Luke 1:26-38.
I.
Last
week we heard about one miraculous pregnancy. This week we hear about another, even more miraculous. Six months have passed. The elderly Elizabeth has finally
decided it is safe to come out of hiding.
Her pregnancy is no longer hideable.
Last
week the angel Gabriel approached a priest working at the very center of Jewish
life, the Temple. He represented
the continuity of the new things God is doing with the Jewish and Israelite
tradition. This is clearly a new
chapter in a very old and ongoing story.
In
the part of the story we hear about today, however, Gabriel starts pushing the
envelope. The Old Testament has
several elderly, childless women who finally bear children by God’s
inspiration. But this next thing will be new.
God
sends the angel to a town in Galilee.
We hear about the town, in a backwater region of Palestine where little
of biblical significance had ever happened before. The small town of Nazareth is not mentioned in the Hebrew
Scriptures at all. It is far from
the center of Jewish life 65 miles to the south, in Jerusalem.
The
next thing Luke tells us is that Gabriel is sent to a young woman, a
“virgin.” And this teenager is
engaged to be married to a man named Joseph, who was a distant descendant of the
great King David. We don’t know
her name yet, but we do know that, since Luke doesn’t say anything about them, she
probably came from a pretty insignificant family. Later we find out that she is somehow related to Elizabeth,
so her family was probably also Levite.
But she has caught a minor break because a descendant of David is slated
to be her husband.
Then
we finally find out that her name is Mary, a very common name in that time and
place, and Luke reminds us again that she is a virgin.
We
know nothing else. Later writers
will embellish this story quite a bit.
And we can figure out some things from the context. Women married very young in those days,
basically as soon as a woman was physically able to have a child. We’re talking somewhere between the
ages of 12 and 14. That’s how old
Mary is.
With
Elizabeth, we know that they were righteous, blameless, and pious, and had
faithfully prayed for a child for decades. But with Mary we are not told anything about her that would
indicate that she had in anyway earned God’s attention. So far the only thing even slightly
notable about her is that she is engaged to a descendant of David.
II.
God’s
choice of Mary has no explanation.
She is quite ordinary. In
being so ordinary, Mary represents us. She was one of thousands of young
Jewish women in Palestine at the time.
God does not choose her for anything she had done. In fact, as we will see, it is more a
matter of what she will do and does do, that sets her apart.
Gabriel
appears to Mary. This was probably
in her parents’ house because young women were kept safe from too much social
interaction until they were safely married. In paintings, Gabriel is obviously an angel; we can tell by
the wings. But angels don’t always
look the part in real life. He may
have just looked like a man to Mary.
He
says to her, “Greetings, favored one!
The Lord is with you.” The
text says she is “perplexed” by this greeting, so something about it was weird
to her. Maybe it was the fact that
an apparently strange man was talking to her at all. In her house.
It doesn’t say she was afraid, particularly; just puzzled and somewhat
confused.
The
angel tells her not to be afraid, anyway, and then goes on to inform her that
she has found favor with God and she will conceive and bear a son whom she will
name Jesus, which was another common name. It means “The Lord has saved.”
Then
he waxes poetic about how great this child will be, mainly in royal language,
which could only relate to Joseph’s family. She must have assumed that this was all relating to the
first child she would have with Joseph after they got married. But there was that disturbing “now, you will conceive.” How could she conceive now?
So
she asks this of the angel: “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” She might as well have said, “I’m not
an idiot; I know where babies come from; and I do not yet qualify. So what do you mean by ‘now’?”
To
which Gabriel explains, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of
the Most High will overshadow you.” The words the angel uses are words that describe the presence
of God.
These
words elsewhere in Scripture refer to the way God, in the form of a cloud, mist, or
Spirit, comes down and infuses the Holy of Holies in the Temple with the divine
Presence; the Presence permeates and pervades whatever it enters. The Temple represented the creation,
and God’s Presence there meant God was present throughout everything God has
made. The angel is basically
telling her that she will become God’s Temple, she is the Holy of Holies, she
is the locus of God’s creative power.
III.
For
this is no ordinary child she is to bear.
“The child to be born will be called holy; he will be called Son of
God,” says the angel. A couple of
minutes ago he was just the son of David, destined to be the King of Israel, it
sounded like. That was momentous
enough. But now he is to be nothing
less than the Son of God.
The
son of David could be born in a miraculous way, like John will be born to two
elderly parents. Isaac and Samuel
were born that way in the Hebrew Scriptures. But that is still relatively normal. The Son of God is something new. The
Son of God could not be conceived and born in a completely normal way; this
would have to be something happening at a higher energy level than what had ever
happened before.
This
Son of God is not appearing from heaven in the clouds, riding a fiery
chariot. God does not have the Son
simply appear in glory. The Son is
not like other, regular gods. God
does not simply shapeshift into human form; God is not so alien to the creation
that God has to intervene from another dimension in a way utterly beyond our
comprehension. The awesome
Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer of the whole universe does not blow into our
world through a spectacular spatio-temporal worm-hole or something.
No. In our
story God needs Mary. That’s the remarkable
thing here. God needs Mary. The
only way for God to come into the world is through a woman. God comes into the world by cooperating
with a frail person with freedom who could theoretically refuse to participate.
