the olive groves this early in the morning gives Miriam some thinking time. She decides to visit her cousin Elizabeth who also is going to have a baby under unusual circumstances. Miriam will be safe at her home in the mountains. Elizabeth is the age of a grandma, but she’s pregnant too--long past the time when anyone thought that would be possible, so Miriam thinks she might find safety and shelter for her unusual situation with Cousin Elizabeth.
A few days later, when Miriam arrives at Elizabeth’s house up in the hills, the women embrace each other and enjoy the new life growing in their bellies. No matter how these babies came to be, the reality of a whole human being made inside their bodies feels miraculous. (Sidebar: An interesting detail is that throughout Elizabeth’s pregnancy, her husband is mute and can’t speak, so these two kinswomen get to talk and connect without him piping up at all!)
They sing together, laughing, dancing, and imagining what good friends their babies will be. Elizabeth cooks nourishing food for her younger cousin. She enjoys caring for the younger woman, and Miriam’s company brings her joy.
Miriam tells Elizabeth why she knows this is a very special baby she’s growing in her belly. This vision of what God really wants in the world for all people excites Miriam so much that she puts it into words and sings for her cousin Elizabeth.
Today we call this song her Magnificat, and it’s considered so radical that several countries at different times in history have banned it from being read or sung in public because it might stir up revolution and make people hope for a new way of being in this world.
When she first sang it though, Miriam couldn’t have known that. She just knew that the world could be different.
My soul knows your heart, O God,
You hear my spirit sigh,
My body's overwhelmed with joy, though my heart still wonders why,
Every blessing from you I feel,
I'm humbled by your dream,
That generations will know my name,
Because you have chosen me.
Your mercy and your strength are pure,
Your holy light shines bright,
On those who honor who you are,
Your presence and your might.
And those who boast, with privilege rise, who use your name for glory
Your strength, your power, they will feel, for misusing your good story.
From thrones of power and of might, you'll bring the haughty down,
But those with hopeful, humble hearts, they shall receive a crown.
For those who hunger for your grace, abundance they shall find,
But the rich and the conceited,
will be the last in line.
You've shown yourself as faithful
To every saint of old
Like Sarah as well as Hagar,
Your story still gets told
From now and for forever
Your love it will sustain
You'll guide our hearts toward justice
And in you, our trust, remains.
We know so much more of Miriam’s story than she would have known then.
We know the story of that holy night several months later when her baby was born. It might have been a holy night, but anyone who has been around birth and newborn babies knows it likely wasn’t a silent night! And despite the nativity scenes we know so well, there undoubtedly would have been midwives, women experienced in helping women give birth, present. Maybe they likely had more practical gifts for a new mama and baby than the Magi brought.
But even though the broad outlines of Miriam’s story and her son are so often told, there’s still so much room for wonder.
What kind of toddler did Miriam mother? What kinds of games did she play with him as a boy? What kinds of stories did she tell him?
How many times did Miriam tell young Jesus about her vision from God as he was growing in her belly? Did she whisper sing her radical song in his ear about a world turned upside down as he was falling asleep?
One day her son will heed a call to teach people. Interestingly, he will begin his teaching career with a miracle his mother asks him to do--saving a family hosting a big wedding from embarrassment by turning water barrels into high-quality wine for the guests to drink. More room for wondering…had he been practicing turning water into wine at home around the dinner table?
When Miriam’s son, Jesus, begins this public ministry, he teaches a very similar message to the one his mother sang about when she was pregnant with him. He tells stories of an upside down kingdom where the poor and the peacemakers are blessed and the rich and powerful have to take a turn at the back of the line.
He heals people, spends time eating and laughing with people, especially those on the margins of his society, and he is so committed to nonviolence that he’s willing to die rather than harm people. And he and his mother remain close.
Miriam and Jesus’s vision still speaks to us today. We still live in a world that needs to be turned upside down. It’s a world where those who are greedy for more than they need could use a lesson in building a bigger table instead of higher walls, a world where those who are hungry need feeding, a world where kindness and loving everyone needs to be seen as a super power, a world where we still need to work together for the peace and flourishing of all.
Questions to reflect:
Which part of Miriam and later Jesus’s vision of a world turned upside down do you most identify with?
This Advent season when we especially wait for and remember Miriam and her child, what parts of her Magnificat calls to you?
How does this gorgeous collage art “Black Madonna” by Loveis Wise speak to you? Why is Mary/Miriam usually depicted by artists in blue? (Loveis Wise made this artwork especially for “Holy Troublemakers & Unconventional Saints, Volume II”.)
In English, we usually use Mary for Jesus’s mother’s name. But in Aramaic, the language she and he spoke, it’s Miriam (or Maryam). Does it help you imagine her life as a person and mother outside of her son’s story to use her name as she would have named herself?
Consider researching what birds—especially doves—represented in the ancient Near East in the first century. Why do you think Miriam/Mary and the Holy Spirit are so often depicted with a bird?
What might you be called to co-create with the Divine in your life and community?
Coloring sheet:
Download the free coloring sheet that goes with this profile about Miriam.
Credits:
Original Art by Loveis Wise
Magnificat poetry by Matthew Paul Turner (with tremendous thanks!).
Thanks to Brian Ammons, whose Advent sermon at Circle of Mercy three years ago helped frame the idea of Mary’s visit from the angel prior to her pregnancy through the lens of vocation and an invitation to co-create with the Divine.
Thanks also to Dr. Keisha McKenzie for being such a thoughtful and insightful editor through multiple projects, including this one.
And much gratitude to womanist scholars, especially Rev. Dr. Wil Gafney, Professor of Hebrew at Brite University and author of Womanist Midrash and the new Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church for the inspiration to name those often not named in our familiar narratives, such as our foremothers, not only forefathers.
Further reading suggestions (for older tweens and teens) on Mary/Miriam through a holy troublemaking, status-quo-upending lens:
“God Is A Black Woman” by Dr. Christena Cleveland
“Mary, Mother of God, Help Me Find Queer Joy” by Emma Cieslik
“Mary: Our Often Reimagined, Always Radical Mother” by Kaya Oakes