Mary Christmas

[dave c]

HEALING SHELTER MINISTRIES #134c, Re-Written 16DEC09

Mary Christmas

by rev. dave c

The Gospel of Luke, Chapter One, 26 In the sixth month, 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 be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name 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 the house of Jacob 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 upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called 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 barren is in her sixth month. 37 For nothing is impossible with God." 38 "I am the Lord's servant," Mary answered. "May it be to me as you have said." Then the angel left her (NIV).

Wow! We have read, listened to, and watched re-enacted this part of the Christmas Story so many times that it can become difficult to really see and hear what Luke is telling us through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. I have to struggle to remember that Mary and Elizabeth—and their counterparts, Joseph and Zechariah—were otherwise ordinary people, who really lived, and whom God had chosen (by whatever Divine criteria) to be a part of the most extraordinary event in the history of all mankind. Until the Annunciation by the angel Gabriel, there wasn’t anything obviously special about Mary. She was just another young Jewish girl who was engaged to just another Jewish young man. Scripture tells us that Nazareth and Bethlehem were not the settings where we would have expected Time itself to be cleaved by the birth of a single person into Before and After.

Mary was a virgin, without question, or her responses to the angel’s pronouncements make no sense. Her engagement to Joseph was very different from our concept of what it is to be engaged. In ancient Israel the betrothal period was basically considered the first year of marriage, but without living together and without acts of consummation.

When the Angel Gabriel told Mary, "Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you," there is no indication that Mary was of special virtue in any way. God did not choose Mary because she was special, Mary was special because God the Father chose her to be the human means by which the Son of God would be born into this world as the Son of Man. You are highly favored is from a Greek word that means, endue with special honor, that is, invest with a particular blessing. It is only otherwise used in the New Testament at Ephesians 1:6, where Paul tells us that all Christians are highly favored with the presence of Jesus Christ. Like Mary, God does not choose to favor Christians with His Son because we are special, rather we are special because God chose us to be the vessels of His presence.

"The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God." Understandably, Mary was alarmed and confused by the appearance of the angel and his message. She may have been young, but she was not naïve as to how babies come into this world. Nonetheless, she answered Gabriel, "I am the Lord's servant,"..."May it be to me as you have said." How was Jesus conceived and placed in Mary’s womb? God only knows. It is a wonderful mystery and a miraculous event. "For nothing is impossible with God." Incredibly, God gives each and every one of us the spiritual opportunity to be miraculously reborn through the acceptance of His Son, Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit (Jn 3:3&7; 1Pe 1:23). The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God--children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God (Jn 1:9-13; NIV).

Some years back, while leading a class of 7 to 10 year olds through the Christmas Story, a precocious little girl asked me, “What if Mary had told God, ‘No’?” After a pause of a few seconds, I told her that I couldn’t answer her question because historically that is not what happened, and “what if’s” are just a guessing game. I did tell her, “What is important is how are you going to answer God when He asks you to do something that is out of the ordinary?” I pray that as we celebrate the birth of the baby Jesus, and throughout the next year—when God asks us to be a part of some impossible thing that He is doing—we will be willing to set aside all our questions and doubts and we will answer Him, "I am the Lord's servant,"..."May it be to me as you have said." Saying “Yes” to God is the real Spirit of the Season. This year I pray we have a Mary CHRISTmas.