Today we are going to talk about the biblical person most often depicted in the visual arts, second only to Jesus. I am speaking, of course, about Mary. She is one of those unusual people that you can Google her first name and the Internet takes you right to her.
The church teachings about Mary are perhaps the most debated among all doctrines. In my humble opinion, the Roman Catholic Church tends to overemphasize her role in salvation history and the Protestant Church tends to deemphasize that same role.
As with all major biblical characters, we wish we knew what she looked like. Artists have been trying to picture Mary for 2000 years. One of the earliest depictions comes from one of the Roman catacombs of the second century…
Then we have perhaps the oldest icon of Mary from the monastery of St. Catherine’s on Mt. Sinai which dates to the sixth century or perhaps earlier…
And then there is perhaps the most famous depiction of Mary, carved in stone by Michelangelo in the fifteenth century…
But if we really want to get an accurate picture of who Mary was and what she was like, then I believe we must go back to the earliest sources that deal with her life, namely, the Gospels. Today, we are going to read the story of the angel Gabriel’s announcement to Mary about the conception and birth of Jesus. Listen for God’s word to you from Luke 1:26-38…
In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.”
Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”
“How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”
The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called[a] the Son of God. Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. For no word from God will ever fail.”
“I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled.” Then the angel left her.
Fairy Tale?
To modern people not familiar with the Jewish background to this story, the account we have just read can sound like a fairy tale. It seems to have all the elements of such a tale: supernatural beings, a lady in distress, and a miracle. But any first century Jew hearing this story for the first time would find here a few things that he or she already believed in.
First, there is God. If one first accepts that there is a God who created the universe, then how can one say that there is anything impossible for that God to do? In fact, that seems to be part of the point of this story. In verse 37, the angel says to Mary, “For no word from God will ever fail.” A more literal word-for-word translation of that sentence is: “For not will be impossible with God everything.”
This is the verse from which I got the idea for the title of this whole Advent series: Mission Possible. Every mission in life is possible for God, simply because he is God, the all-powerful creator of all things. Every first century Jew would have accepted this as a matter of course.
Then there is the angel. This is another aspect of Jewish belief that was common in the first century. Angels are spoken about many times in the Hebrew Scriptures. Angels are created beings who, in terms of hierarchy, currently rank somewhere between human beings and God. (Psalm 8:5) The word “angel” means a messenger. And that sums up the main job that angels perform for God in the Bible. They act as messengers. And that is precisely what the angel Gabriel does for God in this story. He carries God’s message to Mary.
That leads us to the third “fairy tale” aspect of this story. Mary is a virgin. The text says it three times. She’s once, twice, three times a virgin.
This would have stood out as unusual to any first century Jew, just as it stands out to us. We ask the same question Mary asked, “How will this be since I am a virgin?” How can a virgin, remaining a virgin, conceive a child? Any first century Jew would have thought this impossible, just as we do. There are a few things a modern gynecologist could teach people in the first century that they did not know at that time. But every adult person in the first century would have understood, just as we do, that women don’t normally get pregnant without sexual intercourse.
Still, for the first century Jew who believed in an all-powerful God, such a thing would not be beyond belief. Other ancient peoples had tales of such things as well. But this is not a tale that the early church was likely to make up based upon pagan stories. After all, this story is told not just in Luke’s very Gentile Gospel but also in the most Jewish Gospel of all, the Gospel of Matthew. Why would Matthew take a pagan story and introduce it into his Gospel? It seems like the last thing a first century Jew would do. Instead, Matthew finds a precedent for this story in the Greek translation of Isaiah 7:14, “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son and will call him Immanuel.”
Now, it is true that these stories of the virgin conception of Jesus in the womb of Mary are told only in Matthew and Luke. Paul knows nothing of the virgin birth. In that sense, it was obviously possible to be a Christian in the first century without believing in the virgin birth. But we who are Christians in the twenty-first century, and who know these stories, must decide what we are to make of them. And I for one simply accept these stories as part of the larger Jesus story. I find no other way to explain this story that makes more sense than simply to say: it happened.
Amazing Grace
Now, the announcement of the virgin conception is not the first amazing thing in this story. Mary herself was startled by something the angel said before he even makes this announcement to her. Gabriel says, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.” And Luke tells us that “Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be.”
Isn’t that fascinating? Gabriel hasn’t even made his major announcement yet, and Mary is troubled. Notice, she is not troubled by the appearance of the angel himself, but she is troubled at his words. “What kind of greeting is this?” she wonders.
What is it about this greeting that Mary finds startling? Notice that Gabriel has said two things. First, he tells Mary that she is highly favored. And second, he tells Mary that the Lord is with her.
In my own Christian journey, and especially as a pastor, I have noticed that these two statements contain truth that practically everyone I know has a hard time accepting. In fact, many of us have a harder time accepting the truth in the beginning of Gabriel’s statement than we do in accepting the later part about the miracle of the virgin conception.
What am I getting at? I am getting at the fact that if I were to tell you that you are highly favored by God and that the Lord is with you, I think you would have a hard time accepting those two statements, just as Mary had a hard time accepting it. The bottom line is that every human being I have ever known has a hard time accepting grace. Why? Because we think we don’t deserve grace.
