In Defense of “Mary Did You Know?”
By Jane Burkett, ’13
Every Advent, a meme floats around social media about the song “Mary Did You Know?” For those of you who don’t fritter away your time scrolling through Facebook like I do, here it is:
The meme refers to the Christmas song “Mary Did You Know?” If you’ve never heard it, you must do all your Christmas shopping online. Also, for those of us in the Anglo-Catholic tradition, the song is brand-spanking new, having been originally recorded by Michael English in 1991. Here are the lyrics:
Verse 1
Mary, did you know that your baby boy would one day walk on water?
Mary, did you know that your baby boy would save our sons and daughters?
Did you know that your baby boy has come to make you new?
This child that you've delivered, will soon deliver you?
Verse 2
Mary, did you know that your baby boy will give sight to a blind man?
Mary, did you know that your baby boy will calm the storm with his hand?
Did you know that your baby boy has walked where angels trod?
When you kiss your little baby, you kiss the face of God?
Mary, did you know? (Mary, did you know?)
Bridge
The blind will see, the deaf will hear, the dead will live again
The lame will leap, the dumb will speak the praises of the Lamb!
Verse 3
Mary, did you know that your baby boy is Lord of all creation?
Mary, did you know that your baby boy would one day rule the nations?
Did you know that your baby boy is Heaven's perfect Lamb?
That sleeping child you're holding is the great I AM?
Mary, did you know? (Mary, did you know?)
I was surprised to discover that many people genuinely dislike the song for theological reasons. As I see it, the theological objection expressed by the meme has two major flaws: 1) it misjudges the rhetorical effect of the song and 2) although it intends to be a biblical corrective, it’s also biblically inaccurate.
Rhetorical Effect
Why does the song consist entirely of questions? The meme assumes the song asks questions in order to answer each of them with a no. This is a strange assumption, since many rhetorical questions assume the answer is yes. Indeed, one of the most well-known rhetorical questions -- “Is the Pope Catholic?” -- assumes a yes.
Let’s dig deeper into the effect of the song’s questions. An internet search on the function of rhetorical questions brought me to Courtroom Logic Consulting’s website (courtroomlogic.com), which is dedicated to helping trial lawyers develop persuasive strategies. It highlights three important functions of rhetorical questions:
They spark curiosity and interest.
Rhetorical questions create opportunities for engagement and participation. While the listeners (or readers) may not vocally respond to your question, the wheels inside their brains are turning – they’re retrieving memories, thinking about evidence, creating hypotheses, or brainstorming solutions.
They create a framework for new information.
Use of a rhetorical question can help set the stage for what’s to come … [giving] the jury a brief moment of time to consider possible answers.
They evoke emotion.
When jurors begin to personally connect with the issues, facts, and events, they often become more emotionally invested in the story. And evidence with an emotional element can be extremely persuasive.(1)
I believe the song performs all three functions.
Curiosity and interest. The song invites us to ponder the mysteries of the Incarnation from Mary’s point of view. What would it be like to be with the baby Jesus? God as a helpless human infant – how can that even be possible? What awe and wonder to hold God in your hands and look into his eyes!
Indeed, this song encourages religious imagination. If we are to love God with our whole being -- with our whole heart, soul, mind, and strength -- then surely we must love him with our imagination, too. Indeed, imaginative meditation is a time-honored Christian practice designed to draw us closer to God. It’s a key aspect of Ignatian spirituality, and monastics like the Dominicans and Franciscans have used it for centuries. Traditionally, religious imagination has focused more on the crucifixion, but there is no reason it should not be applied to the nativity as well.
A framework for new information. Not everyone knows a lot about Jesus. The song informs them (and reminds us!) about who Jesus is and what he has done in a thought-provoking and poetic way. Look at how flat and preachy the song becomes when we change the sentences to indicative:
Mary, you knew that your baby boy would one day walk on water.
Mary, you knew that your baby boy would save our sons and daughters.
Note also how the verses build in their revelation of Jesus. Verse 1 starts with miracles and moves to salvation. Verse 2 starts with miracles and moves to Jesus’ divinity. The bridge recounts more miracles, and then the song climaxes with verse 3, which is entirely about Jesus’ divinity and kingdom. This build-up is rhetorically powerful.
Evoke emotion. The song invites people to feel about Jesus the way his mother Mary felt. We may not be able to completely identify with Mary, but most people know what it’s like to love a child; it’s like having your heart outside your body. The song prompts us to consider how we can love Jesus so completely.
