Luke 1:26-38 “Announcement of Jesus’ Birth”
All of us probably wish that there were something special about ourselves.
Sure, there are those who seem to be gifted with a strong confidence in life and an intense sense of purpose, but the vast majority of us struggle with feelings of inadequacy and inferiority in all areas of life
What are some of the areas we can feel inadequate to deal with?
...in relationships, at work, even just in facing the challenges of life.
This is also something that effects our thinking at times when it comes to God.
We have this very common tendency, as we talked about a few weeks ago, to assume that there are those who are really good at being Christians, and then there is me.
I struggle with this all the time...a feeling of inadequacy and inability when it comes to my journey with Christ, not to mention the insane idea that I’m supposed to be a leader in this church.
It’s very easy to create a straw man in our minds, the good Christian, the one who is capable of doing and saying the right things all the time, the ones who are really in a position to be USED by God in significant ways.
Our current Christian culture has only reinforced that tendency by creating ministry CELEBRITIES...the big name authors and speakers whom we idolize and look up to and consider to be the important Christians in our time.
But I’ll tell you, if there’s one thing Luke’s gospel will do...it will shatter that idea.
We’re gonna’ continue our study in Luke, so if you have a Bible, open it to Luke 1 please.
One of the driving themes of Luke’s gospel is the way God intentionally seeks out the marginalized to use and to bless.
Luke loudly proclaims, this plan of God’s is for EVERYONE...ANYONE is able to be a part and play a significant role in what God’s doing.
This becomes very clear as we read the next story in the events that lead up to X’s appearing on the earth.
Last time, we read about a priest named Zechariah and his infertile wife Elizabeth...how an angel visited Zechariah while he was in the temple, and told him that God heard his prayer for a son…and remember, Zach had trouble believing that, so God sent a corrective impairment to get his attention.
The section ended with Elizabeth getting pregnant, and we considered how we can learn about coping with disappointment by looking at their story.
So now today, the story picks up 6 months later...after Elizabeth has realized she’s carrying a child.
V 26-27
26 In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, 27 to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. And the virgin's name was Mary.
Now, just off the bat, we don’t notice much about the details Luke provides here...we hear names like Galilee and Nazareth and they are automatically associated with sacred places in our minds…but that certainly wouldn’t have been the case to the first readers of this account.
Especially 1st Century Jewish readers...they would have been suspicious right off the bat.
Gabriel they would have known from the book of Daniel...only two angels are ever mentioned in Scripture...he is one of them…but why Gabe would have ignored Judea and Jerusalem, which has always been the heart of God’s work with Israel...and gone north to Galilee...to a town that probably most of that time had never heard of…THAT wouldn’t have made any sense.
Galilee was a place of contempt for most respectable Jewish people at that time. It was largely inhabited by what one writer called a “mongrelized” population...mostly gentiles, Roman soldiers and Greek merchants...and the Jewish people who lived in Galilee were not known for their piety.
Nazareth was a non-place. I remember years ago when Hurricane Opal came through, and Robbie and I gathered up the kids and evacuated, we were heading North and we drove through this little place called “Two Egg” Florida. I looked them up….here’s the historic downtown district.
This gives you an idea of what Nazareth was like. There’s a larger city in Nazareth now...but only because of Jesus’s story...before that, it was Two Egg.
Right off the bat, something is strange with this story...an announcement is about to be made that the Messiah is going to be born...God is coming into the world...not in Jerusalem or Rome or Athens...but in Nazareth. Not in London or Paris or Washington DC or in Hollywood...but in Two Egg.
Some nowhere town...and who the angel goes to is strange. Not a famous person, or, even like at least Zachariah and Elizabeth were, people of religious significance….not to one of the high priest’s children, not to anyone from Herod’s court.
No...to an unknown teenage girl from a poor town no one ever heard of. Clearly, God has some strange ideas about marketing.
What we know about Mary is that she was most likely between the ages of 13-17...we’d be safe saying around 15-16 years old. It says she is a virgin...that is, she is of marrying age, and still living at home, but she’s engaged to a man named Joseph. In that culture, an engagement, or betrothal was a legally binding contract, breakable only by divorce.
They weren’t married yet...they weren’t living together or sleeping together, those are the by-products of what happens first...the commitment and pledge of their lives to each other. We do that all backwards in our culture...people have sex, move in with each other, and THEN decide if they want to be married...and that’s totally screwed up….which is why then, that relationships are so screwed up in our culture.
So, she’s betrothed to a guy named Joseph...and he’s probably young...in his early 20’s….and we know from Matt and Mark, that he was a “Tekton”, a worker with his hands...maybe doing some carpentry, maybe a little stone masonry...whatever kind of work he could get...because the term means something like a “jack of all trades”.
This tells us he was not a man of independent means….he was a working stiff...a blue collar guy.
Here are our characters through whom God is going to invade the earth.
