The queerness of Mary: A Christmas reflection from OTN trustee Augustine
OTN trustee Augustine Tanner-Ihm with Coordinator Kieran Bohan at the Big Queer Carols event at Sacred Trinity Salford on Sunday 18th December 2022.
In his introduction to the Salford service, Kieran explained:
‘The word “queer” has been, and sometimes still is, used as a term of insult to many in the LGBTQIA+ community. When we use it to describe an event like this, it is a taking back and reframing of the language used about us. Academics use the word ‘queer’ to mean “breaking false binaries”, and there is even a branch of theology called ‘queer theology’. For example, St Paul wrote:
“There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
‘In our modern context, we might add the binaries that we are called to challenge: neither black nor white, neither able nor disabled, neither gay nor straight, neither transgender nor cisgender... you might think of your own.
‘Jesus often broke the binaries and boundaries of his culture, causing scandal by eating with tax collectors and other outcasts. As LGBTQIA+ people who have often been outcast in our communities, to “queer” our theology is to engage with how we talk about God and the Bible from a point of view that isn’t mainstream, male and heterosexual, and to reframe teachings about God and the Bible that seek to denigrate and “other” LGBTQIA+ people.’
READ MORE: What is queer theology?
THIS YEAR, for the first time, the annual Big Queer Carols event hosted by OneBodyOneFaith in London went on tour across England and Wales, to three more churches, in Cardiff, Salford and Sheffield.
OTN trustee Augustine Tanner-Ihm was one of those invited to offer a reflection on the Christmas story. He shared this reflection in person at Sacred Trinity Salford, which hosts an Open Table community, and recorded a video version to be shared at the other services. He reflects on the account of Jesus’ birth from the Gospel of Luke.
When I was a teenager, the phrase used most in conversations was ‘same difference’. It was a phrase that really upset many parents, teachers and linguistic experts. According to the Oxford Language Dictionary, (sorry Cambridge), this term means: ‘to express the speaker's belief that two or more things are essentially the same, despite apparent differences’.
So, by calling the Christmas story, the incarnation of Jesus Christ, the same difference, isn’t that rude, disrespectful or dare I might say blasphemous? Siblings in Christ, I say a profound, NO! This story is the same yet different in the matter of how we view this heavy story today. Mary was nothing special, just an ordinary young girl from an ordinary family. She was just like you and me. She also had to carry labour. Not just labour from having a baby but the emotional labour from being different. From people looking at her unmarried belly and passing judgement. The fear of people not believing her. The shame and culture that, because of who she was, was difficult.
This is queer. To be queer is to be outside of the normative realm. This Christmas, hear this from me: Mary, the mother of God, carries the queerness inside of her; both through the emotional labour and the physical labour of giving birth to the person of Jesus Christ.
Mary didn’t have her family around her, as she carried her child a very long way. Where was Elizabeth, her cousin? It’s no secret that Christmas is often a difficult time for queer people, disproportionately estranged from their family. This means we often must create our own family. While these chosen families can be tremendously amazing and life-giving, it doesn’t change our original family, and it’s tough not to long for our families of origin during Christmas time. Many still in relationship with family are forced to retreat into fear and the closet, for safety amid the exclusion of this season.
But there’s good news. We can subvert the narrative of the traditional family by queering this story. So, I’d like to talk about the revolutionary power of queering Mary.
Abolitionist and women’s rights activist Sojourner Truth in the US spoke at the 1851 Ohio Women’s Convention. Once a slave, Truth questioned the ‘white-washing’ done to women of colour by white women working only for white women’s right to vote, by asking the question: ‘Isn’t I a woman?’ In the same speech she notes that the male clergy claim can’t have as much rights as men because Christ was a man.
But we know this is so wrong. In an act of theological brilliance and subversion, Sojourner Truth poses this question to the male clergy gathered at the convention:
‘Where did your Christ come from? From God, and from a woman. Man had nothing to do with it.’
I contend that Sojourner Truth queered the traditional understanding of Mary. Mary was responsible for birthing Jesus, for ushering Emmanuel into this world. Man had nothing to do with it! If we take a step further, borrowing from a feminist theology, boldly claiming that God is She, then we queer the Christmas narrative even further. Mary, and She who is God, brought Jesus into the world.
I think of the powerful potential of a queer Mary that emboldens, empowers, and enlivens the queer community to be proud of who we are, to honour and celebrate the beauty of the families we create amidst outside threats.
Mary knew a little something about the difficulty of creating a family amidst outside threats, didn’t she? She wasn’t married to Joseph, which was tremendously scandalous during her time. Scripture tells us she was a virgin, so that makes her pregnancy pretty complicated.
And she had to travel far while she was pregnant. She gave birth in a manger because no one would welcome her family. No one would risk a little discomfort for this family. There are a million excuses we can come up with but in the end, there is one thing, isolation. And that is what Mary had. In Ancient Near Eastern cultures, while giving birth, women were always surrounds by their mothers and friends to help. But not Mary. She didn’t have a birthing partner. She was left alone and afraid. And then the king wanted to kill her child.
Many people I know who have created queer families by bringing children into the world can relate to the hardship of Mary’s pregnancy.
There are so many families who would never welcome us into their homes because they view our queer family as wrong, sinful, and an abomination.
Do you want to know about tough pregnancies? Ask a few queer families about the measures they had to take to bring a child into the world. And, yes, throughout the world there are ‘kings’, like Herod, political leaders who would rather see dead queer bodies than joyful queer families; you can see this in what has happened in Qatar.
So, I’d contend that Mary’s very being, her family, and the entirety of Christmas narrative is queer.
We simply must look close enough, peel back the layers of history, peek into the forgotten crevices of the canon, and trust our queer vision, for what we see is nothing less than a queer saint with a belly full of divinity embracing us in all our beautiful diversity.