Please turn within your Bibles to the Gospel of Luke, chapter one, beginning at verse 26. Luke writes, ‘In the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary.’
And he came to her and said, ‘Greetings, oh favored one! The Lord is with you.’ But she was greatly troubled at the saying and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be.
And the angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.’
And Mary said to the angel, ‘How will this be, since I am a virgin?’
And the angel answered her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore, the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God. And behold, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren; for nothing will be impossible with God.’
And Mary said, ‘Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.’ And the angel departed from her.
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Let us pray:
Lord, we thank you for these announcements and pronouncements preserved in Scripture. Help us to hear them and receive them with faith, trust, hope, and joy at their proclamation. Help us to consider what they meant and what they mean for us now, and how we shall live because of what you have done. We pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.
So, like the announcement and prophecy of John’s birth, the story of Jesus’s annunciation is also like a perfect fairy tale. However, although these two related announcements differ greatly in their recipients’ response, the second story builds upon the first. Once again, the names of the persons and places involved enhance the story’s context in support of Gabriel’s prophetic assertion.
To summarize a second story: several months after he appeared to Zechariah, the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a small town called Nazareth in the region of Galilee. There, he appeared to a young engaged but not yet married girl named Mary. When he appeared to her, he gave her a strange and unconventional greeting. While she was still trying to understand what was going on, he prophesied that she would give birth to God’s Messiah. The shock of this pronouncement caused her to ask him, ‘How will this be since I am a virgin?’
To which he responded by explaining how the Lord would be her son’s natural father. The evidence that Gabriel would offer to support this humanly impossible occurrence was the fact of Elizabeth’s aged pregnancy because nothing will be impossible with God.
So, unlike Zechariah, a man who had very good and natural reasons to believe Gabriel but did not, Mary, this young girl who was given very little cause to believe a total stranger, believed the angel and therefore trusted herself to God’s providence.
See, Mary immediately exhibited faith in the Lord and his word, whereas Zechariah did not. Part of our problem today, as 21st-century Christians, is that we have become so familiar with the general Christmas story that it loses a lot of its wonder, especially the wonder in its individual parts. We’re so familiar with it that we can each tell a rendition of the Christmas story. While we would surely touch upon every important event recorded between the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, we would convey very little amazement and astonishment in the telling.
We forget that both separately and together, the birth narratives of Jesus form an extraordinary series of events culminating in a most glorious incident—the birth of the Savior, the fulcrum of redemptive history, the pivotal moment leading to the redemption of all God’s elect.
So it is because we tend to lose or reduce our sense of wonder that we are examining these details so closely, looking to rediscover why these stories are so amazing.
Now, just as in the announcement of John’s birth, the names of the people and places in the story mattered greatly to establish the context. Gabriel, the angel, was a mighty man of God, powerful and apparently a sight that inspired terror in this young and surprised girl.
Galilee was a region in Northern Israel, a territory that once had belonged to the tribes of Zebulun and Naphtali. It was claimed and absorbed by the Assyrian Empire after the fall of the northern kingdom, and over the following centuries, it was resettled by different groups of Gentiles as ownership of the region was traded back and forth between warring factions in different empires.
Earlier, the prophet Isaiah wrote about the redemption and future glorification of this region, saying of it: ‘But there will be no gloom for her who is in anguish. In the former time, he brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali; but in the latter time, he has made glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations. And the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them, a light has shone.’
This was describing a time, sometime in his future, when the light of the Messiah would shine upon them and come out from within them.
Then there’s Nazareth. Nazareth is a town that is never mentioned within the Old Testament directly, but its name comes from the Hebrew word ‘natar,’ a word that can mean to guard or to watch. More appropriately, in this prophetic story, ‘natar’ is a word used to describe a branch or a new shoot of growth.
This last interpretation of the town’s name causes Nazareth’s presence in the story of Jesus’s birth and life to connect with another prophecy of Isaiah: ‘There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch (natar) from his roots shall bear fruit.’
Then there’s Joseph. Joseph is a name that means ‘he will increase,’ and it’s a good and strong name for any father, but especially for the adoptive father of the Savior. I mean, we would expect that such a man would be an encourager, someone who would teach Jesus right from wrong, help teach him Torah, and help build him up in the faith of his Heavenly Father.
