12-18-17 - The Virgin

It’ll be the shortest human gestation period in history. This year, the Fourth Sunday of Advent falls on Christmas Eve. At church in the morning (we’ll all go to church that morning, right?) we’ll hear about Mary’s becoming mystically (and also actually….) pregnant. A few hours later we'll celebrate the wondrous birth of her baby, Jesus. And why not? Of all the takeaways from this story, perhaps the greatest is the angel Gabriel’s exit line: “For nothing is impossible with God.”

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, an awfully intimate detail about one we’ve just met. Maybe Luke just meant her unmarried state, where we might find the word “maiden” more decorous – but her virginity does figure into the story.

We learn that this young woman is engaged to a man called Joseph – and that his ancestry is significant: He is of the family of Israel's legendary King David, from whose line many believed the Messiah would come. As Jesus' earthly father, Joseph will provide his Davidic lineage – which that also gets him and his betrothed to Bethlehem, David’s ancestral town, where prophecies said the Messiah would be born.

We'll 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 many ways she is a screen onto which people 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 vulnerability.

It is that “yes” which has led some to attribute supernatural qualities to her – sinlessness, saintliness, even divinity. Such ideas are not only unbiblical - they undermine 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 as we know him. God might have found another way, but this is the way our story is revealed. Mary is the woman 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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