Here Am I

By Logan Pollock

Here Am I. With these words, Mary joins a tight lineage of those who carried God’s message to God’s people. With these words, she joins the prophetic choir, adding her voice to those of the founders and reformers of her ancient faith. Here am I. God called Abraham by name to test him with the sacrifice of his son, Isaac, and Abraham answered, Here am I. God called Moses by name to lead his people out of slavery into something that, for a while, felt worse than slavery, and Moses answered, Here am I. Seraphs soared over Isaiah’s head, touched his lips with the burning, cleansing coal, and through the fury of wings God asked who he shall send on his behalf, and Isaiah answered, Here am I!

Though Mary joins the company and tradition of the prophets with her first response, she seems to forget a crucial aspect of prophetic identity—disbelief, refusal, Deflection. God tells Abraham he will be a mighty nation, and Abraham reminds God of his childlessness. God tells Moses that he will be the one to lead his people to freedom, and Moses reminds God that he is an inarticulate man of no status. God reveals himself to Isaiah on his throne to call Isaiah into service, and he reminds God that he is an unclean man of unclean lips. But Mary, perplexed and pondering though she was, was not dismayed as her ancestors were. A peasant girl of little means, now tasked with carrying a child that is not her husband’s, Mary had every reason to continue the prophetic motif of rejecting her prophetic role, but remarkably, she didn’t. Here am I, servant of the Lord. Let it be with me according to your word. With this humble ascent, Luke reveals Mary as the greatest of all prophets, bearing God’s message not on her lips but in her womb, carrying not only the words of God but the very Word of God, God himself.