A Sermon on Luke 1: 26-38
It's been a habit for me since I was very young, every time I moved to a new church, school, or city, to find a choir to join. If you are ever looking for a way to connect socially, I highly recommend this strategy, because it has resulted in some of my best and most lasting friendships. In fact, this habit is so well engrained in me that even by sixth grade I was already utilizing the choir strategy to make friends after moving to a new school. That year, we were slated to participate in a big statewide choir festival, and the song chosen for us was the classic, frequently lambasted “Mary, Did You Know?” This song begins “Mary, did you know that your baby boy would one day walk on water? Mary, did you know that your baby boy would save our sons and daughters? Did you know that your baby boy has come to make you new?” The chorus then repeats about 600 times “Mary, did you know?” Contrary to popular belief about the bewildered and meek response of a fair, mild mannered, subservient maiden, Mary did, in fact know. And she was skeptical as all get out.
Although I deeply love many of our classic Christmas hymns and songs, including the number one mansplaining hit of the century, much of our popular portrayals of Mary paint her as a silent, passive recipient of the angel's news. Images depict her unrealistically fair face turned down in humility, gaze averted, or cast down upon her silent, sleeping infant, who is somehow miraculously not covered in vernix or spit up. We never see depictions of an absolutely flabbergasted and overwhelmed Mary, or a concerned and tense Joseph, or a screaming newborn searching for a breast that hasn't yet started producing milk. We so often portray only the most beautiful and ideal parts of the Christmas story without hardly touching on the complex emotions and reactions these people are having to this absolutely bonkers situation. It turns out that rather than being quiet and accepting of the news, Mary was skeptical from the moment the angel appeared. The translation we are using says that Mary was “perplexed” but the Greek word here is actually more accurately translated as “greatly troubled”. So here is Mary, a young woman from a little town who is minding her own business doing whatever it is young unmarried ladies do, probably some kind of hard work, and she is interrupted by an angel appearing before her. The angel barely gets out an intro and already Mary is greatly troubled and trying to understand what the heck is going on.
Clearly, the angel can read the look on her face, and says “Do not be afraid” which is a standard angel greeting because biblical angels are actually kind of horrifying, and then he gives her a lengthy list of things that are going to happen. He tells her 1.) you have found favor with God 2.) you, an unmarried virgin, will conceive a son and by the way throw out your baby name book because you will call him Jesus, and 3.) he will be great, and will be the Son of the Most High, and 4.) he will be the fulfillment of the promise God made to David that your people have been waiting for for centuries. She blinks slowly, her jaw dropping...
So Mary's eyes are crossing and her eyebrows have just shot up to her hairline and she has six thousand questions. First of all, what? How have I, of all people, found favor with God? And also why is this happening? And also excuse me, did you just tell me that my son will be the one foretold who will free Israel? That he will be literally God? That he is going to free us from the empire that oppresses us? And that this reign will continue forever? Ummm... But in light of all of this extensive information the question that pops out of her mouth is, look I know where babies come from and there is something missing from this equation. So she settles on the most pressing issue. We often read it in a tone that gently, delicately says “how can this be for I am a virgin?” but if it were me, it would sound more like “HOW can this BE?! For I am a virgin!!”
To understand exactly how scary this must have been, you have to know a little bit about the context of the world this is happening in. Mary was very likely quite young, somewhere between 12 and 16 years old based upon the traditions of the time. She was a girl, which meant that in terms of economic security, most of her value came from her ability to reliably produce heirs that were certain to be biologically the sons of her husband. Turning up several months pregnant before she had even possibly met her husband would significantly impact her prospects. At best, she would be quietly folded back into her family, her betrothal broken. At worst, she would be expelled from her family and left to fend for herself. This good news of great joy probably sounded an awful lot like will I die a sex worker or pretending my first born is actually my little brother? Not just “how can this be?” but also “why is this happening to me?” and maybe a little bit of “can you please find favor with somebody else?”
