Mark 2:23-28, sort of. The perps were Jesus and his disciples:
One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grainfields, and as his disciples walked along, they began to pick some heads of grain. 24 The Pharisees said to him, “Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?”
25 He answered, “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need? 26 In the days of Abiathar the high priest, he entered the house of God and ate the consecrated bread, which is lawful only for priests to eat. And he also gave some to his companions.”
27 Then he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. 28 So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”
Jesus and his crew were disobeying the law of God, but in a benign way, so it was argued. David likewise, according to Jesus. But this wasn’t a case of receiving direct orders from on high.
She could have, yes, but that misses the point of the story. In the gospel of Matthew, her place in the story is to establish that Jesus was entirely free from sin. The gospel goes on to demonstrate to Jewish readers that Jesus then fulfilled scripture. The infancy narrative in Luke appears to have been added after it had been written, because in Luke 3:1, the story of Jesus appears to start again with mentions of Tiberius, Pontius Pilate, Herod and his brother Phillip, fixing the story in a specific time. Mary’s pregnancy circumstances are not mentioned in the gospels of Mark or John. So, that could she have refused depends on what gospel you are reading and what your theological goals are.
Exodus 3:1 - 4:17 would be another example, where Moses tries to say no to God when Moses is called to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, but God prevails. God sees qualities of leadership in Moses that he can’t see himself.
When I was still in the church, what the pastors usually said from the pulpit was that it was an enormous honor to be the mother of the Messiah and that it was a role that many women in Israel would have badly wanted. There was never any mention of what would happen if Mary refused the role, it was portrayed kind of as, “No woman in ancient Israel in her right mind would turn down such a huge blessing, it would be like being offered a $100 million winning Powerball ticket and refusing.” The whole Magnificat was portrayed as Mary thanking God for having the honor.
Yes, i think this is what the dominant perspective was. Like Job turning down those weird-to-us gifts from God (new children!), it just wasn’t thinkable.
I do get what the OP is getting at, and think the rest of you are being too hasty.
If we look at the text as written, Mary is not explicitly given a choice. Gabriel simply tells Mary that she will conceive a son and name him Jesus. There is no “Would you like it if” or “if that’s okay with you.” While it is announced as a good thing, it is simply treated as a thing that will happen.
Yes, at the end, Mary agrees, saying it will happen. But did she actually have a choice? As she says, she is the handmaid (literally female slave) of the Lord. And again, she’s not asked for her consent or told it is optional.
Sure, if we make assumptions about God’s character, and view him through a modern moral lens, it makes sense to say God wouldn’t violate a woman’s consent. But that wasn’t the ethic of the day. And, well, if a powerful being who could kill you, who you had devoted your life to, told you something would happen, and did not explicitly give you a choice, would you feel you could say no?
Jonah tried to say no to God. What happened to him? How much of the Old Testament has the lesson saying “don’t disobey God”?
I don’t think Mary had a choice. We can come up with an argument for why that is okay in this instance (e.g. God knew she would have enthusiastically accepted if given a choice), but I don’t think we can say that Mary here feels she could say no.
I agree. I can’t imagine the God of the Bible asking Mary, “hey, would you please carry my baby?”
But also, in that world, children were a woman’s wealth and worth. Having a powerful important son was about the best thing that could possibly happen to a woman. It wouldn’t have occurred to anyone that Mary wouldn’t be delighted.
Moses said he could not, God gave him help, Jesus let his followers go after particularly tough teachings, including the rich man who would not sell all his possessions and give to the poor.
This seems like the right answer to the hypothetical of some virgin saying no to God. They’re only going to write about the one who said yes.
It would be funny story: The angels go up to Leah and say you’re going to carry his child, and Leah says no. The next day, they reach out to Miriam, who also says no. Finally, they try Mary, because good jokes and stories always have three examples, and finally find one who says yes. I don’t think it would convey the right message about God and Jesus, going with the third choice.
