Jesus (6 page)

T
HE
G
OSPEL
OF
L
UKE
moves swiftly to introduce the protagonist of the story: Jesus of Nazareth. After a short prelude telling his readers that he plans to set forth an “orderly account” of the “events that have been fulfilled among us,” Luke begins his Gospel with the announcement of the birth of John the Baptist.

Zechariah is fulfilling his priestly duties in the Temple in Jerusalem when the Angel Gabriel appears to announce that his wife, Elizabeth, an elderly woman thought incapable of conceiving, will bear a son. The couple, says Gabriel, are to name the baby John.

Not surprisingly, Zechariah doubts. “How will I know that this is so?” For his doubting, he is struck dumb until the child is born. Elizabeth then remains “in seclusion” for five months.
⁶

About a half a year later, something even more extraordinary happens. “In the sixth month,” Luke says, “the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth.”

With that dramatic sentence Luke tells us not only that the angel (the Greek word is
angelos
, meaning “messenger”) was sent by God, but also that he was sent to a particular place. Luke is greatly concerned with history; his Gospel will pinpoint towns and cities and months and Jewish festivals and which rulers were in charge, to ground his account in time and place. For anyone who imagines God as far above something as banal as human history, here is God choosing a particular time (the sixth month), a particular location (Nazareth), and a particular person (Mary). Theologians call this the “scandal of particularity.”

The angel comes to a woman named Mary, who is betrothed to Joseph. Betrothal was a formal agreement to marry that lasted for a year. The woman involved was usually quite young, sometimes in her late teens.
⁷
But it was a binding contract. Thus, Mary would have been seen for all practical purposes as Joseph's wife.
⁸
This is why, later on, when Joseph discovers that Mary is pregnant, he would be well within his rights to divorce her. Luke also tells us that Joseph was of the line of David.

The angel's words to the young woman may be the most famous greeting in the New Testament.
Chaire, kecharitōmenē
is the Greek,
⁹
usually rendered “Hail, full of grace” or, in an unfortunate translation, “Greetings, favored one,” which sounds like the first words of an alien newly landed on earth. It may be impossible to replicate the beautiful alliteration of the Greek, but one reference book provides a lovely series of possible explanations of how the angel addresses Mary: “endowed with grace, dearly loved, endued with divine grace.”
¹⁰
The tense used indicates that Mary has
already
been gifted. It is not the angel's visit that confers grace; God has done this. Though Mary holds no great position like Zechariah, and though she is most likely poor, and though as an unmarried woman she occupies a lowly state in society, God loves her—lavishly.

Mary is the forerunner of all those in the Christian life who will be judged by human standards as unworthy of God's grace. But God has other ideas.

“The Lord is with you,” the angel continues.

It is not surprising that Mary is surprised, utterly confused, or, in some translations, terrified. Encounters with the divine often engender fear. Sensing her reaction, the angel says, “Do not be afraid, Mary.”

The angel explains that she will bear a son. The boy will be called Jesus (
Iēsous
in Greek). The Hebrew name—Yeshua—was common at the time, a shortened form of Joshua (Yehoshua), the successor to Moses. The name means “God helps” or “God saves.”

In
A Marginal Jew
, his magisterial study of the historical Jesus, the Reverend John P. Meier, professor of New Testament at Notre Dame, notes that for most of the period covered by the Old Testament, Israelites were
not
named after the great patriarchs and matriarchs. But a century or two before Jesus, there came an upsurge in “native-religious” feeling in Palestine. That Jesus's mother and her husband bear names from the Old Testament (Miriam and Joseph) may indicate that he was born into a family who participated in the desire for a reawakening, or reaffirmation, of Jewish identity under Roman rule.
¹¹

Mary's child will be “Son of the Most High,” says the angel. (Later in Luke's Gospel, a ranting demoniac will identify him with a similar title.
¹²
) He will inherit the throne of his ancestor David and will rule over the house of Jacob. “Of his kingdom,” Mary is told, “there will be no end.”

But the young woman is less concerned with what her son will do than with something more immediate: the pregnancy. So she asks the angel plainly, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?”

When Zechariah questions how the birth of his son would be accomplished, the angel offers an explanation but also strikes him dumb, as if punishing him for doubting. The angel treats Mary more gently, offering a mysterious explanation: the Holy Spirit will “overshadow” her. The angel again emphasizes the significance of her child: “He will be called Son of God.”

Then the angel further reassures her. If Mary questions, she can look to Zechariah's wife, Elizabeth, who is Mary's cousin. “This is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren,” says the angel. (The reader already knows this.) Finally comes one of the clearest biblical affirmations of God's power: “For nothing will be impossible with God.”

Mary decides. “Here am I, the servant of the Lord,” she says. The Greek word is
doulē
, or slave. “Let it be with me according to your word.” With that the angel leaves her.

T
HE STORY OF THE
Annunciation never fails to move me. And for many years I wondered what drew me to this particular Gospel story. Is it the irruption of the extraordinary into an ordinary woman's daily life? Is it how a single decision—Mary's yes—changes history? Is it how God chooses the unlikeliest people to accomplish God's desires for the world?

All of those things speak to me, as well as something more personal. For the more I reflect on this passage, the more the story appears to encapsulate the progress of a person's relationship with God. What happens to Mary happens to us.

First of all, the initiative lies entirely with God. God begins the conversation with Mary, as God does with us, breaking into our lives in unexpected ways. We find ourselves touched by a Scripture reading, moved to tears by a friend's comforting words during a confusing time, or befuddled by joy at a glimpse of autumn leaves shining in the late afternoon sun. And we think,
Why am I feeling these feelings of longing, gratitude, wonder?

