What Would You Do?

What would you do

Luke 1:25 – 38

Rev. Dr. Michael H Koplitz

(A sermon based on the annunciation of Mary)

The passage that we have here from Luke’s gospel is called the annunciation of Mary. It is when the angel Gabriel came to Mary in the town of Nazareth to announce that she was going to have a child and that the long-awaited Messiah would be that child. This story of Mary's annunciation contains many theological points, and perhaps the author wrote certain parts in this way to draw attention to the events that were unfolding. There is significance to each part of the story and the words that the angel Gabriel said to Mary.

For example, there are two mentions of the number six. In the Bible, the number six refers to the days of creation. In the book of Genesis, God created the universe in six days and on the seventh day, he rested. Therefore, one could see that Mary was told that her baby was a part of that original creation. Jewish and Christian mysticism says that God would send himself as the Messiah to the earth at the proper time and that this was determined at the time of creation. The Zohar, which is the mystical books of Judaism, speaks about the need for the forgiveness of sin which God sewed into the fabric of the universe. Jesus' birth was the announcement that God had sent the Messiah to repair the fabric of the universe, which was torn apart by human sin. Therefore, the announcement to Mary is quite important.

So, Mary became the mother of God. This is a term that is very endearing in the Greek Orthodox Church and should be in the Catholic and Protestant churches as well. Catholicism and orthodoxy hold Mary in high esteem, but Protestantism does not hold her in as high regard. The reason for this is that when the Protestant breakup occurred, Martin Luther wanted nothing to do with Catholicism. Throughout the centuries, Protestants have looked upon Catholic rituals with disdain.

For example, when I started my ministry, I was an associate pastor. At the beginning of Lent, on Ash Wednesday, I used a medieval Catholic ritual which talked about the heart of Jesus and Mary. It was a beautiful ritual, and the people in the congregation enjoyed it. However, when the worship concluded, the senior pastor pulled me into his office to verbally berate me for using a Catholic ritual, particularly the ritual of the heart of Jesus. Just because one is Protestant does not mean that you cannot appreciate the beautiful liturgies, especially of the medieval period that came out of the Catholic Church. It is not sacrilegious to God. The senior pastor in this case was 100% wrong, but I could never convince him of that. It just wasn’t worth the effort. Somehow, he forgot the fact that all Christians of all denominations worship the same God and believe in the power of forgiveness through Jesus Christ. What a shame for him and the congregations that he served. Luckily, now he’s retired from the ministry.

So, the angel Gabriel appears to Virgin Mary in the town of Nazareth and delivers the message that God is favoring her, and she is going to bear a child. As the narrative says, this surprised Mary. Why was she so upset by it? An old folktale, which you can find in a book called Tobit in the Apocrypha or a Catholic Bible, is related to this. When Martin Luther translated the Old Testament from Hebrew to German, he chose not to include any books that he couldn't find in Hebrew. We have lost any books written in Hebrew that may have been included in the Apocrypha, which comprises several books written in Aramaic and possibly in Hebrew. Therefore, Luther made the decision in his new Protestant Bible to exclude those books. In the Apocrypha, you will find several wonderful stories and folktales that are certainly worth reading, but are nevertheless not inspired or considered the Word of God. In fact in the book of Tobit we learn about the idea that giving alms can grant atonement for sin.

I bring up the details in Tobit because there is a tale about an angel who visited a woman and every time that she was about to get married and killed her husband. We would have to read the story in the book of Tobit to get more information about why this happened. However, the tales of Tobit were being told to the Jews, this one especially to young women. Therefore, when Mary saw an angel before her and the angel acknowledged he was an angel, she became scared. Why? She and Joseph were betrothed. The fear that she had was that the angel Gabriel was there to tell her she would not marry Joseph because he was going to kill him. Therefore, Mary’s fright is cultural and very understandable.