Thursday, 7 March
Luke 1:26-56
Written by Dr Graham Leo. ©2019.
Gabriel continues his messenger journey. Pause for a moment to go behind the text.
Gabriel, according to his own words, stands (a continuous present tense) in the presence of God. It’s an eternal role, so we can't measure it in years, but using our language, we have to say that he has done it ‘for a very long time’. Imagine that ‘moment’ in heaven, when God said, ‘The time has come. The cosmos will be restored. Humanity will be redeemed. Evil will be destroyed.’ Frissons of excitement ripple through heaven’s glorious and cavernous halls.
And Gabriel is given the sacred task of leaving the throne of heaven to come to this little planet, find an old man and a young woman, and tell them the first words of the greatest story ever told. It could almost be a fairy story.
The first person he comes to doesn't believe him – and he’s a highly-educated priest with a lifetime of learning and service. The second person does believe but asks for more details. A troublesome lot, these humans.
The young girl is just a village girl, not very educated, not much life experience. When she sees the angel she is frightened, like Zechariah. But unlike him, she doesn't ask for proof; she just asks for details. OK. I accept the mission. Just tell me how its going to work.
Luke couldn't have known, but no doubt the Holy Spirit knew that this would be a pattern in the church. The boffins, the highly-educated ones who love to parade down cathedral and university aisles in grand procession are too often the ones who won't accept the virgin birth or the resurrection or the miracles. They make the simple complex.
During my Doctorate studies in Theology, I came across plenty of such people. They couldn't believe Luke who had done his research carefully, but could believe a feminist theologian in New York with a social agenda who wouldn't accept that a simple village girl like Mary could have been telling something as simple as the truth.
The common folk are the ones who more easily accept the simple truth. Here is a Saviour. He is God. He has come amongst us and nothing will ever be the same again. Mary was one of those common folk. Not many wise, not many noble… are called. So says Paul (1 Cor. 1:26). Mary accepted the word as soon as she heard it.
But God graciously provides Mary with an earnest of proof, as Shakespeare called it. He tells Mary that her cousin Elizabeth is already pregnant. ‘For nothing is impossible with God.’
Mary’s reply is one we should learn by heart and repeat almost daily. ‘I am the Lord’s servant. May it be to me as you have said.’
Luke says, ‘Then the angel left her’. But to put that another way, he might have said, ‘After that, Mary was on her own’.
Because that’s the way it is for all of us, isn't it? We do the daily reading. We read what the nice, clever man wrote about it. Then we’re on our own.
But that was not all it was. The angel left her, true enough; but she had his words, which were the words of Almighty God.
And so for us. We might have cancer; we might have lost our job; our child might be in a wheelchair; our lifelong lover might have died – but we still have the words of life. And that is not nothing.
Mary immediately sets out to see her cousin. Why? In Franco Zeffirelli’s film, Jesus of Nazareth, Mary walks into her cousin’s house, sees her swollen belly, and says, ‘So it’s true then!’ Well, perhaps. But that’s not how Luke tells it.
In between the angel leaving her, and Mary getting ready to go to visit her cousin, the consummation occurred. That which had been prefigured in ancient myth, which had been foretold in the stars, and that which finally the angel promised, took place. The virgin was so overcome by the holy presence of God that life took root in her womb.
That’s the only way I can say it. And it makes sense. That’s what happened on planet earth. The holy presence of God was so strong at one point that life emerged. And why wouldn't it? God is love, which is still the source of life itself.
That life was so powerful, so unique, that the unborn John the Baptist leapt in the womb of his mother, and worshipped the life that was in the womb of Mary.
Just as well they didn't live in this too-clever age when wicked politicians think that babies in the womb can be discarded like unwanted tissues. These two embryos were already real human beings, the same as every other baby ever formed to live close to their mother’s heartbeat.
Elizabeth’s prophetic greeting to Mary as recorded by Luke is important to hear. We must not let it be drowned out by Mary’s wonderful Magnificat. She says: ‘Blessed is she who has believed that what the Lord has said to her will be accomplished.’
Mary’s hymn of praise follows the same theme. I am blessed, she says, because the Lord has honoured his True Word. The rich and famous will totally miss the point, she says. The humble will be more wise than Harvard, more rich than Hollywood, more blessed than the Royal Houses of all the world.
She concludes with the words: ‘even as he said to our fathers’. Luke could hardly make the point clearer. Whose words are you going to believe? The words of man or the words of God? This won't be the last time that Luke will remind us of the power of the word of God.
When John wrote his Gospel, he dispensed with all the stories of Jesus’ nativity, and went straight to the heart of the matter: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the word was God. He doesn't add, And that Word was Beautiful, Good and True – because he didn't need to.
Prayer:
Your Word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. I commit to reading it and believing it, O my God. Help me to trust your Word, and to rest in its truth. Amen.