Note that rhetorical questions are also used to great effect in the Good Friday hymn, “Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?” That hymn doesn’t receive such widespread disapproval, probably because the rhetorical function of the questions is more obvious – although I did once hear an uninspiring sermon about how no, we weren’t there.
What Mary Knew
In the spirit of the song, then, let’s explore what Mary knew at Jesus’ birth. As even the most ardent Marian devotee should agree, Mary was not omniscient during her earthly life – heck, even Jesus wasn’t omniscient (cf. Matt 24:36)!
When Jesus was 12, Mary spent three whole days searching for her son in Jerusalem and was astonished to find him in the temple conversing with the teachers (Luke 2:41-51). When she rebuked him, the boy replied, “How is it that you sought me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” The answer is obviously no, she didn’t. Mary may have known he was divine, but she didn’t understand all the implications. In other words, she knew, but also didn’t know.
A closer look at the semantic range of the word “know” will be helpful. Merriam-Webster Dictionary has two relevant definitions:
to be aware of the truth or factuality of
to have understanding of
If Mary knew about Jesus’ divinity in the first sense, but not completely in the second, when Jesus was 12, we can infer that at the time of his birth she was only beginning to understand who he was and what he would do. Just like the Twelve, Mary learned more about her son as time went along. By the time he started his ministry, she knew he could miraculously solve the wine shortage at the wedding at Cana. But did she know that at his birth?
Let’s look at what Gabriel told her at the Annunciation (Luke 1:26-37, RSV):
Hail, O favored one, the Lord is with you!
Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there will be no end.
The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God. And behold, your kinswoman Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren. For with God nothing will be impossible.
Notice there’s a lot Gabriel didn’t tell Mary. There’s nothing about miracles, healings, the Lamb of God, or salvation. Does that mean the meme is wrong?
Things aren’t quite that simple, of course. Gabriel told Mary that her son was the divine Son of God and the messianic King of David’s line. We can conclude that Mary supposed Jesus would fulfill common first-century Jewish messianic expectations, particularly those of deliverance and salvation. But what kind of deliverance and salvation would she have expected?
Many – perhaps most – Jews looked for a military leader who would lead the fight to drive the Romans from the land. For others the hope was for a priestly figure who would restore pure worship. In pharisaic circles there seem to have been a hope for a legal and prophetic figure who would introduce true interpretation of the Torah. (2)
Mary’s own hopes for the Messiah, as reflected in the Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55), center around what we would call social justice concerns. Indeed, the crucifixion and resurrection were such a huge departure from messianic expectations that the disciples had trouble believing them, and Judaism’s theology had to be rethought, work which Paul later did. Even with Simeon’s prophecy that a sword would pierce Mary’s heart (Luke 2:35), how could Mary have known what form that piercing would take? It’s clear from all four Gospels that no one accurately foresaw the entirety of God’s plan of salvation, of Jesus being sacrificed as the Lamb of God in order to make believers new.
As for miracles, healings are part of Old Testament messianic prophecy (e.g., Isa 35:5-6), so Mary may have expected those. But while walking on water and calming the storm are things God does in the Old Testament and therefore demonstrations of Jesus’ divinity (see Richard Hays’ Reading Backwards), these actions were not associated with any prophecy. How would Mary have known Jesus would do them?
A summary of what Mary could have known is in the following table. As can be seen, Mary was likely to have known only about half of the song’s lines, and even of those she likely had varying levels of understanding.
Conclusion
The song contains a mixture of things that Mary would and would not have known in varying degrees about Jesus, but ultimately that’s beside the point. Instead, the song invites us to ponder in our hearts, along with this greatest of saints, the mysteries of the Incarnation: how Jesus, being “in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men” (Phil 2:6-7). Pondering this great mystery is a time-honored spiritual practice that helps form our minds into the mind of Christ, making us into little Christs, i.e., Christians.
On that note, I think I’ll grab some eggnog and listen to “Mary Did You Know?” again. A blessed Advent and Feast of the Incarnation to you all!
Postscript
For those of you who remain unconvinced, I made a meme you can share this Lent for the hymn “Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?”:
Jane Burkett holds an MDiv from Nashotah House (2013) and a ThM in Biblical Studies from Duke Divinity School (2015). She resides in Northern Virginia with her hairless dog, who likes Virginia’s winters a lot better than Wisconsin’s. She is employed as an analyst at a consulting firm and is a member of Church of the Epiphany Anglican.
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(1) https://courtroomlogic.com/2019/04/23/rhetorical-questions/
(2) David Wenham and Steve Walton, Exploring the New Testament: A Guide to the Gospels and Acts, Vol. 1 (Intervarsity Press: Downers Grove, IL 2001), 37.