Unsettling Advent 2024, Day 10
“In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leapt in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.’” (Luke 1:39-42)
Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller, both Black mothers in the state of Georgia, died from preventable deaths according to ProPublica reports. As a womanist biblical scholar and resident of Atlanta, I mourn these women who should still be alive today. For clarification, a womanist scholar reads biblical texts with the lived experiences of Black women in the forefront of her mind. Therefore, as we move into the season of Advent post-Dobbs, I ponder Elizabeth’s words when she greets Mary, the mother of Jesus, in the verse above.
Luke’s Gospel, the only Gospel to record these pregnant women’s conversation, does not ponder the fraught nature of their pregnancies. Mary is likely a teenager. Elizabeth is probably a geriatric pregnancy, a term unknown in Luke’s time. Writing through male-centric eyes, Luke is an author who is “liable to mistake the attitudes to women expressed in the sources for the actual history of women.” Namely, Luke writes about Mary and Elizabeth but does not know their actual lived experiences.
Thus, while reading Elizabeth’s blessing to Mary, readers may forget that there are cursed women in the background of this text. Similarly, there are also cursed “fruit of the womb.” How have I never considered such a thought before? In Palestine Judea, teenage girls evidenced fecundity by procreating with advanced-aged husbands, risking maternal death. Post-Dobbs, we are living in an era where maternal death is ticking up again, especially for Black women. We are no longer in the “blessed” age of Roe.
As Christians we frequently invoke a blessing upon one another without thought to the meaning of our words. The Greek word for “bless” is eulogeo. Yes, friends, you should notice the English cognate “eulogy.” Just as a eulogy is to speak well of an honoree after death, in the biblical context, eulogeo connotes the idea to pronounce God’s special favor upon a recipient or to reign God’s benefits upon one another.
Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller lost out on opportunities to be blessed mothers. Perhaps this Advent season is the beginning of the hope to enter a phase of resistance to ensure that all mothers become blessed in a post-Dobbs era.
Angela Parker is assistant professor of New Testament and Greek at Mercer University’s McAfee School of Theology and author of If God Still Breathes, Why Can’t I?: Black Lives Matter and Biblical Authority.