(A Christmas Meditation)
Dr. Luke informs us that Elizabeth was elderly and barren when the angel, Gabriel, appeared to her husband. The angel told Zechariah that Elizabeth was to bear a son. His name was to be John, and John was to prepare the people of Israel for the coming of the Lord.
In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy the angel paid a second visit, this time to Mary. The angel told Mary she, too, was to bear a son, who would be named Jesus and he was to reign over the house of Jacob forever.
You might say Mary was underwhelmed at this prospect. Perhaps she hoped the angel was mistaken. Mary brought up a biological glitch to his revelation—she was a virgin. The angel, unfazed, informed her that the power of the Most High would overshadow her. Hers was to be a supernatural pregnancy and it was to produce a supernatural being. The language was reminiscent of creation. Before the original creation activities the Spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters, overshadowing them. The first Adam had failed at his assignment of earthly steward; the second Adam (Jesus) was needed.
The angel reminded Mary that God possesses astonishing abilities. As evidence he informed her that her cousin Elizabeth was pregnant. This would have brought to mind Mary’s ancestor, Sarah, who became pregnant when she was 90 years old. Of course, Mary’s situation was considerably different. It’s one thing to conceive a child after trying for many years; it’s quite another to conceive a child without trying at all. There was no precedent, no reference point for this one.
How would Mary face her new privilege/problem? One thing we know is that Mary had “found favor with God.” God was pleased with her. We also read that Joseph, Mary’s betrothed, was “a just man”. Both Mary and Joseph were Godly and wise, however provincial they may have been. Would we expect the heavenly Father to put Jesus under the supervision of fools?
This would not be an easy assignment for Mary. It’s fair to say that none of us are really prepared to be parents. When children arrive they turn our worlds upside down in wonderful and horrible but, most of all, in unrelenting ways. How much more daunting the assignment of parenting the Creator of the universe? Would he cry and wake his parents in the middle of the night? Would he mess in his diapers? Would he be like other children, helpless and curious and cute and reacting with wonder at the sights and smells and sounds and textures of all that he would come to know? Yes, surely. But what would it be like to raise a “holy”child? It’s hard to imagine that Mary would have expected this to mean her son would be completely without sin. In all likelihood, Mary and Joseph, like the rest of the disciples, didn’t fully appreciate the divinity of Jesus until he rose from the grave. Raising Jesus must have included regular head-stressing revelations.
We don’t have much information about Jesus’ youth, but there is one example in Luke chapter 2, when Jesus was 12. The family had traveled to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover, but when the feast was over, they headed home to Nazareth with a large group of other pilgrims. After a day of travel the parents realized Jesus was not with them. Back to Jerusalem they went to find him sitting among teachers. All those interacting with him were amazed by his questions and by his level of understanding. Mary and Joseph were also astonished with him, though, from their perspective, it seemed their son had acted inappropriately. “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” he asked them. Apparently they did not know…they did not understand how this excused him for being irresponsible. This suggests that Jesus was not radically different from other boys through his first twelve years, but at twelve a shift took place in which Jesus became overtly more of a son to the heavenly Father than he was to his earthly parents.
Raising Jesus never got easy. Jesus was too pure for the world to tolerate. Eventually his holiness drove those in power to have him crucified.
Could Mary have foreseen all of this? Thankfully, no. It would have been too much to assent to. But when the Angel came to her she must have reasoned, “If I’m having a bad dream because of too many pickled Brussels sprouts, I’ll wake up and I won’t be pregnant. But if this is really the angel, Gabriel, and if he really brings this message from the Lord God, then it must be good news, whatever the circumstances may look like. “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word,” she responded to the angel. Then the angel left her.
What do you do when you’re a virgin and you think you may be pregnant with the Son of God? What do you do when no one else in the world knows about this? Do you go to Joseph? “Joe, something happened to me last night. I know you’re going to find this hard to believe…”
Dr. Luke tells us that Mary “arose and went with haste” to a town in Judah to visit Elizabeth. This would have been a trip of about 90 miles, which means it would have taken Mary 4 or 5 days. But she was in a hurry! Her simple life suddenly had become complicated and scary. Confirming Elizabeth’s pregnancy would go a long way towards confirming or debunking her own encounter with the angel.
Dr. Luke describes the highly anticipated encounter this way: “When Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby [John] leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, and she exclaimed with a loud cry, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.”
So John the Baptist began his ministry of testifying to the Lordship of Jesus Christ when he was a 6-month old fetus. It is also interesting that the first verbal testimony for Jesus’ Lordship comes from a woman. These were not acceptable sources of legal testimony in first century Palestine…though their testimonies have endured for the twenty centuries since. And so, the answer to Mary’s question was both shocking and overwhelming. Clearly, the angel had been real. It is worth noting that Mary stays with Elizabeth another 3 months. By then she would have also achieved the more natural confirmation of her pregnancy. I suspect, too, that there would have been written communications with Joseph through which he would have made known his own encounter with an angel, resulting in his willingness to proceed with marriage.
It’s also worth noting that Jesus was less than week from his own conception when Elizabeth greeted Mary. In our “advanced” culture this would make him an embryo, which is to say, not legally human. Under similar circumstances in the 21st century, Jesus would likely have been aborted. Thankfully, Mary was not nearly as sophisticated, and was much more attuned to her Creator, than the vast majority of us living today. Instead, she elected to obey the Lord which, while frequently the difficult way, is always the life-affirming way.
The sacrificial choice Mary made is the example that women (and men) should look to when considering abortion. Where would we be if she had chosen otherwise? Without a Savior the world would also be without hope. Let me clarify here that God’s purposes cannot be thwarted by the foolish decisions of women or men. God chose Mary and Joseph because he knew they would respond appropriately. Perhaps it’s better to say, God prepared Mary and Joseph to respond appropriately. A timeless God can analyze every problem backward, forward, and sideways long before it appears on the timeline. Even so, God acts primarily through agents in this world, and Mary, by her own hard decision, bore the only holy one, Jesus Christ.
Christmas is the celebration of the gift of Jesus from the Heavenly Father. He was a precious and costly gift. He was/is the gift of abundant life. For life to be abundant it must be everlasting and it must be bursting with loving relationships. This life must be guided by the wisdom of God and it is a love relationship with Him. It is the only gift, really. All other gifts are derived from it, and we can only hope that the gifts we give somehow, point to it.
It makes a lot of sense that Christmas has become a day of giving. Those who have received The Gift are overflowing with riches. This is the Spirit of Christmas: that we give joyfully and sacrificially, because we want to be like the one who gave so much to us.
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