The Passion of Mary and the Birth of Christ

This Christmas, St James’s side chapel features images of a series of black women saints gathered around Mary the Mother of God. In Florence Okoye’s altarpiece and frontal, which will be on display until Epiphany on Sunday 5 January, women learn from, support, and speak with Mary as she offers wisdom and gives birth to the Son of God. In the altarpiece, Mary’s hands are turned upwards in a gesture of openness and possibility. In the frontal image, Mary’s hands are pressed into the birthing chair, as she is immersed in the labour of bringing new life into the world.

In Okoye’s images, Mary is described as the ‘Theotokos’ – God-bearer – the one who carried the mysterious eternal glory of God’s radiant self in her womb. The black women depicted here, with Mary among them as the Black Madonna, are interwoven into a cosmic sharing of faith, hope, and love across many generations.

She describes each of the figures surrounding Mary. On the frontal, St Monica – mother of St Augustine the African theologian, supports Mary who is in labour. On the right side of the frontal Mary Seacole, who was a medical professional in the Crimean War and a Catholic convert, is depicted as a midwife at the birth of Jesus. In the centre, Mary clasps hands with her companion, and as their fingers interlace, a new world of eternal love is about to come into being. Mary Seacole is one of many ‘everyday saints’ depicted in Okoye’s work. In the altarpiece, there are more, including St Josephine Bakhita and a friend who inspires Okoye in her life and faith.

On the lower left, the contemporary womanist theologian Revd Dr Wil Gafney is present, listening and linking our lives to Mary’s. As Brite Divinity School’s Professor of the Hebrew Bible, one of her recent projects is titled A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church. In her translation of Psalm 68, to be read Christmas Day, Gafney writes:

Sing to God, sing praises to her Name;

Exalt her who rides up on the clouds;

Holy is her Name, rejoice before her!

…Your creatures found a dwelling in her;

God, you provided in your goodness for the oppressed.

The Author of Life gave the word;

The women who proclaim the good news are a great army.

Gafney explains that the vast majority of biblical translators miss a crucial point in the psalm’s last verse – the people who proclaim God’s good news are, in the original Hebrew, women. You can watch a talk by Gafney about God and gender here.

In these sacred days of Christmas, as we welcome Jesus into the world and into our lives, in the midst of the chaos, violence and fear that grips so many in its grasp, Okoye’s artwork at St James’s invites us to get to know the women who surrounded Mary and Jesus in those first moments of his birth, and those who were and are inspired by Mary as the God-bearer, the teacher, the revolutionary, and the one who knew Jesus and formed him in her womb, just as God forms us, raises us up, and calls us into a new and radiant dawn.

At Christmas thousands of people come to St James’s for carol services, for peace, for prayer, and for reasons that they might not be able to name or understand. Across these weeks of Advent contemplation and patience interlaced with tinsel, mince pies, and countless renditions of Mariah Carey singing ‘I don’t want a lot for Christmas….’, I’ve been accompanied by a little book of poems by Lemn Sissay. Titled Let the Light Pour in, each poem is only a few lines, and they’re all about what mornings look like and feel like – what they bring and don’t bring, depending on whoever and wherever we are. One poem in particular has stayed with me, and at the threshold of this Christmas season and it’s promise of hope, I spent time with images of Mary the Mother of God in the side chapel at St James’s, and I read the poem again, wondering what Christ’s arrival could mean, tiny and yet earth-shattering, joyful and liberating:

Dawn is a riddle

From the middle of the night

Born in a ripple

In a giggle of light