The Gospel According to the Women Who Waited – Mary: The Unwed Teen Who Said Yes Anyway

If you grew up in church, you probably met Mary as a porcelain figure in a nativity scene - head bowed, hands folded, bathed in blue light and docile silence. But that sanitized version leaves out the real scandal of her story.

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Mary wasn’t a quiet saint. She was a teenage girl, unmarried, poor, and living under Roman occupation. She didn’t float through Bethlehem on a cloud of obedience. She carried danger in her womb and defiance in her voice.

When the angel appears in Luke’s Gospel, Mary doesn’t automatically agree. She argues. She asks questions. She wants to know how this will happen and what it will mean. And when she finally says yes - “Let it be to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38) - it isn’t meek submission. It’s a radical act of courage.

The Scandal of “Yes”

Mary’s “yes” wasn’t polite or safe. It was the kind of yes that could have gotten her killed. In her world, an unwed pregnancy wasn’t just gossip fodder - it was grounds for public shame or death by stoning.

We like to call Mary “blessed among women,” but the blessing came with risk: social exile, poverty, and violence. She said yes to bearing life in a world designed to punish her for it.

And yet, she did it anyway.

Mary’s yes is the defiant yes of every young mother told she ruined her life. Every incarcerated woman birthing in chains. Every unhoused parent whose love is questioned because of where they sleep. Every survivor who chooses life in a system built to deny it.

The Empire She Defied

Mary’s story isn’t just about personal faith - it’s political. Her pregnancy isn’t an accident of history; it’s an act of divine resistance.

Rome ruled through fear and force. Kings taxed peasants into hunger. The temple elite protected power, not people. But Mary’s song - the Magnificat (Luke 1:46–55) - reads like a revolutionary manifesto:

“He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He has brought down the mighty from their thrones and lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty.”

This isn’t lullaby language. This is liberation theology in its purest form - sung by a pregnant teenager from the wrong side of empire.

Mary didn’t whisper her hope. She sang it out loud.

Not submission, but survival

It’s easy to romanticize Mary’s yes as submission. But reread it - it’s survival. She doesn’t accept passively; she partners with possibility. She looks empire in the face and says, I’ll carry what could get me killed, because I believe life will come from it.

That’s what faith looks like when the world offers you nothing but risk.

And her courage ripples forward: she teaches Jesus to question power, to eat with outcasts, to call God “Father” without fear of priests or kings. Her yes birthed a movement.

Mary, Reimagined

Mary wasn’t meek. She was magnificent. Her story is the story of every woman who chooses love in a system that calls her unfit.

Every girl who refuses shame. 

Every survivor who turns survival into song.

Her Magnificat still echoes today - in protest chants, in lullabies sung in jail cells, in every whisper of hope that says the lowly will be lifted and the hungry will be filled.

Mary’s story mirrors:

• Every young mother shamed instead of supported.

• Every unhoused woman building safety from nothing.

• Every incarcerated mother fighting to hold her child.

• Every person whose “yes” to survival looks like rebellion to polite society.

This is what divine courage looks like on the margins. Not purity, but persistence. Not compliance, but creation.

Reclaiming Mary’s Yes

Mary’s yes was never about quiet obedience - it was about saying yes to herself, to survival, to a future that the empire tried to erase.

And in that, she’s still speaking to us:

Say yes anyway.

Even when it’s risky.

Even when it’s lonely.

Even when the world calls your courage a scandal.

Because sometimes, the holiest thing a woman can do is survive - and sing about it.

✍️ This post is part of SWOP Behind Bars’ December series, “Women Who Waited – Advent from the Margins,” reimagining sacred waiting as endurance, survival, and resistance.