We all know Jesus’s mother Mary. The virgin who conceived and bore the Son of God. The woman who's pregnancy almost caused her fiancé to leave her. And we talk a lot about her sacrifice around Christmas time. But we don’t usually focus on her after Jesus has grown up.
In Mark 6:3 some people ask “Isn’t this the carpenter? Isn’t this Mary’s son?” And this is a very interesting choice of words. In these times children were usually referred to as belonging to their father. So we would expect it to say “Joseph’s son.” And one possible explanation was that Joseph was dead (and in fact he isn’t mentioned after Jesus’s childhood).
But another possible reason is that word had spread that Mary had fallen pregnant before marriage, so this is a subtle jab at the fact that, in the eyes of their community, Jesus was illegitimate.
So here we see that Mary’s sacrifice continued long after the Christmas story and that the stigma surrounding Jesus’s conception may have followed her (and Him) for the rest of her life. And despite the snide looks they may have endured, Mary knew the truth. And although she received no reward from men, Mary surely was richly rewarded by God.