At Christ the Healer, we will depart from the lectionary for the last two weeks of Advent. This Sunday, for our “Baby Shower for Mary,” we will do Mary’s story, which the lectionary has on Advent 4. That week I plan to use a gospel passage that never shows up in the lectionary at all, the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth. I thought about staying on course for Water Daily, for the sake of the many readers who do not attend my church – but naaah. I’m going to drag you all over the place with me! It'll be fun. So here go.
We meet Mary, a young woman betrothed to a man named Joseph, right about the time she meets the Angel Gabriel: “In the sixth month [of Elizabeth’s pregnancy with John, who would grow up to be the Baptist…] the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary.”
Who was this Mary? Luke tries to make a decent introduction with the “where-when-who." She lived in Galilee, considered by many a low-rent backwater of Judean provinces. Scripture says nothing of her economic circumstances or her family – which doesn’t stop later generations from naming her parents Anna and Joachim, and designating them saints.
We are told that she is a virgin. To our ears that might seem an awfully intimate detail about one we’ve just met. Maybe that’s just the word Luke used to describe her unmarried state, where we might find “maiden” more decorous – but her actual virginity does figure into the story as well.
We learn that this young woman is engaged to a man called Joseph – and that his lineage is significant: He is of the family of Israel's legendary King David, from whom many believed the Messiah would come. Though Joseph will have no biological relation to Jesus, he will be his earthly father and establish his Davidic lineage – and that lineage also gets him and his betrothed to Bethlehem, David’s ancestral town, where prophecies said the Messiah would be born.
We can save for another day the encounter between Mary and this angel. Today let’s focus on the girl, this girl who has been so adored and so worshiped and so controversial for so many generations. In some ways she is a screen onto which people can project their own wishes and identities. We know little about her beyond these biographical details – and the amazing grace with which she considers the angel’s announcement and comes to a quiet “Yes,” a yes staggering in its humility and willingness to accept vulnerability.
It is that “yes” which has led some to attribute supernatural qualities to her – sinlessness, saintliness, even divinity. To do this entirely undermines the power of her story for us: That God chose an ordinary girl for an extraordinary ministry – and that she chose to accept the mission and let it shape her life. Were it not for Mary, there would be no Jesus of Nazareth in the way we know him. Perhaps God would have found another way, but this is the way our story is revealed. Mary is the one who bore God for us.
Today in prayer we might contemplate Mary, however she appears in our mind’s eye. Imagine her in her room when the angel appears, and play through the story. Or go even deeper and imagine yourself in that position. What would you think? Say? Do? However we enter her story, let us give thanks to Mary, or for her, for the gift she gave us.
In a small way we share her mission – to allow the Spirit to fill us with life, a life not wholly our own but mingled with ours to create a new person, the Christ who comes to set all people free – and then to bear that Christ into the world.
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