Christ has come and Christ will come again - Day 2
Luke 1:26-38
26 In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, 27 to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. 28 The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.”
29 Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. 30 But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. 31 You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. 32 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, 33 and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”
34 “How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”
35 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[b] the Son of God. 36 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. 37 For no word from God will ever fail.”
38 “I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled.” Then the angel left her.
Mary stumbles over two parts of the angel’s message. “Greetings, you who are highly favoured! The Lord is with you.” is an unusual greeting to bring to peasant girl in rural Israel. In what ways is Mary favoured and blessed? She has no status, no position, there is nothing about her to draw people’s attention to her, let alone drawing God’s attention. The blessing is unexpected, an announcement of God’s attention being focused on her. It is unsettling.
The second part of the message is equally unsettling, she is to give birth to a child. She who has no husband, she who has never been with a man, how can she give birth to a child? That is the biological mystery, the disruptive truth that the God of the universe can do the impossible – what God says will happen no matter how impossible. (vs. 37) But even more unsettling is that Mary, unimportant, ignored, unseen, peasant Mary, would be the mother of the Messiah. And how can she be the mother of the Messiah? Her being the mother of the Messiah disrupts all the known understandings of the world. That through her the hope of the world would arrive. Through the lowly and the overlooked, through the ignored and the pushed-aside, through such a one as Mary hope would be birthed in the world. She was willing to be used by God, to follow his call.
God invites us to join his disruptive action in the world. That is, God is disrupting the world with the hope he offers. and we are invited to be the ones through whom he points to that hope. Through us, unimportant and insignificant, God brings hope to the world, using us as signs pointing out that hope. As Christ lives in us, hope is seen. Hope that disrupts the accepted understandings of how the world works.
PRAYER:
Lord God, we are amazed by Mary’s willingness to let her life be disrupted by your call. Help us to accept your disruptive action in our lives, that we may follow you in faith and obedience. In Jesus’ name. Amen.