Don Not Be Afraid (Part 2)
Do Not Be Afraid (Part 2)
Luke 1:26-38
Two weeks ago, I looked at the first of two couples who are essential in telling the Advent story: Zachariah and Elizabeth, the parents of John the Baptist. Like several other crucial couples in the Bible, they were unable to have a child. They were faithful people so this wasn’t some “divine punishment.” Luke goes out of his way to tell us this. Our deepest longings sometimes go unfulfilled. Zachariah and Elizabeth accepted this and moved on with their lives. This is what really faithful people do.
Then, one day, something entirely unexpected—something shocking—happens. An angel appears to Zachariah in the temple of all places. Angels are always messengers. This particular angel has quite a message to deliver. He tells Zachariah that he and Elizabeth are going to have a baby and that this baby will be the one who prepares the way for the Messiah. When visited by a messenger from God what does this faithful man who is also a priest do? He rejects the whole thing! He’s faithful and holy but he does still have at least an ounce of common sense. Senior citizens don’t have babies. Senior citizens play with their children’s children.
Zachariah believed in God. Zachariah believed in living a holy life. However, when push came to shove, what Zachariah really believed in was common sense. Since the fulfillment of the angel’s message would be—let’s call it, “miraculous,”—there was a line that needed to be drawn. Being a priest, perhaps, had taken the extraordinary and made it both ritualized and ordinary. When you institutionalize what used to be wild, like a lion at the zoo, something is lost. At the zoo, you may be sure that you’re looking at a lion but because of the moat and the plexiglass between us, the danger has been completely removed. This angel and his message was a kind of announcement that God was back to breaking the rules rather than enforcing them which just doesn’t fit with Zachariah’s watered down concept of God. for Zachariah. Interestingly, though, making faith wild again—a rule breaking, untamed way of being in the world—would be the core work of his son, John the Baptist, when he grew up.
So, Zachariah argues with the angel but the angel isn’t hearing it. He gives Zachariah a big, long time out. For the rest of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, he is going to be silent. The man who always knew the right thing to say and the right thing to do wasn’t going to be doing much of either. Instead, he was going to spend some time listening and watching and waiting. Imagine what he learned!
The second couple that we need to meet is the one that everyone pays attention to: Joseph and Mary, the parents of Jesus of Nazareth. Now, this is hard but I want you to meet them as if you are meeting them for the first time. Zachariah and Elizabeth were an elderly couple who had tried forever to have a child. Joseph and Mary aren’t even married yet. They were barely engaged. The hadn’t even thought about a child. Maybe the only thing they had in common was that they lived in a world where things are expected to make sense. In this sense, Joseph and Mary are about to meet the God who can be wild and break a few rules, too.
Let’s focus on Mary first. The good news for Elizabeth was that even if it was hard to wrap her head around being pregnant, the rules that were being broken were being broken to give her what she and Zachariah had always wanted: a child of their own. No one would feel anything but joy for them, except for the occasional sideways glance from someone who still wanted this all to make sense. Mary’s situation is entirely different. Mary’s “news” is that she is about to be an unwed mother. That news literally could put her life in jeopardy. Her world was not kind to women, especially women who broke the rules, which she would have had to do to become pregnant. In fact, her finance’, Joseph, would not only have had the right to file charges against Mary, he would likely have been expected to file those charges on behalf of all decent men. It’s not something we talk about much but Mary could have been convicted and stoned to death—end of story. That’s a much more challenging bit of news to take in than, “Hey, grandma and grandpa, you’re going to have a baby!”
Just the thought of an angel speaking directly to a woman would have made this a marginally offensive story back in the day. When women were out in public, they were forbidden to speak to men who were not their relatives. Men were not allowed to speak to unknown women, either. Jesus would grow up and break such rules over and over again—talking to women, touching and healing women, helping women find their voices in a culture that silenced them. The angel is breaking all those rules to empower Mary.
