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The Gospel of Luke, above all books of the New Testament, is about women. It reads as if a woman might have written it. It contains intimate details which would hardly have occurred to most men. It begins with the birth of John the Baptist, focusing on Elizabeth, his mother. The next major section is Mary's story. To her we will shortly return. There follows the prophecy of an old woman named Anna. When the boy Jesus went to the temple to debate with the learned doctors, the only person Luke quotes is his mother. Many of Luke's stories from Jesus' ministry are about women: the woman who was a sinner, the woman who wouldn't give up in her quest for a cure, the widow of Nain, the bent over woman, the widow who gave her mite to the offering plate. At the resurrection it is only the women who have the faith to go to the garden of graves. Luke lists Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of Jesus, and other women. Luke reports that when they told the disciples about the empty tomb these men assumed it was an idle tale and did not believe them. This was of course a culture in which women didn't count and in which their talk was treated as idle tittle tattle. Now back to the central character in the birth narrative, and a story only told by Luke, about Mary the mother of Jesus. Over the years there have been two ways in which I have imagined Mary. I have seen her as a frightened little girl, overwhelmed by events far beyond her control, just a simple, rural, unlettered child whom God had chosen to be the vessel of grace. That is the kind of Mary we portrait in the Nativity scenes. But the Nativity hardly ever gets the sense of the Birth of Jesus right! There is another way to view Mary, a way more faithful I think, to Luke's text. Here we find a determined, strong, assertive woman; a model for all women - a woman of power and influence: educated, sharp, committed. It is the resourceful, competent, clear woman from whom Jesus learned much of what he knew about God's will for him and for his world.
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