Throughout the Advent season, we have been reflecting on the stories of the women who showed up in the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel. These ancestresses of Jesus affected his life and his character in important and profound ways. We reflected on the faith of Tamar, the hope of Rahab, the love of Ruth, and the peace of Bathsheba. And so, on this day when we celebrate the birth of Jesus, I want to continue in the theme and look at the final woman mentioned in Matthew’s genealogy, Mary, whose husband was Joseph, through whose lineage Jesus is connected to David and Abraham. Now, you may think this a bit of an unorthodox choice to not focus on Jesus on Christmas Eve. But if you think about it, the guy gets to be the focus of pretty much every other sermon throughout the whole rest of the year, so on this day of his birth, who better to talk about than the woman who birthed him.
The theme word for today is “joy,” which at first seems like low-hanging fruit after some of the theological gymnastics we’ve had to go through to make some of the previous words fit. Remember the faith of Tamar or the peace of Bathsheba, those weren’t the easiest. But today, on Christmas Eve, on the eve of the birth of Jesus the newborn king, we have joy. What could be more fitting than that?
Except, remember this evening we’re focusing not on Jesus but on Mary. And, don’t get me wrong, I love babies as much as the next person, especially if those babies go home and wake up somebody else, but there are a lot of reasons why the pronouncement of the arrival of a baby did not immediately fill Mary with a sense of joy. Mary is barely more than a baby herself. People married early in those days, she is possibly as young as fourteen. Her engagement to Joseph was probably arranged by her father, as was the custom at that time. Following the announcement of an engagement, the bride-to-be would remain with her parents for up to a year until the groom would come for the marriage celebration. That period of engagement was as legally binding as a wedding, but because they were not yet married, there would have been no question from the community that the child Mary carried was not the child of Joseph.
So when the angel showed up and told Mary, hey, guess what, you’re going to have a baby, her initial response would probably not have been, “oh yay, a baby!” It would have more likely been worry, fear, even shame. Having a child out of wedlock can cause raised eyebrows even today, imagine the judgment this pregnancy would have inflicted on Mary. The Law of Moses is very clear about its stance on adultery. While first century rabbis had begun to back off on the punishment of stoning unwed mothers, society’s ability to throw verbal stones was still in full effect. The looks, the shrugs, the turned away glances and whispers under breath, all this and more, Mary heard foretold in the angel’s words. This unasked for, unanticipated, infant may someday shake the very foundations of the earth, but first it was going to turn Mary’s life upside down.
And fear was Mary’s first response. The translation of verse twenty-nine tames it, calling her response “perplexed,” but the Greek is not so gentle. There is a Hebrew folk tale about a jealous angel who sabotaged a woman’s wedding by killing her bridegroom again and again, what ill will did this unanticipated visitor mean for Mary?
The angel was quick to assuage her fears, “Greetings favored one! The Lord is with you.” And here is the real miracle of this story, maybe more miraculous than the birth itself. Mary believed the angel’s judgment of her. When the angel called Mary the favored one of God, Mary clung to that word, and not the words of all those competing voices, who would cast judgment and hatred and shame. Mary believed the pronouncement of the angel, and responded to him, “Let it be with me according to your word.”
This single-minded ability to drown out all of the competing voices of a judgmental world and focus only on the voice of God is a characteristic that Jesus also had, and that I think he inherited from his mother. Jesus certainly heard judgmental voices throughout his ministry. Voices of religious leaders accosting him for healing on the Sabbath, for eating with the “wrong” sorts of people, for not conforming to their expectation for how a Messiah should act. Voices of Roman authorities, mocking this upstart Galilean who thought he could take on the power of the One Roman Empire. Voices of thieves and soldiers mocking, “he saved others, let him save himself.” Voices of his own followers, questioning his teachings on the purpose of his mission. All these competing voices, yet the only one that seemed to shaped Jesus was the words uttered at his baptism, “You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.”
I think part of the reason Jesus was so easily able to shake off the competing judgments and focus only on the judgment of God, was because he was raised by a woman who knew from her own experience that only the voice of God mattered, and who raised her son to know who he was, and whose he was. And that quiet assurance brings joy, not fleeting happiness, but the deep-seated confident joy that who you are is exactly who God wants you to be, that you are God’s beloved, God’s favored, and you, as you are, is enough for God. This is a stabilizing promise that holds fast through terror and happiness, through fear and amazement. The same assurance that got Mary through nine months of judgment and mumbling, was the assurance that when the shepherds burst in shouting of the amazing words of the heavenly host, and all around were amazed, led Mary not to be swept up in the hubbub, but to treasure their words and ponder them in her heart, to hold onto this promise for the days she would really need them, the days when the judgments of the world where not so warm and fuzzy.
May this be the joy that fills you this Christmas season. Joy in the promise that you are the favored one of God, and that to you has been born, this day, in the city of David, a savior who is the Messiah, the Lord. May every other competing voice, every voice of judgment or condemnation, every voice of question or doubt or fear, every voice that says you are not enough, that this is not for you, may all those voices fall silent in the promise made this night. Because the joy of Mary is the promise of this pronouncement, “Greetings, favored one. The Lord is with you.” May you internalize this promise, and may your heart respond in kind, “Let it be with me according to your word.” Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment