12.20.20 Luke 1:26–38
26 In the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a town of Galilee named Nazareth, 27 to a virgin pledged in marriage to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. 28 The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you. Blessed are you among women.” 29 But she was greatly troubled by the statement and was wondering what kind of greeting this could be. 30 The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, because you have found favor with God. 31 Listen, you will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to name him Jesus. 32 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. 33 He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and his kingdom will never end.” 34 Mary said to the angel, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?” 35 The angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. 36 Listen, Elizabeth, your relative, has also conceived a son in her old age even though she was called barren, and this is her sixth month. 37 For nothing will be impossible for God.” 38 Then Mary said, “See, I am the Lord’s servant. May it happen to me as you have said.” Then the angel left her.
Jesus is the Greatest Gift
We never asked for
It was Father’s Day, maybe about 10 or 15 years ago, that my wife showed me a present she had bought me. It was an above ground pool. I wasn’t as thrilled about the gift as one might think, because it meant that I would have to spend my afternoon putting the pool together. I would also have to make sure that the water didn’t turn green. So I was kind of grumpy that afternoon because of that “gift”, but we laugh about it now.
It goes to show that not all gifts are wanted or well received. Sometimes you might need to ask first before the gift is given. Think of King Ahaz, a king of Israel who lived about 700 years before Jesus was born. They were under attack by Aram and Ephraim and on the verge of defeat. God offered Ahaz the gift of a sign to prove that he would not lose a battle and that God would rescue them. But that would have required Ahaz to not trust in his alliance that he wanted to work out with a foreign country and just trust that God would work it out. That was too much of a risk. Ahaz didn’t WANT that gift of a sign. He refused it. He didn’t want to believe.
Think about today’s text. God sends the angel Gabriel to Mary to tell her that she’s going to receive a gift - the Messiah is going to be born through her! He simply says, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you. Blessed are you among women.” In humility and fear, Mary is troubled by what he has to say. “Why am I favored? Who am I to receive such a favor? And HOW exactly am I favored?” Gabriel sees the fear and wonder in her face. He says, “Do not be afraid, Mary, because you have found favor with God. 31 Listen, you will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to name him Jesus. 32 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. 33 He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and his kingdom will never end.” Talk about dropping a bomb on someone! He doesn’t give her a choice in the matter. He simply says, “this is what’s going to happen.”
I mean, you don’t just show up on someone’s doorstep with a dog, much less a human. What are you going to do with that?!? And what’s more - she isn’t going to adopt this child - she’s going to bear this child. She’d most likely experience the weight gains, the food cravings, the morning sickness, the pain of childbirth, and then the rest of her life would be changed raising this child. She had no choice in the matter. God had chosen her not to just have a child, but to give birth to the Messiah, the son of the Most High, God in the flesh. These words of Gabriel were reflected in our Old Testament prophecy for today. Mary probably had heard these words in church. They may have been popular in her day. She knew exactly what he was saying.
Contemplate Him
How do you wrap your mind around that? How do you prepare for that? Well, thankfully Mary would have nine months to think about it, three of which would be with Elizabeth who seemed to know by revelation what was happening to Mary. Yes, she would have time to think about it and talk about it as the life of God Incarnate continued to grow inside her womb.
And isn’t that what the season of Advent is supposed to be about? A time to contemplate in your mind, to get your mind pregnant with the miracle of Christmas? God is being implanted in the womb of Mary to save us from our sins. We don’t have to change His diaper. We don’t have to feed Him or take care of Him. He is coming to take care of us and to rescue us from this world. He’s doing ALL the work.
Think about that work! I mean, who of us would ever choose to be born again in your mother’s womb? I’m a bit claustrophobic. The last thing I would want to do would be to climb into someone’s womb and live in that confined space for 9 months. The last thing I would want to do would be to learn how to walk and talk again, and then re-experience this world again - but only worse! Jesus, remember, lived as part of the Trinity prior to His incarnation. He chose to come here. He had seen how the world was progressing. He had caused the rising and falling of nations. He created it all, and now He was ENTERING His own creation. He who controlled the world chose to humble Himself and come down here to save us, this little portion of creation, humanity. This is an awesome thing to think about. This isn't just a baby coming into our world. This is God in the flesh coming to SAVE us from our sins and gather our attention with His love and forgiveness.
Mary would have nine months to contemplate what would happen through her. Take the time to contemplate Christmas, especially during Advent. Don’t let the devil get hold of your preparations so that you are running here and there in frantic preparation of getting presents bought and wrapped, trees put up, and every other needless deadline that really doesn’t have much to do with Christmas at all. This is a gift that is meant to give you peace and comfort in the forgiveness of sins, not make you busy and broke with too many preparations. Remember what that Child has come to do - to live and die for you, so you don’t have to frantically live your life trying to manufacture joy through gifts that will be broken or forgotten in one to ten years. If you want to do them, don’t let them distract you from your time of contemplation. We only spend one month, four Sundays, and one Wednesday, to stop and look at Jesus, to be ready for Him to come. Make the most of it! Stop and read through these words again. You are preparing for a gift - to appreciate what a gift that is in Jesus.
He is an impossible gift
I wasn’t thrilled about the pool because I thought about how much work it would cause me, not thinking about the fact that I might enjoy its water once in a while. When God called Moses to be the leader of the Israelites, he would be given the gift of being able to perform miraculous signs. He’d get to see God’s power work through him and his staff. Yet Moses didn’t think of that. Moses gave every excuse in the book when he was called on to lead the Israelites out of slavery. He even bluntly said to God, “find someone else!” But God got angry with Moses and gave him some help: pretty much ignored his denial and told him to do it anyway. And I suppose that’s why some people hate Christmas too, because of how much time and money it costs them.
If anyone would have to do a lot of work, it was going to be Mary. She’d have to raise this child. But we don’t hear Mary making any excuses. She simply has a question about the logistics. “How will this be, since I am a virgin?” One might think that her natural inclination would be that she would have a child through Joseph. But she doesn’t even suggest that. She must understand that this would be impossible, since she and Joseph are sinners. She knows that this is beyond the realm of two humans to procreate, for this will be the Son of the Most High!
35 The angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. 36 Listen, Elizabeth, your relative, has also conceived a son in her old age even though she was called barren, and this is her sixth month. 37 For nothing will be impossible for God.” The angel uses the term “overshadow.” It maybe brings to mind what happened to Moses in the Old Testament as they were traveling through the wilderness. A pillar of cloud would travel over them during the day. Moses was sometimes called to talk with the Lord, so he would enter what was called the Tent of Meeting. Then what would happen? The LORD would descend over the tent in the cloud and overshadow the Tent, and God would meet and talk with Moses. So also the Holy Spirit would do with Mary. He would overshadow her with His power. There would be no sexual relations, for it would be a virgin birth. Basically, it would be an impossible miracle. There was no other way to explain it.
But isn’t it interesting how the angel Gabriel used some logic with Mary with an argument from the lesser to the greater. Elizabeth, her relative was barren. She wasn’t able to have children throughout her life, and now she was older. Who knows? Maybe she was 50, 60 or 70 years old? But nonetheless, she had become pregnant through a natural relation with Zechariah. So if God could do this miracle with Elizabeth, then couldn’t He do an even greater miracle with MARY? Gabriel pointed Mary to a modern day miracle which Mary probably didn’t even know about as proof of God’s power and might. That’s what caused Mary to run there right after this revelation! So nothing is impossible with God!
Don’t we need to remember this today as well? The God who overshadowed Mary and enabled her to be pregnant can still enter you and your children through the waters of baptism. The God who took on flesh can still come to you in the flesh and blood of the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper. God is real! He does real things in this real world. He’s not just a concept. He’s not just a belief. He’s an actual God who took on real flesh to deal with us in this real world. And it’s this God that lived in our world, healed our sick, raised our dead, went through death, and came back to life. If God is really this powerful and this merciful, then don’t you think He can still break through into our world and work miracles today? Should we live in fear when God is still alive and well? Should we live in hopelessness and doubt? Or should we live in faith that God is who He says He is and He will do what is GOOD for us - what will bring us to heaven? For nothing will be impossible for God. If NOTHING is impossible for God, then that also means that EVERYTHING IS POSSIBLE. He can work through weakness and death too, viruses and plagues.
We receive with humility and joy
Then Mary said, “See, I am the Lord’s servant. May it happen to me as you have said.” I know we don’t like to praise Mary too much because of what Catholicism has done with her, but nonetheless, this is an excellent response. You sense no fear in her voice: no more nervous questions. And she could have had all kinds of them, “How am I going to tell Joseph? How am I supposed to raise him?” None of that. The angel has come crashing into her world with what some would consider a very intrusive gift, that many in our world would want to ABORT, and she has WELCOMED what he had to say and God had to give. She was willing and happy to have God use her as the instrument through which God would come into our world to save us. She knew that whatever sacrifices she would have to make would pale in comparison to the opportunity to get to hold the perfect child, the holy Messiah, and the Savior of the world. God would work out the rest of the details.
Would to God that the Holy Spirit would develop such an attitude within us, May it happen to me as you have said. No selfishness. No holding back because you just don’t have time for Jesus or because He isn’t in your plans. The attitude of humble faith simply says to God, “May it be to me as you have said.” Make me willing to give up my wants and my goals. “Give me your life. I need it. I want it. Wash into my soul through my baptism. Enter into my body with your body and blood. Grow in me. Possess me. Become me. Change me. Take my life and let it be, consecrated Lord to thee. Take my moments and my days, let them flow in ceaseless praise.”
Gifts are sometimes hard to give. You don’t know what people want or need. You’re almost embarrassed to give it. Sometimes they are hard to receive too. Maybe pride gets in the way. . . . That pool didn’t end up being the worst gift in the world. I don’t really think it was worth it , but the kids had fun in it and I even floated in it a few times. Isn’t it great to give gifts to little kids? To see the excitement in their eyes: the eagerness to use the gift you’ve given them? I used to love those days!
Mary was given a huge gift from God. She had no choice. She was going to have a holy Child who would be the King and Savior of the world. Nonetheless, she was glad to receive it, and she had nine months to think about how wonderful it would be to give birth to this Messiah within her.
God grant us all the willing and thankful spirit of Advent, to think about what a wonderful gift we receive at Christmas: Christ in the flesh, in the manger, to the cross, from the grave, for us and our salvation. Amen.
