Source: The Annunciation by Henry Ossawa Tanner (1899), in the Philadelphia Museum of Art

My favorite painting of the Annunciation is by the African American realist artist Henry Ossawa Tanner. In Tanner’s Annunciation, the angel appears as a column of light. As for Mary, she isn’t a demure, passive girl. She is a young woman who leans forward with a quizzical expression on her face. Tanner’s Mary has real questions, and Tanner treats the Annunciation as a real event that happened to a real person in a real place - which is what it is. This painting takes seriously the fact that in that universe-upending moment, Mary could have said no but didn’t.

I think sometimes people grow up with a two-dimensional, cardboard-cutout version of Mary. But the Mary of Scripture is more complicated and interesting than that. She is a woman of faith and courage. Here’s how the British Anglican poet Denise Levertov describes the scene:

Called to a destiny more momentous
than any in all of Time,
she did not quail,
  only asked
a simple, ‘How can this be?’
and gravely, courteously,
took to heart the angel’s reply,
the astounding ministry she was offered:
to bear in her womb
Infinite weight and lightness; to carry
in hidden, finite inwardness,
nine months of Eternity; to contain
in slender vase of being,
the sum of power–
in narrow flesh,
the sum of light.
This was the moment no one speaks of,
when she could still refuse.
A breath unbreathed,
                                Spirit,
                                          suspended,
                                                            waiting.
Bravest of all humans,
                                  consent illumined her.

In this last, suspended moment of Advent, we are in the time of Mary. Christmas is a time to rejoice in the glory of the Lord, but it’s also a time to be confronted by the very human reality of the story of Jesus’ birth. Neither Mary, nor Joseph, nor Jesus, are two-dimensional figures acting out a sentimental tale. They are real people, caught up in the most real situation possible: the situation of God’s action towards us in the Word made flesh. It is a time of awe. It is a time of joy.

May the blessing of our newborn Savior be with each of you this season.

Yours in expectation,

Kara+