This is God beginning a conversation. And when we realize that this might be God's voice, what happens? Sometimes we're grateful. But just as often we're fearful—like Mary.

Fear is a common reaction to the divine. When one realizes that it is
God
who might be drawing near, we instinctively withdraw. Thinking about the Creator of the Universe entering into the “particularity” of our lives can be terrifying. Sometimes on retreat, when I feel that I've suddenly received an answer to a long-standing problem or been given an insight that seems to have originated from outside me (as in “There's no way I could have come up with that on my own”), I grow frightened or, as one translation describes Mary, “greatly disturbed.” God is paying attention to us. How could that not frighten?

We may also struggle with the notion of God's paying attention to us in our littleness, in other words, “Who,
me
?” It may be hard for modern-day believers to appreciate this aspect of Mary's life, particularly when conditioned by the kinds of images of Mary that decorate the Basilica of the Annunciation—ten-foot-high mosaics of a strong, proud woman—but we must remember who Miriam of Nazareth was. First, she was a woman. Second, she was young. Third, she was most likely poor and living in an insignificant town. Finally, she was a Jew living in a land ultimately ruled by the Roman Empire. Taken together, Mary can be seen as a figure with little power. For a more contemporary image, think of God's appearing to a young girl in a small village in Africa.

The angel gently counsels her to set this aside: “Do not be afraid, Mary.” Among the first words Mary hears are ones that her son will frequently use in his ministry, as when he walks on water in full view of the terrified disciples. Perhaps Mary shared her own experiences with Jesus. Why wouldn't she? Who knows if Mary repeated the angel's calming words to a frightened boy, a confused adolescent, or a worried adult: “Do not be afraid, Jesus.”

The angel then explains things for her. Again, as in our own lives. Take the example of a young person from an affluent background who hears a call to a different way of life. Naturally, it's not as dramatic as Mary's encounter, but it is an encounter with grace all the same. Imagine a college professor inviting you to consider working among the poor in the developing world. You're initially stunned—“
Me?
”—but you also intuit a sense of God's voice in the invitation. After the initial shock wears off, the professor describes what life overseas will be like. You'll be living in a remote village; you'll have to learn a new language; you'll be separated from your friends and family; but your encounters with those living in poverty, she says, will transform you. This is what the angel does for Mary once she surmounts her alarm: he helps her discern.

At this point, along with Mary, you would probably ask, “How can this be?” This may be the facet of Mary's life that intersects most with our own. We feel inadequate to what God seems to be asking—even if we are sure that it is God who is asking. This happens not only with an invitation to something wonderfully new and exciting, but also with a sudden turn of events that darkens life. An illness. The loss of a job. A ruptured friendship. Who hasn't said, “How can this be?”

A few years ago, my father was diagnosed with lung cancer. When I heard the news from my mother over the phone, I was seized with fear. By then in my forties, I knew friends who had accompanied their parents during a terminal illness and I could see the future: sorrowful hospital visits, painful conversations, monumental feelings of fear and loss. And finally the terrible reality of seeing my father suffer and die. I knew that God was asking me to accept this, but I wanted to say, “How can this be? How can I do this?” Mary asks the same questions.

In response the angel is considerate. Gabriel doesn't threaten her for the insolence of asking a question or burden her with a physical malady for speaking up, as he did with Zechariah.
¹³

Instead, the angel simply asks her to look around. “And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren.” Sometimes this verse is interpreted as the angel's revealing something unknown to Mary: “Here's a secret—Elizabeth is pregnant.” But it's just as likely that Mary, Elizabeth's cousin, would already have heard the astonishing news of the elderly woman's pregnancy. To my mind, the angel is saying: “You have doubts about what God will do? Then just look at what God has already done.” Looking backward helps Mary to look forward. Awareness leads to trust.

Frequently I meet with people struggling with devastating news. During those times even the most devout can begin to doubt God's presence. But often what helps them to regain trust is a simple question: “Has God been with you in difficult times in the past?”

In the same way that the angel reorients Mary by pointing to what has already happened, a friend can invite us to remember. “Were there times in the past,” a friend might ask, “when you felt like things were confusing, but where you can now see God's hand?” And often we will pause and say, “Now that you mention it, when I thought I couldn't possibly go on, I found that something or someone helped me to face my difficulties. God was with me.” Memories of God's activity in the past enable us to embrace the future.

Newly confident, Mary says yes. Notice that she does so in absolute freedom. No one coerces her. And she was free to say no. Mary also makes her decision without appealing to a man. She doesn't ask Joseph for permission. Nor does she tell the angel that she must consult with her father. The young woman living in a patriarchal time makes a decision about the coming king. Someone with little power agrees to bring the powerful one into the world: “Let it be with me according to your word.”

A close friend recently told me how important this passage has been to her as a mother. She prays with Denise Levertov's poem “The Annunciation” every week, she said. The poem reads, in part:

My friend told me, “Both the Gospel passage and the poem remind me to consent with grace and courage in a
physical
way to the presence of God in my life.” This reality was made clearer to her after giving birth to her two children. “I can't emphasize how important this freedom to respond to God is in my life, and to do so bodily only heightened this.”

With God's help the world is poised for something new, something that even Mary may not be able to understand fully, perhaps until the Resurrection. Remember that Mary was told that her son would be the Son of God, not that he would be tortured, put to death on a cross, and then rise from the dead. Mary says yes to a future that she does not know. She is an example of letting God do God's work, without trying to figure it out.

When we say yes to God, we are usually surprised by the results. We say “I do” during a wedding and receive blessings far beyond what we could have imagined. We accept a position as a teacher and our lives are changed by our students. More simply, we say yes to God and are completely transformed.