“God’s choice”
By Rev. Michael Stonhouse
Meditation – Saturday, March 25, 2023
Luke 1:26-38 (Forward, p. 55) CEV p. 1055
So, from this account of the angelic visitation to Mary, what do we know about Mary of Nazareth, the future mother of Jesus. There are two ‘groups’ of things that we might note:
a) The first is how God saw her. The angel told her immediately that she was ‘blessed’ and that ‘the Lord was with her’. Furthermore, he tells her that God is pleased with her.’ All of this is important and highly significant. This was an important starting point for their conversation, to know that God was aware of her, with her, and pleased with her. And then to know that God was intending to bless her. These. things alone would fuel her trust and give her greater confidence in what was subsequently to happen. Furthermore, that God had actually initiated the encounter, as it was widely supposed in those times that God had quit speaking to His people, would lead her to believe that some new and awesome was about to happen.
b) Then, there is Mary’s reaction to the angel, Gabriel. Her initial reaction is quite understandable. She is awestruck, puzzled, and not a little bit afraid, for Gabriel has to reassure her, “Don’t be afraid.” Surely from what we read elsewhere in the Scriptures, her response toward the angel was quite natural.
Interestingly, she isn’t so much taken aback by the prophecy of the angel in terms of her Son and what He would be as with the practicalities of the matter. “How can this be,” she asks, “seeing as I know not a man” (to quote the old King James Version.) (The Contemporary English Version glosses over this a bit by saying, “How can this happen? I’m not married.”) But Mary knows that there is more to having a baby than just that! The Good News Version is correct when it says, “I am a virgin. How, then, can this be?’ Here Mary is ever the practical one!
But then when the ‘how’ is explained to her, she takes it all in, no questions asked. I find this more than a bit bewildering and rather inexplicable: I mean how many people, how many women, are there out there that can claim to be pregnant ‘by the Holy Spirit’? Surely, this was—and is--unheard of, but Mary just accepts it. However, in her favour, there is a long Biblical tradition of God orchestrating unheard of, unexpected births (just think of Sarah, Hannah, Rachel and, most recently, her cousin Elizabeth, so maybe it isn’t quite a weird or unusual after all.
But there is one last thing to say about Mary: when she is then told that ‘nothing is impossible’ with God, she simply accepts it. “I am the Lord’s servant. Let it happen to me as you have said.” This says a great deal about her relationship with God and her trust in Him. Basically, she has given God ‘carte blanche’ to do whatever He wants to do with her life. I find this quite enheartening, and challenging, for I don’t know just many of us would be willing to do this. I find—here I speak from personal experience—that our response to God is not an unqualified ‘yes’, but a ‘yes, but’, a ‘yes’ with certain conditions and qualifiers. So, my prayer, my prayer for all of us, is “Lord, help me, help us, to say ‘yes.’ Amen.
Forward notes: “In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth” (verse 26).
“Why did God pick Mary? Perhaps it was because God knew her response: ‘Let it be with me according to your word.’ Mary gave herself to something that she could not fully apprehend, and she trusted.
“This reminds me of the twelve-step program, particularly the step about recognizing that we are powerless. If we apply this step to our lives of faith, then we come to acknowledge that we are powerless over most of our lives. We can, like Mary, offer ourselves up to God.”
Moving Forward: “Why do you think God picked Mary?”