Mary gave birth to Jesus; now it’s our turn!
Originally posted at kingdom.blog
This is the first year in quite a while that I won’t be having the opportunity to share any sort of Christmas message in my church. I thought instead though that I would blog one! To be honest, I haven’t spent a huge amount of time yet meditating on the Scriptures that we typically look at over the Christmas period, but I did enjoy hearing my friend Daniel speak on Luke 1:26-38 this last Sunday evening. And it was during his message that I found myself creating a kind of spin off message, triggered by his talk. (Is it just preachers who do that when listening to other people preach?!)
Anyway, let’s start by taking a look at this passage from Luke:
26 In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, 27 to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. 28 The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favoured! The Lord is with you.”
29 Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. 30 But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favour with God. 31 You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, 33 and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end.”
34 “How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”
35 The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. 36 Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. 37 For no word from God will ever fail.”
38 “I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May it be to me according to your word.” Then the angel left her.
Having just shared that passage, I want to say at the outset that it is not my intention to delve hugely into that and do some 5000 word exposition. I thought instead I’d just share the thoughts that that triggered in my mind as this passage was read out on Sunday and expounded by Daniel.
Essentially, as soon as I heard this passage, I couldn’t stop thinking of the verses in Luke 18 which say: 16 But Jesus called the children to him and said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. 17 Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” It seemed like God was trying to say to me that Mary’s story was a picture to the rest of us how we enter the kingdom like a child. (Most scholars agree that it is highly probable that Mary may have been somewhere between the age of 12 and 14 when this all happened.)
I have always been amazed by Mary’s response to what must have been the most confusing and freakish moment of her (or anyone’s) life. Sometimes we read these passages as nice, sweet Christmas Bible stories, but let’s be honest; this is extremely odd! How would you react to being told you’d have a baby as a result of God ‘overshadowing’ you?! This is NOT normal. She is probably scared out of her wits; maybe even physically shaking. Her mind was almost certainly filled with doubts, questions, and uncertainties. And if she stopped to think even for a minute about the consequences in her culture of giving birth to a child not conceived with her husband-to-be, she’d have been petrified. But look at the boldness and simplicity of her response: May it be to me according to your word. Amazing! Such a simple trust in God. She wasn’t saying she understood everything. And she certainly wasn’t saying that she wasn’t afraid. But she had enough of a child like faith to simply trust in God. We have so much to learn from this child, Mary!
I am sure most of us can see the link with Mary’s story here and the new birth into God’s kingdom that we are all invited into as a result Jesus’ birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension. And isn’t the invitation into God’s kingdom equally odd to what Mary was asked to do? We become so familiar with terms like ‘born again’, but again, let’s be honest, that IS odd! Mary is asked to give birth to a child of God and we are invited to be ‘born again’. You what?! But this is the nature of the kingdom. It doesn’t make sense a lot of time. It isn’t ‘normal’. And this is why we cannot receive the kingdom of God unless we come with the simple trust of a child.
It is important to note that both Mary’s conception and our new birth is just the start. It is the beginning and not an end in itself. We would all know that something had gone very wrong if Mary was pregnant with Jesus but never gave birth to Him. Sadly though, the equivalent this seems to happen a lot when people are ‘born again’. We seem to have made this the goal. But the goal is never to be ‘born again’; the goal is to enter the kingdom now and live the life that Jesus would if He was in our shoes here on earth. There is a sense in which, having become ‘pregnant with Jesus’, we too need to give birth. And if we don’t give birth, something has clearly gone wrong.
I probably need to break that down and explain what I mean! Ok, so Mary becomes pregnant with Jesus by the Holy Spirit and then, after nine months, births the baby who will eventually change the world and bring hope and salvation. That much I am sure most of us are familiar with. But the point I am trying to make is that, as I see it, the story is the same for each one us. God comes and makes His home in us and then births out of us something that will continue the work of Jesus in changing the world and bringing hope and salvation.
I truly believe that each and every one of us is called in our own unique way to change the world. And that starts of course with we ourselves being changed. But God wants to go beyond this and further His kingdom through us. The time of pregnancy is the time where we ourselves are changed, but the point has to come where the growing on the inside of us has to result in something coming out. The blessing we have received has to be passed on and shared. God has placed dreams and visions with us all and, like Mary, we need to give birth to them.
So this Christmas, when we think about Mary giving birth to Jesus, let us also think about what God is wanting to birth through us. By the Holy Spirit we, like Mary, have Christ within us. And we, like Mary, need to - in a different sense - give birth to Christ. And we do this when we choose to let Him live His life through us. When we choose to become His apprentices. When we capture His heart for this world and become His hands, feet, voice, etc. And we do this too when we grab a hold of the dreams and visions He has placed within us and commit to seeing them come to pass.
Don’t settle for an ordinary life when you can have an extraordinary one!
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