And that is the whole point. Grace is precisely “undeserved favor”. We don’t get grace from God because we merit it. We don’t earn grace. Grace is the gift of a God who naturally overflows with love for you and me.
And that is what Gabriel announced first to Mary. He announced to her the miracle of grace. The miracle of grace is that we each, like Mary, are chosen for a special vocation. Maybe we aren’t chosen to conceive and give birth to the Son of God like Mary was. But then again, maybe we are. Isn’t that precisely what we are called to do, not in a physical manner, but a spiritual one? When Jesus is conceived and born in us by the power of the Holy Spirit, we are called to exhibit him to the world.
Do Not Fear
Notice next how Gabriel responds to Mary’s troubled heart. First, he tells her, “Do not fear.” It seems like almost every time in the Bible when a human being encounters an angel, the first thing the angel says is: “Do not fear.” We get the idea that encountering the divine, the supernatural, is so awesome that it naturally elicits fear. But of course, this fear is different from other fears we have in life.
If I told you that there was a tiger in the next room, and I convinced you of the truth of that statement, you would be filled with one kind of fear. You might feel fear for your physical safety. But if I told you there was a ghost in the next room, and convinced you of the truth of that fact, you would be filled with a different kind of fear. You would have a sense of the uncanny. You would, most likely, be filled with a sense of awe. That, I think, is close to what Mary must have been feeling in the presence of the angel Gabriel. She was feeling a terrible sense of awe, perhaps a bit of unease. And so, the angel tells Mary not to be afraid.
Next, the angel reiterates that Mary has found favor with God. She does not need to worry about what God might do to her because God looks on her with favor, with grace. And so also does God look on each of us with grace. We don’t need to worry about God’s judgment upon us if we are in Christ because God looks at us the way he looks at his Son.
The Promise of the Messiah
Next, Gabriel delivers to Mary the main part of his message, that …
- She is to conceive and give birth to a son.
- She is to name him Jesus.
- He will be great.
- He will be called “the Son of the ‘Most High’”.
- The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David.
- He will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.
Each of these points have to do with Jesus being the Davidic Messiah which means “anointed one”. In other words, Mary’s son will be a king in the line of David, and his kingdom will never end, just as the Lord promised David hundreds of years before.
How Will This Be?
This is when Mary asks the angel how this will be since she is a virgin. Then the angel explains that…
- The Holy Spirit will come on Mary.
- The power of the ‘Most High’ will overshadow her.
- So, the holy one to be born from her womb will be called the Son of God.
All this talk of Jesus being the Son of the ‘Most High’ and the Son of God sounds to us like a prophecy of divinity. But we must remember that these were Messianic titles. Mary would not necessarily have assumed that Jesus would be divine. That revelation came later, and it probably came to Mary gradually.
Then Mary is given a sort of token to assure her of the reality of this promise. She is told that her cousin Elizabeth is going to have a child in her old age, and that in fact Elizabeth is in the sixth month of her pregnancy. For nothing is impossible with God.
Praying Big
I wonder, have you ever asked God to do something seemingly impossible? Or have you seen God do the impossible without even asking him?
There is a hymn by John Newton that has one stanza with these words…
Thou art coming to a King,
Large petitions with thee bring;
For His grace and power are such,
None can ever ask too much.
Personally, I think we need to take the words of Luke 1:37 and the words of Newton’s hymn much more seriously than we do. I believe God wants us to claim his promises and put them to the test. God wants us to understand and to trust that he can do what is impossible for us as human beings.
Let It Be
This passage concludes with Mary’s words to the angel Gabriel: “I am the Lord’s servant. May your word to me be fulfilled.”
Theologians call this “Mary’s Fiat”, which is not to say that Mary drives around a little Italian car. The word “fiat” is Latin for “let it be”.
And of course, the Beatles had a great song based upon these words…
When I find myself in times of trouble
Mother Mary comes to me
speaking words of wisdom
Let it be.
People have often wondered, “What if Mary had said ‘no’ to God? What would have happened then?” My answer is, “I suppose God would have chosen someone else to be the mother of our Savior. You see, I really do believe in “free will”. If God gives us the power of choice, and I believe he does, then that means we can say “no”, even to God, and he will respect our choice. At the same time, if Mary had said “no”, she could not have thwarted God’s plan. God simply would have accomplished his plan using someone else.
But Mary did not say “no”. She said “yes”. And so, she got a front row seat to witness the incarnation, God taking on human flesh. Mary was caught up in the wonder, the joy, and the pain of it all.
The question is: “What do we say when God comes to us with his plan for our lives? Do we say, ‘yes’ or ‘no’?”
If we are honest, then we must admit that oftentimes we want to say “no” to God because his plan is so different from ours, and his plan often comes as an interruption to what we think is our normal life.
But think of what Mary would have missed out on if she had said “no” to God. Think what you and I might miss out on if we say “no” to the Lord. How much better it is to give the response that Mary gave… “Let it be.”
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