That’s the story about the Jews on Mount Sinai - that before offering them the Torah, God went to every other nation on earth and asked “do you want to make a covenant where I bless you and you follow my commandments?”, and every nation answered “let’s hear what those commandments are first”, while the Jews said “we will hear and we will do”. But only after God asked everyone else.
This is a good plot line, but if you’re going to add it to your nativity play, you gotta cut out the bit where Mary is trying to give birth but every inn tells her no. It’s too repetitive if you have both stories. Unless you add a third example, and then the repitition of the theme becomes its own meta-theme.
In formal logic, if you start with a false assumption then the conclusion - even if each subsequent step if rigidly logical - isn’t necessary false. It could be false. It also could be true. Or completely nonsensical or meaningless.
An analogy could be made to interstellar empires in science fiction. How do you do that without violating all we know about the laws of science? Any way you want. Quasiscientific; magical; wishful thinking; ignoring the problem; hand-waving. None have any more foundation that any others.
We are dealing here with an unauthorized sequel. Think of James by Percival Everett, a re-imagining of Huck Finn told from the perspective of a very literate Jim. It’s morality is wildly different than Twain’s version, even though Twain wrote from a morally lofty view for his time. James can do things that Jim cannot; the precedents set in the first book do not necessarily hold.
What are the moral choices for Mary in her time? We can’t possibly say because we are given no information about the universe the sequel is set in. The earlier book’s rules prove to be suspended and Jesus cannot be used for guidance before he is even conceived.
I hadn’t thought this through in my earlier posts when I was still trying to warp reality to make the story a “true” one. Everybody here is equally right and equally wrong, including me.
If we’re talking fanfic, I recall a story written from Mary’s viewpoint where it turned out that Mary was the intended Messiah; but nobody would listen to a woman, so Jesus was born as the substitute Messiah.
Huh. In that story, was it God who “intended” that she be the messiah, only ti come up with a Plan B after it turned out that Plan A didn’t work? Or did God know all along that Plan A wouldn’t work? Or did that aspect not come up?
I have been looking on tvtropes.org for an answer to this question. The category Plot Armor is close but that’s not quite it. Anyone have any suggestions?
I don’t know the answer, but some of the world’s greatest painters have imagined her struggling with the question in her mind and how that would look on her face. IMHO, the greatest is by Antonello da Messina, Virgin Annunciate
I put the same question to an Episcopal priest I know, who replied:
I’ve preached and talked about this a ton. It happens to be one of my favorite topics.
It seems to me that Mary’s agency is central to the work of salvation that God was continuing to unfold. There is a kind of necessity to her choosing to say “Yes” (leading to a renewed humanity) where our First Parents tried to choose their own way. Again and again we see that agency is important when God calls anyone.
It is also important to note that Mary was thoughtful about the angel’s message. Luke tells us that she was perplexed and reflective about the kind of greeting she had received. What kind of calling was she receiving? As it turns out, it was a call that echoes the formula for prophetic calling.
With regard to whether or not she would have been punished, I don’t know that punishment fits the normal operation. We only have the narratives of people saying “Yes”. So, we can’t know if others were approached by God previously–perhaps even in the case of Mary. On the occasions when we see God mess with people (Jonah), it’s because of their hard heartedness. Where people get punished is when they forget justice, kindness and humility and caring for the powerless.
As far as contingencies, if Mary had refused, I believe God would have found another candidate. However, it’s likely that we would not know about Mary or her refusal. We would simply know about the blessed virgin, “whoever-said-yes” instead…
I am not sure that we can interpret an Old Testament God as benevolent or only messing with bad people. All the way back to expelling them from the Garden of Eden, for instance, unless one interprets that as a blessing in disguise. Not necessarily an egregiously bloodthirsty deity, but not one you want to piss off.
By Exodus 4, God had had quite enough of Moses and was simply going to do him in, but his wife placated things with a bloody ritual. Not really evidence that there are no repercussions for disobedience.
_-_Galleria_Regionale_della_Sicilia%2C_Palermo.jpg)