Favored by God—Mother of David’s Heir—Lectionary Reflection for Advent 4A (Luke 1)
Luke 1:26-38 New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition
26 In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, 27 to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. 28 And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” 29 But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. 30 The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. 31 And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. 33 He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” 34 Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” 35 The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. 36 And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. 37 For nothing will be impossible with God.” 38 Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.
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Note: As I write this
reflection for the Fourth Sunday of Advent, this is that strange year when the
Fourth Sunday and Christmas Eve fall on the same day. I realize that there will
be some who choose to focus on Christmas Eve and skip the Fourth Sunday.
Nevertheless, the readings for the Fourth Sunday remain important to the larger
story.
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Having
heard that John the Baptist had prepared the way for the coming of the Lord, we
now hear a birth announcement. While Mark and John place John in a position to
baptize Jesus, or at least point him out to a people hoping for a messianic
figure, so that his ministry can begin, the reading from Luke 1 prepares us for
the Christmas message. This is the word we’ve been waiting to hear. A child
will be born to reign over the house of Jacob forever, and a young woman named
Mary will have the honor of bearing this child. This announcement follows
another, for in Luke’s telling of the Jesus story, Jesus has a cousin named
John, who will baptize him later on in life. The story of John’s somewhat
miraculous conception precedes the announcement to Mary, such that in Luke 1
the stories of John and Jesus, Elizabeth and Mary, are intertwined. In this
particular reading the focus is solely on the announcement to Mary, who is
betrothed to Joseph, who is a member of the house of David.
You
might speak of this encounter not as an annunciation as much as it is a divine
call. Even as the angel Gabriel visited Zechariah to let him know that his
wife, Elizabeth, would in her old age bear a child with an important divine
calling to serve as a prophet to the people (Lk 1:8-20), in the sixth month of
Elizabeth’s pregnancy, Gabriel appears to Mary who lives in Nazareth in Galilee
to let her know that she is favored by God. As you might expect, Mary is
“perplexed.” After all, angels don’t show up on a regular basis, which is why
Gabriel’s follow-up words are “Don’t be afraid.” This is a common word placed
on the lips of angels, even if as Esther Hamori notes, they are the most
human-like of God’s host, many of which are rather monstrous. As a result, she
writes that on “some level, we identify with angels; we register that they’re
like us. And maybe we seek to domesticate them in art and song and seasonal
décor in order to avoid the mirror image of our own monstrosity” [Hamori, God’s
Monsters, p. 133]. It’s just something to ponder as we consider Gabriel’s
visitation to Mary, and his word of comfort as the word that she is perplexed
seems to have a bit of fear attached.
Here is where the calling comes
into play. Gabriel informs Mary that God has chosen her to bear a holy child
whose story that Luke is about to unfold. It’s a story that includes a birth, a
death, and a resurrection/ascension. According to Luke, at the moment of
Gabriel’s visitation, Mary is living in the small Galilean village of Nazareth and
is betrothed to Joseph, but she’s still a virgin. Unlike Matthew, Luke doesn’t
connect Mary’s status as a virgin with a word from Isaiah (Matt. 1:22-23; Is.7:14). Mary isn’t a person of wealth or status. She lives far from the center
of Jewish religious life. Yet, God has chosen her for this important mission.
The one piece here that qualifies her is Joseph’s connection to David, a status
revealed in the birth story since Joseph and Mary must travel to Bethlehem to
register (Lk 2:1-7). Thus, Jesus can claim in some fashion to the House of
David, which allows him to be called the son of David (Lk 1:32; 3:31;18:38-39). This is the foundation for Jesus’ messianic calling, as Gabriel is
intimating that Mary’s child will sit on David’s throne and reign over Israel (the
House of Jacob) forever.
As you
might expect, Mary is overwhelmed by the news and is quite aware of her current
state, that of being a virgin. She responds to Gabriel’s news with predictable
words: “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” Now, I suppose Gabriel could
simply tell Mary that once she and Joseph consummate their marriage, she’ll get
pregnant, and their child would be the chosen one. After all, that’s
essentially what Gabriel told Zechariah, though Elizabeth wasn’t a virgin,
rather she was barren. However, that’s not what Gabriel tells her. Instead,
Gabriel tells Mary that the “Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of
the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy;
he will be called Son of God” (Lk. 1:35).
