12232020 – Luke 1. 26-38 Advent 4B
Biblically speaking, WHEN a messenger from God SHOWS UP, you know things are about to change in a BIG way.
Yikes! Get SCARED. Get VERY scared!
Going back in the Hebrew Bible, we KNOW of stories about other Biblical women. Women like Sara or Rachel or Rebecca or Hannah…
Just as men sat around campfires and TOLD and RETOLD the stories of their fathers’ fathers…so too, I would imagine, the women told stories about some of the great matriarchs of old.
Storytelling was a cultural thing!
It kept the people ALIVE. It kept the MEMORIES alive. It shared a common history and a common tradition. It kept the fore-fathers and fore-mothers WITH US always.
Sara was a good woman, kin, and wife to Abraham, who, after years of BARRENNESS, is blessed with a son, Isaac. (The joke was on her and Abraham.)
They previously HAD an encounter with a messenger of God.
Rachel, like Sarah and Rebecca and Hannah, REMAINED unable to conceive.
According to Hebrew scholars, “The INFERTILITY of the matriarchs has a two-fold effect: it HEIGHTENS the DRAMA of the BIRTH of the eventual son, marking Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and Samuel as being “SPECIAL” and it EMPHASIZES that pregnancy IS an ACT of GOD.”
In the biblical narrative, Hannah is one of the two wives of Elkanah. The other, Peninnah, had given birth to Elkanah’s children, but Hannah remained childless…that is, until a MESSENGER of GOD showed up.
So, we are being SET UP. There is a Biblical PRECEDENCE.
But unlike her PREDECESSORS, Mary was not “pining away” to have a baby.
But, uh-oh, a messenger of the Lord SHOWS UP…get scared. Start shaking.
It is an EPIC – BIBLICAL ENCOUNTER.
Mary, unlike the other Biblical women, was young, she was VERY YOUNG…maybe even, too young.
Mary was also not married yet–like most girls of that era, her marriage had been PRE-ARRANGED by her FATHER long before, so there was NO QUESTION that she WOULD BE wed ONE DAY. But it HAD NOT happened YET.
THE VISITATION by a MESSENGER of God muddies the waters. He is NOT ALWAYS an answer to a prayer. He is NOT ALWAYS the answer to a problem or a crisis, SOMETIMES he causes the CRISIS…
OR, perhaps, Mary does, with her response. The Scriptures make it abundantly clear: Mary IS a VIRGIN.
While Sarah, Hannah, Rachel, and Elizabeth were all OLDER, Mary has just barely entered PUBERTY. Her life is just beginning…
THIS CHANGE signals that something NEW, something DIFFERENT is about to take place. Something huge and maybe even unprecedented. Again, get scared.
The real question is WHY is this happening? WHY is this happening NOW?
The Biblical answer is that THIS is God’s plan, God’s doing, part of God’s LARGER PLAN for the REDEMPTION of all humankind.
From beginning to end, THE WHOLE EVENT is embraced and enveloped in GRACE.
As one of my favorite authors once put it, Mary was probably “too dazzled to notice,” but maybe just underneath his wings and bright shining garments even Gabriel was “trembling a little” in nervous anticipation as to how this whole encounter was going to go.
In the end, the hosts of heaven must surely have HEAVED a collective sigh of relief!
This kind of stuff does not happen overnight. It is years in the making. Like the aligning of the planets themselves…everything must be just right.
It takes time…decades and even centuries in the making…
The long-awaited plan of salvaging this fallen world of ours was finally moving forward!
After ages of waiting, and planning, and lining things up, a mother had been chosen to become the bearer of the very Son of God himself.
It was a big deal! It was a huge deal.
God would come to us.
God would reside with his people.
And although it was “iffy” in the beginning, she ultimately DID say, “Yes!”
Applause and cheers must have been heard in the heaven’s above…
It was settled…it was done…
Within a year that little baby would be born in Bethlehem, and the salvation of the whole world would be off and running (or at least off and crawling !)
But it all began with a young girl saying, “Yes, to God.” Amen.