Listeners would have only become more uncomfortable with each unfolding step in our text. Not only does God’s messenger speak to this woman but his message to her is that God has chosen to work through her. She’s not rich but God cares for her. She’s not powerful but God cares for her. Most of all, she’s a woman in a society that denigrates women…and God picks her. The angel says, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you!” It’s one thing to have someone speak to you when the rule is that no one should speak to you. It is quite another thing to have the one who speaks to you speak with real respect and reverie, to have him look you straight in the eye and tell you that out of all the people that God could have picked to work through and work with, God chose you.
Mary is stunned, stunned in the same way that Elizabeth and Zachariah were stunned, stunned the way that you and I have been stunned when something happens that is completely unexpected, that breaks all the rules, that pretty much just blows our minds. We stand there slack jawed for a moment or two. We think to ourselves, “Oh man…I did not see that coming.” We might argue with the angels or whomever delivered the message. We might just argue with reality that this can possibly be real. We might rub our eyes and pinch ourselves and shake our heads a few times.
The key, though, of course, is for us to not get stuck. The question is, “How long will it take you to take in what’s happening and lean in hard?” How long will it take for the unexpected development to become the new reality? The longer it takes, the more likely it is that we will miss the opportunity in front of us. Even when what’s happening is extraordinary, the clock is still ticking. Are you in or are you out? Or…like Zachariah, do you perhaps need a little “silent retreat” time to buy yourself a chance to get on board? (Zechariah, like the other men in his culture, would have been totally used to being in charge and in control. Imagine how hard it would be to realize that it is God who is in charge!)
That’s the defining thing about Mary…she’s on board in no time flat. She not only accepts that the angel is there to talk to her, she leans in and listens to the specifics of what he has to say: “You’re going to have a child; Your child is going to be amazing; In fact, he’s going to sit on the throne of David.”
Now, this is the part when I need to suspend what you think you know. Yes, Mary does ask a question. In today’s translation of this text, Mary’s question is, “How can this be? I’m a virgin.” Here’s another translation, in fact a better translation: “How can this be? I’m just a young woman.”
Think about this. The “I’m a virgin” translation seems to imply that God couldn’t possibly work through a regular woman. So, God has to pick one who is “undefiled,” which is a real insult to basically almost every woman. Women had been blamed for almost everything that men did wrong, starting with Eve in the garden tempting poor Adam. Men and their impulses were apparently powerless in the face of tempting women. Those who favor emphasizing the “Virgin Mary,” seem to be very motivated to establish that Mary, unlike all other women wasn’t the “temptress” but rather was the one who could not be tempted.
Now, consider the other translation: “How can this be? I’m just a young woman.” Mary isn’t saying, “I’m not in the baby making business, yet.” Rather, she is saying, “How could God choose me? I’m powerless and poor and overlooked and ignored. I’m a young woman. No one picks someone like me.
The angel basically says to her, “When it comes to how and why, you can leave that up to God. What matters is not why God chose you but what God will do through you. That’s the work of the Spirit. That’s the power of God.” The angel even brags a bit about what’s happening to Mary’s cousin, Elizabeth and her husband Zachariah in their old age. “The point is,” the angel suggests, “Nothing is impossible when it comes to God.”
None of us get to dictate when the miraculous happens or what the details of the miracle will be when it does. God makes God’s presence known. We stand slack jawed and then we make a choice. Are we in our are we out? Are we on board or are we going to sit this one out? Do we believe in God or do we believe in common sense? In the middle of feeling overwhelmed and confused, making that choice is no easy matter.
That’s why Mary is amazing. She receives the most extraordinary news: that God is about to work through her. That extraordinary news—that she’s going to have a baby—will put her life at risk, will shape her every waking moment for the rest of her life, and will one day lead her to the foot of a cross where her son will die and her heart will be broken. In this moment, though, all she knows is that God is at work in the world and wants to work through her, that she has a chance—whatever anyone else might think or assume—to be part of something amazing. So, she stands tall, finds her voice, and speaks for all the world to hear: “Here am I, the servant of the Lord, let it be with me according to your word.”
Mary is fearless and fierce. Rather than being a role model of chastity, Mary shows us what it means to live with courage and faith. God calls. Mary follows. May we learn, in our own time, to be faithful and brave, just like her.