by Marcia Mount Shoop
Luke 1:46b-55
“It is a testament to Mary’s power, that even her colonized identity found a way to liberate so many. Even in her concealment she found a way to empower women, even as she was also a tool of oppression. Mary embodies the complexity we all carry in our bodies–we are assimilated into oppressive systems even as we resist, even as we persist in our longing for the world to change and for our bodies to be set free.
And there is real grief here, that we lost a lot as a human race when we lost access to the possibility that Mary experienced what many people in history have experienced–our bodies being unsafe in the world, our bodies being a site of conflicting and dangerous discourses about what it means to be human.”
Watch the full GCPC service on 12/17/23 here
(Scripture and sermon begin at 1:08)