CHRISTMAS
PAST:
Gabriel's World Tour, 6 B.C.
- Zechariah:
"Yes, but ..."
- Mary:
The Bible talked about the Messiah, but not about being the Messiah's
Mom.
Zechariah
What would happen if one morning, during the middle of your daily routine, an angel appeared and told you that God had a plan that would completely change your life? How would you respond?
Luke's account of the Christmas story includes two such incidents, and there are important truths and lessons to be found in these events.
In the first instance, the angel Gabriel appears to the priest Zechariah in the temple as he conducts his duties. Zechariah "was startled and gripped with fear." Well, I suppose you and I would be, too."Do not be afraid, Zechariah," Gabriel tells him. "Your prayer has been heard. Your wife, Elizabeth, will bear you a son, and you are to give him the name John ... he will be great in the sight of the Lord. Many of the people of Israel will he bring back to the Lord their God. And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous - to make ready a people prepared for the Lord."
Zechariah has been confronted with the heavenly glory of God's messenger, a clearly supernatural interruption of his day. Yet his response to the angel's astounding news is to try and fit it into his existing assumptions about his life and his future.
"How can I be sure of this?" responds Zechariah. "I am an old man and my wife is well along in years." Zechariah can't believe that he and Elizabeth could have a child, much less grasp the magnitude of John The Baptist's mission.
Gabriel, who was pretty sure he was being clear, is unamused. "I stand in the presence of God," he says. "You will be silent and not able to speak until the day this happens, because you did not believe my words, which will come true at their proper time."
When God communicates with us or takes action in our lives, it is rarely with the impact of the angel's appearance. But I think our reaction is often much like Zechariah's. We question whether it is real. "Was that God speaking to me, or a hallucination? Was that a miracle, or just a coincidence? And if that really WAS God, can that really be what He meant?"
While we may relate to Zechariah's confusion and skepticism, we must be aware that it has its cost. It's not so much that we might be struck dumb if we doubt God's authority or interest in us, but that we might miss the blessings and peace God desires to share with us.
Whether they come to us through a heavenly messenger or a passage of Scripture, God's promises are trustworthy, and our ability to accept them and live them is limited primarily by our ability to believe them. As Zechariah's story demonstrates, God is never predictable, but is always faithful.Mary
After Gabriel appears to Zechariah, Luke presents the account of his appearance to Mary. And if the angel's news for Zechariah seemed astounding, it was but a trifle compared to the bombshell Gabriel drops on Mary.
"You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. 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, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end."
Whatever upheaval Zechariah had to grapple with was minor league compared to Mary's dilemma. Let's consider her situation when confronted with the news that she would bear God's Son through the virgin birth. What might this mean to her?
Mary was probably about 16, perhaps even younger. She becomes pregnant. Given the societal mores of the time, she could have fully expected that she would be disgraced, that her fiancee Joseph (who knew he wasn't the father) would abandon her, and that she would probably never marry. It's also important to understand that Jewish society in the first century took a real hard line on "blasphemy," as later accounts of Jesus' ministry and death make clear. A young, single woman claiming that God had made her pregnant would have encountered trouble.
We can try to imagine ourselves in Mary's shoes, but I don't expect we can ever really grasp the enormity of her situation. Mary must have known there could be problems. But rather than focusing on the size of her problems, she chose to trust in the size of her God.
"I am the Lord's servant," she replies. "May it be to me as you have said."
Through the history of Christianity, Jesus' mother has been the subject of a great deal of religious thought, some of it unusual and venturing outside the sparse Biblical accounts of her life. Theologies of Mary have long been one of the criterias Christians have used to differentiate themselves from one another. For Protestants, devotion to Mary is often characterized as a "Catholic thing."
Yet in Luke, Mary offers one of the most powerful examples of a person submitting to God's will, surrendering self and setting aside fears about the future. It is a response that ultimately has little to do with Mary's age, gender or marital status. Mary's example of a life yielded to God's purpose speaks powerfully to us today, its simplicity transcending 2,000 years of complex theology.
God touches our lives often, in ways we almost never expect. We can relate to Zechariah's confusion, but we must aspire to Mary's faith. We need to try, as best we can, to be the Lord's servants, entrusting ourselves to His care as we walk through each new day in His world.Thanks for visiting!
These meditations were prepared by Rich Miller of Lawrenceville, New Jersey. Rich is a lay speaker who attends the The Hopewell United Methodist Church in Hopewell Borough, N.J. If you have any thoughts, comments or feedback, please e-mail us!
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