God needs Mary. God comes into the world by becoming
part of the world from the very beginning of life, where all life begins. God becomes a couple of cells in the
womb of a woman. God starts where
we all start.
On
the other hand, that does not mean that God can be conjured into the world by
human initiative. Mary does not
dream up this story and invent the concept of herself bearing the Son of God. Such a thing would not have been
conceivable to her. Human beings
do not have the power to bring God into the world. God does not arrive among us by human initiative, planning,
action, or power. Priests and
theologians did not theorize that what needs to happen is for God to enter the
world as part of it, and then make that happen.
That’s
what Luke wants to communicate by means of this virginal conception thing. Two people can bring a new human being
into the world. That happens all
the time. That’s how we all got
here. But two people – or even a
whole fertility clinic full of gynecological specialists – cannot bring God into the world. That can only happen by God’s sovereign
initiative.
IV.
We
understand God as Trinity. God is
an interactive, mutually reciprocal dance among three distinct and equal but
united elements or “persons”. It
is God’s very essence and nature to be a community, a multiplicity in oneness, a
unity in threeness. God is a complex
of relationships that overflows in creation, redemption, and sanctification. God creates by speaking, by language,
which is inherently relational; and everything that God speaks into existence necessarily
receives the signature of God’s Trinitarian/communal/relational character in
some way. Everything that God has
made resonates with and echoes God’s voice. Everything contains God’s voiceprint.
It
is our sinful, limited, self-centered, fearful, and near-sighted mortal consciousness
that prevents us from seeing the truth that it all belongs to God, that the
whole universe is stamped with and shaped by God’s character, that the heavens
are telling God’s glory, and God’s love and beauty are seen in everything God
has made. We don’t normally
perceive that God is protecting, healing, redeeming, forgiving, preserving us
and holding up and together the whole creation. In a sense, God does not have to “come into” the world
because God is already here. God’s Word is imprinted on everything, and God’s Spirit infuses everything.
It
is we, who have been separated from reality,
who neither perceive nor know the truth of God’s love and Presence… it is we who have somehow to come into
God. That’s the mystery here. In the angel God invites Mary to
participate in this dance; in the Holy Spirit God descends upon and emerges
within Mary, and makes real and tangible and personal and individual in her
what is really present and potential within all creation and all of us.
God
engulfs and surrounds Mary so that she is able to know God’s Spirit flowing
within her and God’s protective and generative power overshadowing her and
embracing her and empowering her, and the Word and Spirit that is within all
things becomes uniquely present within her, full of grace and truth. God does not “impregnate” Mary like
some alien, assaulting force; God comes to inspire what God has placed deepest
within her to emerge. God blows
into flame the spark within her.
God’s breath blows through her and condenses within her what was
suspended and invisible.
And
God does it this way so that no one would mistake what is going on here for
ordinary; this is a unique, one-time-only pregnancy. Yet in this one special act God opens our eyes to God’s
Presence and blessing everywhere, in all of life, in each one of us.
V.
This
is not just a mildly interesting historical story about the experience of a
young woman two thousand years ago.
If we reduce the Bible, especially a story like this one, to a mere
historical account, we lose the meaning.
We kill it. We objectify
it. If it’s just about somebody
else, who really cares, in the end?
This
story is about how the living God comes into the world. How it happens in this story gives us
the pattern, the signature, by which we may examine and reflect upon our own lives. Because the real point is about how God
comes into the world in and through and among us. Each one of us, and all of us together.
The
angel informs Mary about Elizabeth’s pregnancy as a sign that God can do
anything. And Mary gives her
famous response, which is the prototypical response of faith to God’s saving
Presence at work in the world.
“Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your
word.”
If
only we could begin each day, and live every moment of every day, in the spirit
of these words! They express our
highest ambition as human beings, which is to inhabit the purpose for which we
are here on the earth in the first place.
We are here to love and serve the Lord, the Creator, the Spirit of
holiness. We are here to be
perfect vessels through whom the love of God flows into the world. As Mary bore Jesus in her body, we are
here to bear witness to Jesus, the embodied love of God.
And
what courage it takes to say, “Let it be with me according to your word”! How much it can cost us to keep that
affirmation! Mary knew her life
just ceased being ordinary. Rather
she fearlessly embraces what God gives her.
For
“let it be with me according to your word” means keeping to the Word rather
than to the values and standards of the world. It means holding to the equality and justice expressed in
the Torah. It means God’s whole
agenda of liberation becomes your agenda.
How
is Christ conceived and nurtured and preparing to be born in you? In our hearts?
In our thoughts and words?
In our actions? How is the
saving, redeeming, forgiving, healing, emancipating, and loving Presence of the
living God being formed in you? In
all of us together?
How
are we cleaning out our systems so God can flow through us? How are we preparing a space in our
lives like when we set up a room in our homes for a new baby?
Most
importantly, how are we seeing God’s redeeming Presence everywhere because we
know that God is uniquely Present in this child Mary will bear? How are we preparing ourselves to
follow Jesus, living together as his body, nurtured by his Body and Blood,
welcoming and embracing others in the dance of holy love to which he calls us?
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