Bible Study Notes: St Luke’s Gospel
Session 4 - Chapter 1 vv 26-38
In the sixth month of Elizabeth's pregnancy, God sent the
angel Gabriel to the Galilean village of Nazareth to a virgin engaged
to be married to a man descended from David. His name was Joseph, and
the virgin's name, Mary. Upon entering, Gabriel greeted her:
Good morning!
You're beautiful with God's beauty,
Beautiful inside and out!
God be with you.
She was thoroughly shaken, wondering what was behind a greeting like that.
But the angel assured her, "Mary, you have nothing to fear. God has
a surprise for you: You will become pregnant and give birth to a son and
call his name Jesus.
He will be great,
be called 'Son of the Highest.'
The Lord God will give him
the throne of his father David;
He will rule Jacob's house forever -
no end, ever, to his kingdom."
Mary said to the angel, "But how? I've never slept with a man."
The angel answered,
The Holy Spirit will come upon you,
the power of the Highest hover over you;
Therefore, the child you bring to birth
will be called Holy, Son of God.
"And did you know that your cousin Elizabeth conceived a son, old
as she is? Everyone called her barren, and here she is six months pregnant!
Nothing, you see, is impossible with God."
And Mary said,
Yes, I see it all now:
I'm the Lord's maid, ready to serve.
Let it be with me
just as you say.
Then the angel left her.
© The
Message
In our last session we were looking at the first of the hymns contained in Luke’s gospel and today we move to probably the most famous of the hymns contained in his gospel.
The archangel Gabriel had been along to the Temple to tell poor old dumbstruck Zechariah the news of his wife’s pregnancy and having completely turned his and his wife’s life upside down with the news and having prefaced it with a, ‘don’t worry’ he proceeds to drop in on Mary.
Mary of Nazareth is a young virgin girl engaged to Joseph, bachelor of the parish of Nazareth and carpenter. Gabriel immediately opens the visit with another, ‘don’t worry’ and yet more comforting words and he tells her that she is the highly favoured one, beautiful inside and out! Someone who God is really comfortable with.
What an accolade, I wonder how we would feel if someone came and told us that’s how God feels about us? Well, the great thing is that is how God feels about us!!
We can see that this apparition troubles her, but scares her! But it was these words about her special status before God that caused her special concern.
It was not that Mary lacked confidence or had low self-esteem, as we would say today. Mary possessed a strong sense of self. The angel did not make her fearful, as such. It was her down-to-earth humility that unsettled her. Her honest assessment of herself saw how great a love of God, self and others she really wished to attain. God’s special affirmation of her dignity surprised her; it was all so sudden. What could it mean?
Gabriel, ever the perceptive one, perceived Mary’s disquiet and strove to put her at ease. The angel told her she would conceive and bear a child whose name was to be Jesus. The Son of the most highest who will rule over the house of David and whose Kingdom will last for ever.
An enormous amount for anyone to take in and absorb. But it is from her knowledge of scripture that she is able to understand the angel’s references to the Messianic promises. Moreover, there would have been plenty of Messiah talk in the air, both in the local synagogue and amongst her neighbours. Given the Roman occupation and the promises of the prophecies she would have been familiar with.
She understood what the angel was saying to her; she appreciated the fact that Gabriel presented her with two astonishing revelations at once. She was about to conceive a son, immediately and that boy would grow up to be the Messiah. Such an unlikely story.
Like Zechariah she is more than intrigued and questions the angel, understandable under the circumstances. But just look at the facts, what do we know about Mary?
She was betrothed. She had had no sexual relationship with him. Her question, however was very different from that of Zechariah’s. I wonder if you might think why?
Zechariah’s question arose from an arrested faith that needed a challenge to kick-start it. Luke will tell us soon that voice of prophecy was silent, they, the church people, had grown weary waiting for God to act. Their faith had lost its hope.
Mary, by contrast, had a faith that could be said to be in progress. She was looking forward eagerly to something.
Gabriel told her the Holy Spirit would cause this conception. The child would be called the Son of God. He also told her the good news about her cousin Elizabeth.
The interesting thing is the way in which the ‘offer’ is made and how it is received and responded to. St Bernard of Clairvaux, one of the great teachers of the faith, writing in the 13th century, has written a lovely homily on this incident and I have printed copies of this for you. (See appendix 1)
The point he is making is that love cannot be commanded. Love on demand is force, not affection. God has issued Mary an invitation and now even God must await an answer. It is in this silence that Mary gathered up her whole soul for a response, so perhaps we might pause here and read St Bernard.
I believe that what we see here is a response from Mary that required an answer from the deepest part of her faith life. It must be as harmonious as faith and love. As the answer emerges from her lips, it comes from her heart. The ‘let it be done’ is a creation like expression, and so in a sense Mary becomes our mother in faith just as Abraham was a father in faith. She is to give birth to the Saviour and founder of a new people of God. Never has faith been more creative or a faith surrender meant so much.
© Fr Michael Fuller: November 2007