Servant of the Lord
December 7th, 2020
In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.”
Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. 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, and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”
“How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”
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. 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. For no word from God will ever fail.”
“I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled.” Then the angel left her.
Luke 1:26-38, NIV
Mary was a teenager from a no-account town in the countryside. She had no special qualifications. She wasn’t powerful, or rich, or overtly pious. She was scared. When the angel appeared and greeted her as “highly favored” and “blessed among women” she was, very sensibly, scared.
I’m sure the angel’s subsequent explanation did nothing to make her less scared. Mary was hoping for Messiah to come, to bring healing and justice to the people of Israel. But it’s one thing to hope God will bring liberation and quite another to find out you’re going to have a central part in the drama. Filling the role God has prepared for her will take courage. The courage to be a mother, but extra courage too, since God’s calling will expose her to judgment by her community as an unwed mother.
Mary asks how this is going to take place. The angel’s response, “With God, nothing shall be impossible”, reminds us that God is the God of the promise. These are the same words he spoke to Sarah (and Abraham) when he promised that a barren woman would bear a son through whom God would establish a great nation. Now there is going to be another impossible pregnancy. Now the coming of Jesus will (re-)establish God’s Kingdom.
God has prepared the path for Mary to follow, but he does not compel Mary to follow it. I don’t know what would’ve happened if Mary hadn’t responded “I am the servant of the Lord”, but what’s important is that that is how she responded. “With God, nothing shall be impossible”, but God still needs us to respond as his servants if his Kingdom is to come.
God chose an unwed teenage girl from the backwoods of a backwater of the Roman Empire to bring the hope of the world into the world. Only Mary got to bear the child Jesus. But God is capable of birthing Jesus in all of us. Even if we say and think that that’s what we want it’ll be scary and strange. It’ll certainly be disruptive. But if we respond to God’s calling “Let it be unto me according to thy word” then God will work in us and through us to bring his Kingdom to our lives and the lives of those around us.
Prayer: “I am the Lord’s servant. Let it be to me according to thy word.”
Daniel Phillips
