Luke 1:26-38 Gabriel Announces

 

Advent has begun; a time of waiting shaped by excitement and anticipation, even during a time of pandemic. As I walk through our neighbourhood, a lot of people are putting their lights and trees up early, needing an early boost of hope this year. Christmas and advent are a time of hope where, for a short time we try to lay the burdens of the rest of the year aside, looking to the baby in a manger to give us the hope we all need. This advent our theme is “A Saviour Made Known,” a theme that will keep pointing us to the Christ child who has come to make sense of this world, to bring the healing and grace that is so needed. We begin with a heavenly visitor and a young woman engaged to be married to a humble carpenter.

This is such a familiar story to us; God sending his messenger Gabriel to a small nothing town and an ordinary simple girl Mary, and yet we keep wanting to hear it again every year. As we listen to the story of Gabriel and Mary, we can almost feel Mary’s fear, wonder and awe-filled confusion at what’s happening as this creature from heaven appears to her. While Mary is really important to this story, the main story here is God at work fulfilling his promise of a saviour, how his plan to bring the promised saviour is going to happen.

God doesn’t hide his plan from Mary, he announces exactly what he’s doing through Gabriel, giving Mary the opportunity to say “yes,” knowing what lies ahead for her. Saying “yes” means that Mary will face disgrace from her parents and community since she and Joseph aren’t completely married yet, she will be shamed in her town as an unwed mother, and she’s got to be wondering what Joseph is going to say and do when he finds out; you can only hide a pregnancy for so long. When Mary asks, “How will this be since I’m a virgin,” she’s showing Gabriel that she realizes her baby is not going to be Joseph’s son.

Gabriel reminds Mary that nothing is impossible with God, or how the NIV 2011 translates it, “For no word from God will ever fail.” He goes on to tell Mary that “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.” We hear a number of echoes here to other times in Scripture. The first is when the Spirit of God filled the tabernacle in Exodus 40 once Moses finishes it, “Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. Moses could not enter the tent of meeting because the cloud had settled on it, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.” God does the same thing when Solomon dedicates the temple to God in 2 Chronicles 7, “When Solomon finished praying, fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices, and the glory of the Lord filled the temple. The priests could not enter the temple of the Lord because the glory of the Lord filled it.” These are powerful moments when God shows his presence in clear ways.

But there is also the echo forward to when Jesus goes to the mountaintop with Peter, James and John in Matthew 17, “After six days Jesus took with him Peter, James and John the brother of James, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. There he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light. Just then there appeared before them Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus. Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here. If you wish, I will put up three shelters—one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.” While he was still speaking, a bright cloud covered them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!” The picture of God overshadowing indicates God personal presence, this is what Mary is hearing when Gabriel tells her the Holy Spirit will overshadow her: God is right here.

But again, this is not about Mary, but about the son Mary is having. Gabriel tells Mary who her son is going to be. Her son is to be called Jesus, which means ‘the Lord saves,’ and “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.” Jesus is the Son of the Most High, which means that Mary will be the mother of God; she truly is favoured by God! Gabriel is pointing to Jesus’ divinity, revealing that Jesus will be God’s own son. Jesus is not going to be half god and half human like the children in Greek and Roman mythology, humans with super powers; but Jesus is fully God, and through Mary, fully human.

The wonder in this story is not that Mary is going to have a baby as a virgin, the wonder is that God is becoming a baby, is becoming vulnerable and helpless, is only going to be able to survive because of a human couple willing to become a butt of local jokes, willing to be shamed because God becomes one of us. There is nothing that can compare to this ever. We can try to craft stories of princes becoming paupers, but even those stories only hint at what God is doing, becoming one of us in order to save us.

Jesus comes to save us, not from Rome, but from our sin. As God, Jesus is powerful and strong enough to carry all our sins to the cross, but as human, Jesus is able to take our punishment on himself for the entire human race. The cradle leads to the cross, to the grave and resurrection and then the throne at the right hand of God. Jesus is going to be a king even greater than Caesar as Jesus is the king of the kingdom of heaven that encompasses all of creation, not just an empire with boundaries. Christmas depends on Good Friday and Easter for its meaning and importance.

Mary answers Gabriel, “I am the Lord’s servant, may your word to me be fulfilled.” In churches, we often focus on the second part of what Mary says, “may your word to me be fulfilled,” and it’s a powerful response that echoes Jesus’ words to God in the Garden of Gethsemane, where just before his crucifixion, Jesus asks God for another path to follow instead of the cross, but in the end, Jesus tells God, “Not my will, but yours be done.” We focus on Mary’s decision to follow God’s plan; it sounds to us as if it’s her choice to follow God’s plan or not.

But when we listen to Mary through the first part of her response, we get a different picture, “I am the Lord’s servant.” The word Mary uses is doulos and means servant or slave. As God’s slave, something that Paul later often calls himself, Mary doesn’t have a choice to have the baby Jesus, instead she’s acknowledging that God’s plans for her life take priority over her original plans for her life, that God has the power to do as he desires and she will be obedient to God’s plan. I realize how this sounds in our culture today with all the abuse against women and the #MeToo revelations of men using their power against women, yet Mary, as we shall see in her song next week, completely trusts in the faithfulness of her God to her. This is an echo of the trust that Ruth places in Boaz the night she appears at the threshing floor and offers herself to Boaz. Throughout Israel’s history, God has shown himself to be trustworthy and faithful to his people, even when they have not been faithful to him.

So, when we hear Mary say, “may your word to me be fulfilled,” Mary is being obedient to God’s call and plans for her life, to the word from God. She’s telling God she is his faithful servant and accepts the responsibility to give birth to God’s son and raise him to know God and be faithful to his heavenly father.

The word from God spoken to Mary is the same word spoken at the beginning of creation. This same word is now creating a new life in Mary, the Word, as John says at the beginning of his Gospel, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” The light comes as a baby born in a stable in a dark time of Israel’s history, bringing new life and hope to all the nations of the world, bringing light still to us today, bringing hope and new life to everyone willing to accept Jesus as your king and become his slave to continue the work of the kingdom of heaven. Are you willing to become a slave of Jesus?