This
verse raises all kinds of red flags for many modern Christians. While the
creeds invite us to confess that Jesus “came down from heaven, was incarnate of
the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and became human” (Nicene Creed), we tend
to cross our fingers at that point. While my denomination is noncreedal, we do
have a confession of faith called the Preamble to the
Design. It says nothing about Mary being a virgin. In fact, what it
invites us to confess is that “Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God,
and proclaim him Lord and Savior of the World.” The message, whatever our
concerns, is that Jesus is human but not merely human. There is something
different about him. Thus, the Council of Ephesus in 431 determined that Mary
should be called the Theotokos, that is, the "God-bearer" or “Mother of God.” Joe Jones offers us
some sobering thoughts that can help us hear this word from Luke. Of the declaration
that Mary is the Theotokos, he writes:
If we pull back from this sobering assertion, then we endanger our capacity to follow through on the logic of the eternal Son becoming incarnate by the womb of a woman. We could then have a docetized Jesus that simply appears in the façade of a human being. But Mary is the Mother of the incarnate Son not by any virtues or powers she inherently possesses but by the impregnating, life-giving power of the Holy Spirit. Mary is graciously elected and empowered to be the Mother of the eternal Son. The decisive grammatical point is not to involve us in useless speculation about the mechanics or hydraulics of this impregnating and apparent virginity. [A Grammar of Christian Faith, 2:409].
He makes two points as a result. First “the eternal Son
becomes incarnate from the womb of a woman, another human being.” Secondly,
“this eternal Son becomes incarnate by the empowering action of the Holy
Spirit” [Jones, Grammar of the Christian Faith, 2:409-410]. This
ultimately is a miracle of God. It is not something we are meant to dissect,
but rather confess, so that we might embrace the message that Jesus is the Son
of God. That is, “the real miracle is that God becomes human flesh through
being born of a Jewish woman” [Grammar of the Christian Faith, 2:410].
The stories of Gabriel’s
visitation to Zechariah and Mary, as well as the pregnancies of Elizabeth and
Mary, raise all kinds of questions. One of those questions has to do with the
apparent relationship between Mary and Elizabeth since one would assume that
Elizabeth, whose husband is a priest, would come from the tribe of Levi, while
Mary and Joseph would be part of the tribe of Judah. Of course, Luke doesn’t
seem bothered by these inconsistencies. We need to raise them, but Luke is not
concerned. He simply wants to connect John and Jesus in a familial way, so that
they are connected both by their births and their interaction as adults, though
Luke doesn’t draw our attention to their apparent relationship when Jesus comes
to be baptized by John.
Gabriel’s
announcement to Mary has significant political implications because the land in
which Mary and Joseph dwell is a vassal kingdom. The current occupant of the throne
in Israel is an Idumean monarch who had married into the Hasmonean family,
which had briefly ruled Judea until the kingdom came under Roman control. Herod
was known to be a jealous king who killed his own family members to protect his
rule. Even Herod had to worry about his connection with Rome. So, if this child
were to grow up and take the throne to David’s kingdom, that would require
throwing off Roman rule. While many tried, no one succeeded, at least not for
several centuries. Besides, David’s throne had been empty for six centuries.
So, how would this transpire? Indeed, remember that this word was delivered to
a young woman, likely still in her teen years, who lived in the insignificant
village of Nazareth, in Galilee, far from the center of power.
We hear
this word about a child who will be born to a young woman living in Nazareth
with Christmas knocking on the door. We’re likely busy with making final
plans for the celebration. Preachers might be working feverishly on that
Christmas homily, so perhaps we could skip this word and get right to the heart
of the matter. But at least Luke thinks we need this announcement before we get
to the birth story. Besides, once this all sinks in with Mary (after visiting
her cousin Elizabeth), she responds with the Magnificat. Yes, Mary will magnify
the Lord because the Lord looked upon her with favor. She sings about the Lord
scattering the proud and bringing down the proud from their thrones, and more.
All of this is because God made a promise to Abraham (Lk. 1:46-55).
The
moment we’ve been waiting for is about to dawn, but it’s not quite there. So,
be patient and keep watch. It would appear that the realm Jesus is to initiate
will look different from that of Herod, Augustus, or any other human ruler. We
like “strong leaders,” but it would seem that God has a different vision for
the coming realm, for the one who will be born to Mary will operate very
differently from Herod or modern pretenders. As Paul put it in Philippians 2
(whether he wrote the hymn or not is immaterial here):
5 Let the
same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
6 who,
though he existed in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be grasped,
7 but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
assuming human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a human,
8 he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross.
9 Therefore
God exalted him even more highly
and gave him the name
that is above every other name,
10 so that at the name given to Jesus
every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father. (Phil.
2:5-11)
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