Thank God for Luke. Of the many insights Luke gives us, his glimpses of Mary are especially profound. Were it not for Luke's Gospel, we would know very little about Mary. Mark skips the birth altogether, and in his Gospel, Jesus seems indifferent to Mary when she does show up. Matthew's Mary is mute. Not one word comes from her lips. She is present, but passive and silent. John shares her presence and her story, but little of her words or thoughts. And St. Paul… the bulk of the New Testament…never even mentions her.

We Protestants have tended to avoid Mary as if she belonged only to the Roman Catholics, and in the process perhaps we have missed the beauty and the power of her place in the sacred story. Jason Byassee reminds us that in Mary, the church makes its radical claim to "Incarnati…