Mary’s Imagination Incubator

Mary the mother of Jesus figures prominently in Advent. We remember the Annunciation—angels reveal that she will bear a son who would declare and enact the Kingdom of God. We recall the Visitation—Mary, pregnant with Jesus, travels to spend time with Elizabeth, pregnant with John. Elizabeth praises Mary’s faith—and Mary responds with a song (Luke 1:46-55).

God’s arm is strong. God scatters the people who are proud and think great things about themselves. God brings down rulers from their thrones, and raises up the humble. God fills the hungry with good things, but sends the rich away with nothing.

The Magnificat declares God’s great reversal—a social overturning where the high are cast down and the low lifted up.

In Imagination: A Manifesto, Ruha Benjamin, professor of African-American Studies at Princeton, defines a ‘social imaginary’ as a collective vision of a desirable and feasible future. Imaginaries animate politics—think of the different Americas envisioned by Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.

The dominant social imaginary is hierarchical. It divides the world into two groups: men and women, white and black, straight and gay, abled and disabled. Then it asserts that those in the first group, who are superior, matter more than those in the second, who are inferior and disposable. The dominant social imaginary, and the public policies and practices it creates, crushes the feeble and lifts up the powerful.

Things were pretty much the same in Mary’s first-century Palestine. Politically, she was an oppressed colonial subject of Roman occupation. She and her people were ruthlessly exploited by the puppet ruler Herod through taxation and brutality. She—along with all Jewish men and women—were mistreated by an aristocratic priesthood that collaborated with Rome for political power and economic gain. Economically, Mary’s society was divided into two classes: the very rich and the very poor. Peasant farmers fell into debt because of secular and religious taxes. She, like most in rural villages, lived in subsistence poverty—while the elite enjoyed luxurious splendor. Socially, Mary was from Galilee—the most marginalized, stigmatized, and left behind area in Palestine. ‘Galilean’ was a pejorative slur, a put-down that demeaned people’s worth. These harsh social realities shaped the teenage Mary’s daily life and emerging political consciousness.

Powerful and wealthy forces, past and present, create domination systems that, Marcus Borg says, are politically oppressive, economically exploitative and—worst of all—religiously legitimated. That is America today. Trump won the backing of a majority of voters—including 80 percent of Christians—who favor incompetence, narcissism, racism, misogyny, dishonesty, bigotry, vitriol, and cruelty above basic values of decency and fairness, respect and compassion. Trump’s policy plans, outlined in Project 2025, shift the tax burden from the wealthy onto the middle class, cut Social Security benefits for seniors, strip healthcare insurance from millions of individuals, eliminate Head Start’s no-cost child care for low-income children, abolish the Department of Education which funds schools serving disadvantaged and disabled students, separate millions of immigrant families through mass deportations and sabotage policies that address climate change. That’s just the start of Trump’s domination agenda that is intended to—and will—exclude, oppress, and harm vulnerable people. The pain will be felt across America. And around the world.

Against this backdrop, Mary’s song proclaims God’s alternative social imaginary where the feeble are lifted up and the powerful crushed. It denounces unjust social arrangements and announces a new age of social leveling where systems and structures are equal, inclusive, and fair. It imagines beloved community, society organized so everyone thrives. Mary’s subversive prophecy—a political overturning where the disinherited are lifted up and the hungry fed—is good news for victims of the dominant social order, but bad news for those who perpetrate or benefit from it.

Mary’s name, Jennifer McBride points out, can mean ‘rebellious.’ It fits her and her song, which rebels against the world as it is. McBride adds that too often we sentimentalize Mary as gentle and dreamy. We spiritualize her message, turning the “proud” and “lowly” into inner attitudes. We empty the Magnificat of its radical political meaning, distorting and denying its’ purpose. This privatized reading serves the status quo—by refusing to challenge concentrations of power and wealth, it perpetuates an unjust system where few prosper and many suffer.

Imagination, Benjamin says, pushes us beyond what we think politically possible. We must dream if things are to get better. We have to imagine something different. But imagination doesn’t just happen—instead, it must be cultivated and nurtured. We must saturate our imagination with stories of shared humanity, of justice and equality, of shalom—well-being for all in every area of life. That’s why we desperately need Mary’s “imagination incubator” (Benjamin’s words). Her song deprograms the hierarchical imaginary which only values some lives, replacing it with a solidarity imaginary where everyone belongs without having to prove their worth. It roots us in a vision of a just society where all—all without exception—flourish.

Walter Brueggemann states that the prophets—Isaiah and Amos, Jesus and Mary—offer “scenarios of alternative social reality that. . .lead us to direct confrontation with presumed, taken-for-granted worlds.” Following Mary’s vision means yearning for political overturning so the lowly are lifted up, the hungry fed, the sick comforted, the prisoner visited, the stranger welcomed, the disabled included. And it means acting to resist unjust social arrangements that harm people. It means standing with those who are disadvantaged, speaking out for those denied justice. It means protecting the immigrant and sheltering the person with disabilities.

We are called, individually and collectively, to be a movement for wholeness in a broken world. We are called to defend those on the margins. And so we must sing where Mary sings.

During the darkest days of the Nazi tyranny—when the church capitulated and Germany descended into barbarity—Dietrich Bonhoeffer drew strength for his resistance activities from Mary’s song: “the most passionate, the wildest. . .the most revolutionary Advent hymn that has ever been sung.”

I, too, need to hear her words, to pray her words, to trust her words, in my many hours of post-election sadness, anger, fear, and despair. Yes, I must sing where Mary sings!