God's Love Revealed Series

“In those days Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country, to a town in Judah, and she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, and she exclaimed with a loud cry, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.’” [1]

This is not the way we would normally initiate a story intended to transform lives. I’m reasonably certain that if you or I were writing this story, we would have quite a different approach, an approach that would affirm those who were listening. We would be careful to avoid relating the account of any situation that was less than ideal. We would avoid even allowing a hint that a given course of action could be problematic. We wouldn’t want to discourage anyone, we wouldn’t want someone to be turned off so that they would refuse to hear us out, so we would be ever so careful to frame the story just so. We would want to ensure that the story really captured interest as we spoke of the beauty of the mother, or as we spoke of her ability to overcome every obstacle, or as we told how God chose her because of her intelligence and her native wit.

What we wouldn’t do is begin a story by speaking of a teenage girl, or possibly a preteen girl, who became a mother without even mentioning how she looked, without the possibility of speaking of how she overcame multiple difficulties to succeed against all odds, or without speaking of the brilliance of her mind. But, then, the story that God is telling us isn’t really about the girl—it is about the infant that is to be born, isn’t it!

You do have to admit that the story provided by Doctor Luke is rather strange. A young girl is pregnant, and the people of the village who have known her since she was born, or those who were aware of her presence in the little village, will soon come to the conclusion that she has been unfaithful to her betrothed husband. There can be no other explanation for her condition. When she leaves her hometown, we assume she is fleeing to the distant home of an older relative to allow her to escape prying eyes and wagging tongues. However, she is surprised by the spontaneous and excited greeting she receives from her cousin. Her cousin recognises not only that this child is expecting a baby, but that the baby the young woman now carries is designated as exceptional.

We are told this teenage girl carries God’s own Son in her womb, and the knowledge of the unique character of the child Mary now carries is immediately and divinely revealed to Elizabeth in an awesome demonstration of God’s own power. Don’t miss the fact that a miracle took place as Elizabeth was the recipient of divine revelation of the child Mary carried. Just as the child she was carrying was a divine intervention in the normal course of matters, so the child her cousin was carrying was Himself a miracle, and the knowledge that this child was exceptional was likewise miraculous.

The message for this third Sunday in our Advent season invites each of us to focus on this young girl, paying particular attention to the fact that she is less concerned about self-preservation or maintaining some sort of image she may have constructed in her mind than she is concerned to know and to do the will of God. This young girl is seeking to honour God. And when the Lord has revealed to her what He is doing through the intervention of an angel, Mary responded without hesitation, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word” [LUKE 1:38].

RUSHING TO OBEY GOD’S COMMAND — I suspect that more than a few of us preachers, perhaps even you as you listened to a preacher who was standing behind the sacred desk as I do now, have imagined that Mary lingered in her parents’ home for some period, leaving only when her pregnancy could no longer be kept secret. Without actually thinking the matter through, we have convinced ourselves that Mary fled in fear at what others might say when her condition became known, or possibly hurried from her home in fear of the embarrassment her unplanned pregnancy would bring her parents.