By all indicators, they were not extraordinary...Mary would have wed Joseph, and they would have lived humbly...she would have given birth to numerous poor children, she would never have been educated...never travel farther than a few miles from the mobile-home...and one day DIE, like THOUSANDS of others before her...a nobody in a nothing town in the middle of nowhere.
This is the stage God chose to launch from to heal this broken world.
Do we feel inadequate or unqualified to be used by God to make a difference? Do we feel too insignificant for God to concern himself with us?
Well, we learn from this that
THE LORD COMES TO NEEDY PEOPLE
If there’s one thing we learn over and over in the Bible, it’s that the very first step we have to make in seeing our lives change into what God intended…
is we have to acknowledge we CAN’T do this on our own...that we are NEEDY.
That’s what J was saying in the Sermon on the Mount, when he said “blessed are those who are poor in spirit, that’s how you get into the kingdom of God...he’s talking about those who realize their own weakness and powerlessness apart from Him!
The incarnation, salvation, resurrection...CHRISTMAS isn’t for the proud and self-sufficient...it’s for those who know how much they NEED God.
Later on, it will be poor, humble, shepherd outcasts who see and hear the heavenly announcement that Jesus has been born...in fact, all of Luke’s gospel is punctuated by the words “poor” and “humble”.
The whole notion that we have to achieve something spiritually or religiously in order to find God’s approval works AGAINST this premise!
The only thing we REALLY have to do is acknowledge that we CAN’T do anything valuable on our own...that all good will come from him.
Psalm 119:68 in the Message says “You are good and the source of good; train me in your goodness.”
So if we feel like we don’t have anything to offer...that’s alright...that’s EXACTLY who God uses to make a difference in this world.
Now...the story goes on...v28
28 And he came to her and said, “Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!” 29 But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. 30 And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. 31 And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, 33 and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”
We don’t know where Mary is when this happened...tradition says she was at the well in Nazareth, which is there to this day...but there’s no way to know that for sure. We don’t know how Gabe appeared to her or if there was anything supernatural about his showing up. It says she was troubled at what he said, so he may have just looked like some guy, but it would have been an unusual thing, because this sort of casual interaction with a girl who was betrothed didn’t happen.
I think she knew to SOME degree that this was a messenger from God...and she’s troubled because, as we made so clear earlier, she’s not sure why SHE is being approached.
He tells her she’s favored...literally, she is the recipient of God’s grace…and building on our first observation, we sort of can see that
GOD'S GRACE IS WHAT ENABLES THE UNQUALIFIED
Mary is a teenage girl. She’s not the 30 year old stately looking woman we see in statues or icons of the mother and child, she’s a KID! And she is told that she is being entrusted with carrying the Messiah...God, embodied in flesh.
This story just gets more and more absurd, even in terms of the people involved.
I mean...I’ve had teenage daughters...I had trouble trusting a teenage girl with an IPOD, much less entrusting the MESSIAH to her!
Yet God trusts her. And He CAN trust her, because it’s his own GRACE which enables her to do this, even though she’s someone the world would consider unqualified to do this.
What is it we have a desire to do in God? What difference would we like to make in this world? If God is enabling us...if God is leading us to that, and he often leads us by giving us the desire to do something…then what can keep us from doing it?
I struggle with being unqualified...I really do. The thing I hate being asked the most is “what college did you attend?”...and I have to shift around and say “I took a semester of art at community college, but failed it and dropped out.”
And I know that for some people...that admission disqualifies me from being a leader in the church. I’ve been told it directly and indirectly.
But that’s ok, because I’ve also been told that we, that includes you too, aren’t a real church because of where we meet and, of course, who the pastor is.
Sometimes I look around and see how we have a building with a leaky wall and the sound guys have to work with what we’ve cobbled together over the years…
and I get worried that maybe we’re not qualified for this….but then I read Mary’s story...and I see how a poor, teenage girl could carry the Messiah into the world because of God’s grace, and I think that God’s grace will make the difference with US TOO! That by God’s grace, WE can carry the Messiah to OUR world...by God’s grace, we can do ANYTHING!
Remembering that...I feel a lot better. We need to remember God’s grace when we feel unqualified for any given calling in life.
Ok...so the story goes on...v34
34 And Mary said to the angel, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?”
35 And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God.
Now, in a similar way to Zachariah, Mary questions the angel, but there is a distinct difference.
Where Zach said “how CAN I KNOW”...Mary says “How WILL this be?” John on Wonderwhat wrote: [Wonderwhat.net is church blog where we discuss the upcoming passage the week before]
“I guess the quickest way to get on an angels bad side is to basically ask him, 'can I trust you?'. Mary on the other hand seems to be saying, 'ok, I get what you're saying and all -- but how?' Maybe it all comes down to how we answer that question, do you trust me?”
Really, the difference between their responses is the difference between being incredulous and inquisitive. Mary states that she believe it WILL BE, she’s not doubting what he says, she’s just trying to understand the process.
Gabe tells her this will be something the Holy Spirit does miraculously. God will form himself as an embryo apart from the normal process. The Messiah will be born to a virgin.
