Another mass shooting, this time in Indianapolis. It’s what, the 45th since March? The violence in Colorado at a grocery store? The anti-Asian slaughter in Atlanta?

Adam Toledo, a 13-year-old boy murdered by police while his hands were up in Chicago.

Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old man, a father, murdered by police for an “air freshener violation” and allegedly because the officer couldn’t tell her taser from her gun. The violence of 2021 is America’s signal of returning to its murderous “normal.”
These violent infractions—especially the ones protected by supposed halls of “justice”—are my context, to be clear.

Mary knew. I have to think that the author of the Magnificat knew that there were systems that favored the rich and powerful that the Messiah in her womb would be born to overturn. These songs that tout Mary’s cluelessness are so sweetly condescending. She knew. She was chosen by God because God knew that Mary would be able to endure a life of speculation, gossip, revulsion, and the horror of outliving her son—and yet still cling to the promises written on the scrolls of the prophets she quoted. God knew that Mary would still be able to discern and recognize the will of God whether it was in her baby boy’s smile or in the faith of Elizabeth or Mary Magdalene.

Mary, better than most, knew the cost of good news. A sword pierced her heart by the 8th day of Jesus’ life. She carried his death as she raised him.

Baal worship never used to make sense to me. Why would anyone worship an inanimate object? What power does the thing wield that people would build temples and systems and veneration and sacrifices to glorify it?

But now I see the U.S. and guns, and am aware of the fervor of idol worship, the devotion to human sacrifice, and the ecstasy of protecting the thing by cutting down men, women, and children who do not bow.

When Jesus was slandered, scourged, and crucified, Mary’s innocent baby boy, I don’t have to guess at her horror and helplessness.

We see it every day—innocents crucified by an apathetic and violent state to the approving roar of the crowd. The only irony is that many in the crowds today would claim to know and love Jesus when what they actually know and love, is lynching.

Why would the masses want Barabbas instead of Jesus? Jesus multiplied meals, raised the dead, and offered healing. The systems he threatened would neutralize the power of religious elites and topple the tyranny of oppression over dispossessed and tired people. He had his eye on the poor, the captive, the blind.

Why would anyone choose a mere man over a miracle maker? How many times must Mary have contemplated this in the face of her son’s rejection. How she must have groaned on the inside watching broods of vipers pervert her son’s beauty into pathology and lawlessness. I wonder if she recognized her neighbors, her rabbis, her provincial leaders in the crowd that mocked her baby boy.

Mary knew. She had three days of hell to endure while the jackals picked at the sinews and bones of her son’s memory. A fake and a fraud. A criminal and a liar. Jesus was no angel.

I wonder if she wanted to rip his name from their filthy mouths, only to realize that she could protect nothing of Jesus; not his name, not his reputation, not the swarm of deliberate misinformation and gossip and trivializing of his traumatic death. All she had was what she knew to be true. She didn’t even get his body. All she had were the other women to hold her up, to wail with her, to witness the humiliation and death of her baby boy and tell her that how he died isn’t what he deserved, or how he lived.

Mary knew. And the God who chose Mary and trusted her with everything, God knows, too. God knows that people will pick anything and anyone before they choose Him. A pistol, a letter in the alphabet, or a squat, orange despot are more appealing than a man of sorrows acquainted with grief to the stiff-necked. Dead boys are a reasonable sacrifice for those who worship a shadow of law and order rather than Mary’s son.

Isn’t it a sort of brooding viper that hisses not to tread on him?

Yet a snake’s head must be crushed if the Bible is something to be believed; if the children of Eve find hope in Mary’s Child; if the gospel is in fact good news which will set captives free (a threat to a country that banks on slavery and mass incarceration)—which Mary knew, sang about and rejoiced to see.

Of course they tried to snuff her joy and mute her wail. Mary’s love, out loud, dignified the life of Jesus, outlaw. Screamed that his life mattered. The mere existence of her son, his ontological being, was perceived as a threat. His unarmed body was dangerous. His living was dangerous. He had to be stopped for status-quo to be saved.

Or so they thought.

I think on Mary these days as I watch anguished mothers and aunts, sisters and cousins, wailing for the dead who should not be dead. The virtual crowds around Adam and Daunte, George and Breonna and Ahmaud mock on and on. Death doesn’t shut the mouths of the unjust nor slake the desires of the bloodthirsty.

I draw strength from Mary, and the anguished loved ones who wail and scream the dignity of their deceased loved ones; who compose modern-day magnificats; who are witnesses willing to face the cruel and unholy in order to protect the memories of the beloved. They smash America’s idols with their vocal testimonies.

No, I am not saying that anyone else but Jesus can be Jesus. To be crudely didactic, the imago dei is worth protecting, especially as it is embodied in the most marginalized and unprotected. Mary’s child came to save such as these. America’s news is not good; in fact, it’s a mindless, violent refrain. Good news comes from Mary’s child, acquainted with agony and slander, robbed of the right to grow old, yet who is the firstborn of creation, whom death could not hold.

Mary’s agony was brief but potent. I admit, I am jealous of the three days after looking down 400 years of racialized violence in the United States—my voice hoarse and eyes bleary from crying out, “let my people go,” and “how long?” I want the resurrection part, now, because we are so long lain in the tomb.

I contemplate Mary: I know the way her son lived, then died, then lived, changed the way she viewed death itself, and emboldened her. We hold her witness in our hands when we hold the Bible and read the gospel narrative. She told her story. She knew. I pray God’s mercy on us in a state that hates us, where the youngest to the oldest are slaughtered, where violence is normalized and weapons are worshipped. I love Mary’s son, and pray for strength to honor the embodied, loud faith that led him to the cross, and led Mary to the foot of it.

And I sing for the day the Magnificat is sung in past-tense.