The angel continues... “The Holy Spirit will come upon you and your child will be the Son of God.” I suspect that contrary to the song, Mary did actually grasp the magnitude of this statement. She was a descendent of David, as I'm sure she knew. She would also have known of the Messianic prophecies stating that a ruler greater than David would come, and what that truly meant. For centuries, her people had been overtaken by large empires: the babylonians, assyrians, and now the Romans. She would have known of the promise given to Abraham that her people would be great and numerous as the stars, and she would have learned all about the revered king David and what he did for Israel with God on his side, and yet the people had again succumbed to the rule of empire, and here was an angel standing in front of Mary telling her that the child she was to bear would be the Son of God, which could only mean one thing: that the government will rest upon his shoulders; that he will gather up the diaspora of Judah and unite them; that he will rule over them in wisdom and truth; that he will be the chief cornerstone; that he will be bruised for our inequities and that by his wounds all people would be healed. Mary, did you know?
The angel goes on to explain that Mary's cousin Elizabeth has also conceived a child despite having been assumed to be unable to conceive. Then the angel ends this pronouncement by saying “nothing is impossible with God.” What a comprehensive statement that is. When I read this story, I think of all the times in my life that my world was completely upended and the amount of kicking and screaming I did about it. All of us has a story in our head about how this life thing should go. Maybe the story is that we should make a certain amount of money, or marry a certain type of person, or have a certain kind of family, or that we will have certain career paths open to us, that we will be able bodied, that we will be quiet and not make waves, or that people will see us in a certain way.
We all sort of pre-write our stories based on society's expectations, or our hopes, or what sounds fun or easy or manageable, and I have to say I don't know anybody whose life has gone as they expect. We don't expect to lose a job. We don't expect to lose a loved one. We don't expect cancer. We don't expect to never meet “the one.” We don't expect to be a refugee, or a prisoner, an outcast, a killer, or one who has betrayed or been betrayed by another. Mary's story of marrying a nice Jewish fellow and having a couple of very ordinary children was just thrown out the window, and I think it's important to really think about how disorienting this all must have felt to her, even though in theory she was being given a great gift.
In my experience, we sometimes even rail against the good things presented to us, because they feel like too much, or too hard, or like I am not the right person for the job. Moses argued with God about his calling; Jonah hopped on a boat and ended up becoming fish vomit, a story I very much identify with. Mary, this woman from a nowhere town amongst a nobody people in the midst of a vast empire was faced with the call of the Lord, and right when any sane person would start packing a bag to assume a new name in a new town and get out of this insane situation, the angel assures her that her cousin and friend Elizabeth is also in an unexpectedly miraculous situation, and that with God it isn't all so impossible.
I imagine her sitting for a long time. The Bible never tells us how long these reactions take, but I am imagining a long, forgive me for saying it, pregnant pause. And then she takes a deep, shaky breath, and swallows hard, and somehow, with the courage of ten thousand warriors, this little brand new adult in this little place accepts the call, saying, “Here I am.” Here I am, Lord, I will take it as it comes. Here I am, willing to be your vessel. Here I am, willing to have my future absolutely shift under my feet. Here I am, Lord, send me.
An anecdote I have probably shared before is that moments after waking up in agonizing pain from my first cancer surgery, I opened my eyes and blearily saw the name tag of the nurse taking care of me. It said Emmanuel. And in that moment I knew there was hope. I knew that whatever this mission was that God had handed me, the power of the Holy Spirit and the presence of God would be made known to me; the impossible would become possible somehow. We all glimpse our own mini annunciations, through scripture, through the love of our communities, through the words of wise people, and sometimes, for the less subtle of us, through a name badge smacking us in the face.
The story of God with us is the promise that in light of the overwhelming realities of this world: all the tragedy and ugliness and brokenness, and grief; that in the face of the impossible, insurmountable odds, the callings and paths we walk even when we don't want to, we hear this incredible, outrageous, terrifying news that we have been given this child, this prince of peace, the one who will redeem, the one who calls us beloved; the one that calls us from now to not yet. And because he came, we will never be alone. I think Mary DID know. I believe she fully grasped the implications of the angel's appearance, and that is why she was perplexed, or greatly troubled, why she pondered and questioned. And yet, in the end she accepted that this absolutely wild situation would and could be okay, because she wasn't alone. Emmanuel means “God with us.” Here I am, Lord, may it be according to your will. Amen.