Now this is a sticking point for a lot of people. Neo-orthodoxy shrugs and says with slight embarrassment that “these were primitive people after all...they just didn’t know what we know today, how impossible that is.” which is a hugely arrogant thing to say. Of COURSE they knew how babies were born. EVERYONE knew how absurd this whole thing sounded. If Luke is the one writing this, he’s a DOCTOR, he CERTAINLY knows that pregnancy doesn’t happen to people who abstain from sex.
Obviously, this isn’t likely to convince anyone who isn’t already open in some sense to the possibility that Jesus, while being fully human, is MORE than just human.
Paul never preached the virgin birth, not once, but always the death and resurrection of Christ for salvation. Once a person is there, there is almost an “appropriateness” about this story...its hard to define, but it somehow rings true.
The thing is, I don’t claim to understand this, I don't. Neither did Mary. But that’s not what’s important, because we learn here that -
THE HOLY SPIRIT IS THE SOURCE OF LIFE AND POWER, NOT OUR UNDERSTANDING OF THINGS
When life gets strange, when things take unexpected turns or our plans get wildly interrupted, like Mary’s did in a big way, we usually start the desperate process of trying to understand the situation, because we usually think “If I can just understand it, if I can just know more about it...I can fix it, or at least bear it.”
But that is rarely the case...maybe NEVER.
This has been the unhappy pursuit of human beings ever since the Garden of Eden.
There were two trees mentioned in the Garden of Eden, one was the tree of life, what was the other one?
The tree of knowledge of good and evil.
God told us to stay away from one, its implied we could eat freely of the other, but when it came to a choice, we chose wrong tree.
From that time on, humanity has desperately trying to find comfort from figuring things out, desperately clinging to the hope that if we can just understand something, we’ll find life there.
Life comes from God...the Holy Spirit is the source of life and peace and power to cope.
We have to choose LIFE! We have to CHOOSE to believe G, whether we understand things or not.
The Holy Spirit is the source of life and the power to cope. Lets not neglect His work by trying to figure everything out.
Ok...well...finishing up this morning, lets read v36-38
Gabe is still talking….36 And behold, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren. 37 For nothing will be impossible with God.” 38 And Mary said, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” And the angel departed from her.
Gabriel’s mission is now complete and he leaves Mary with a sign. You’re relative Elizabethy is also having a son, you know, the one they called “barren”…
and the whole thing gets summed up with the phrase “nothing will be impossible with God”.
God’s going to do this because nothing is impossible with Him. We may say “Women who abstain from sexual activity DO NOT have babies”...but God is sort of...God, and he can DO whatever he wants, and APPEAR wherever he wants, because nothings impossible for him.
Mary’s response to all this craziness is WONDERFUL: "I’m your servant...I’m yours...let it be to me according to your word.”
So, as a final thought on this subject...we could say that
WHOLENESS IS FOUND IN SUBMISSION TO GOD'S PLAN
Our struggle with feeling insecure or inadequate is usually stemming from a sense of being incomplete.
But, as we said last week, God has a plan, of which we are a part. If we can see our lives, and all the parts of it together as part of God’s BIG plan, our purpose becomes clear,and that is, to yield to God’s will in life.
That’s not always an easy thing to do and it can end up being very difficult at times. We’ll have to make painful choices at times, to yield to God’s plan for our lives.
See...Mary making this statement was not some joyful anticipation of being able to be Messiah’s mom. That may have been partly there, but what she was facing was not all good times.
This was a huge, monumental upheaval of Mary’s plans, of her life and for her reputation!
From that point on, she would be called “whore” by mean people who didn’t know this story. She would endure the scorn of neighbors and relatives alike. She would have hear her son being called a bastard. Not to mention the perplexing, even unapproachable way his ministry would lead him. She would have to watch him go on a headlong, collision course with the religious and political authorities of his day.
She would have to feel the pain of standing below his cross while his tortured body gurgled his last breath.
But the end result would be joy and power like the world has never known.
What incredible strength she shows here! Mary is saying in her statement, “you’re will be done!” This is what Jesus taught us to pray, later on, “Father, let your will be done right here, right now, just like it’s done in heaven itself!”
“I’m yours...let YOUR will have the final say concerning my life!”
It is for that submissive attitude toward God that this young, teenage mother will be known throughout history as “the blessed virgin Mary”.
It is for that submissive attitude toward God that WE will one day know the joy of falling into our savior’s arms and hearing him whisper in our ear, “Well done, well done. Welcome home.”
We look to so many temporal things to make us feel complete, and as good consumers, we watch the commercials with baited breath just KNOWING that a blanket with sleeves built into it will make us feel complete…or that next relationship...or that next promotion...or that next shot of whiskey or hit from a bong will make us feel fulfilled…but only in submission to God’s plan will we EVER know wholeness, because his plan leads us into life the way we were intended to live it.
So...from Mary’s story, we learn that God comes to the needy, His grace enables the unqualified, His spirit gives life, not our understanding...and His plan is the means to our wholeness.
Right on?