Then there’s David, a name which means ‘beloved,’ but used here specifically as the house of David, the ancient and legitimate royal house. A family that did not presently enjoy any social favor, prestige, honor, or even really unity as a cohesive group.
Due to the many sons and many wives and children of Solomon, David’s son and successor, by this time centuries later, the descendants of David were innumerable and without any clear hierarchy or priority, making it so that none of them could have a firm claim on the throne by right of natural generation.
But also, really anyone of them could potentially stake a claim if they achieved enough social support, something that both the Hasmoneans and the Herodians would certainly seek to prevent.
Mary, or Miriam, is a name which has an uncertainty or a variety of meanings. The name Mary is derived from Miriam, calling forward the memory of Moses’s sister. Her name is related to one of two words; either ‘mayim,’ which means sea or waters, or ‘mara,’ meaning bitter or drops.
So, her name seems to suggest something like a sea of bitterness or even tears, which does foreshadow the future sweep of her life as being characterized by tears—tears of joy and tears of sadness.
Lastly, there’s Jesus, or Yahoshua, a name which means ‘Yahweh saves,’ and is the most appropriate name for the God-Man and Son of God because through him and his work, Yahweh would save his elect.
But while it’s not a name, there is yet one more important and context-defining term used within Luke’s introduction to this story—a term that is twice translated as ‘virgin’ in verse 27: ‘parthenos.’ This term carried a very definite and specific use within the ancient Greek-speaking world.
It was used particularly to describe a female virgin, a young unmarried woman who had never known a man. The term is most famously associated with a place in Greece, the Parthenon, a temple that was devoted to Athena the virgin, which historically was populated and operated by virgins dedicated in service to the Greek gods.
So, this term actually provides two very specific meanings and implications to the original readers and hearers of Luke’s Gospel. Mary was surely a physical virgin, and through this story, Mary would play a certain kind of sacred role in her begetting of Jesus as the Theos or God-bearer, which makes the literal interpretation of the Virgin birth a necessary doctrine of the Christian faith.
Because Mary’s physical status prior to and through the Holy Spirit’s activity defines Jesus’s natural relationship with Joseph as an adopted son, Jesus’s federal relationship with Adam as being not an heir and thus not a recipient of original sin and guilt, preserving his natural holiness.
Jesus’s natural relationship with God the Father as the only begotten Son, Jesus’s mediatorial role as the Son of God, like Adam but different, because his role as the last Adam is filled, and Jesus’s unique nature as the God-man, fully human and fully divine, without mixture, confusion, or division.
So you can see it’s very important. Now when Gabriel appeared to Mary, he made two distinct prophecies about who her son would be. The first was about his relationship to David and the blessing he would receive from the Lord because of that relationship. The second was about his relationship to the Lord and how that would come about.
The first is the ultimate fulfillment of God’s promise to King David, and the second was an echo of the original creation of Adam by God. But first, before prophesying, he set the stage for the pronouncement with his greeting: ‘Greetings, oh favored one! The Lord is with you.’
A greeting that troubled her. It troubled her and confused her because it was so strange and extraordinary. It was not, and it would not be, a normal type of greeting even for someone who was an aristocrat. So she tried to discern; she tried to understand and reason out what the angel meant by the greeting.
Calling her favored implies that she had or was receiving some kind of special grace, a grace which Gabriel defined as being the Lord’s presence. But it was unclear to her whether this was meant to be the grace of the Lord’s presence and favor simply because she was a Jew and belonged to Israel, or because she was simply a rather fortunate and blessed girl, or because the Lord was present and with her in a more specific and personal capacity as the Lord was with David or with the prophets.
The story suggests that her reasoning led her to assume the last reason, the thought of which terrified her. And that is why Gabriel continued by saying, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God,’ trying to reassure her and calm her. He basically told her, ‘Don’t be scared; God is going to do something very special and very good for you.’
But what was the special and good thing that the Lord would favor her with? And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.
And he will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. Note that this was not just some pretty platitude but a very specific title. We know that ‘Son of God’ was a title used by the Roman emperors from Caesar Augustus onward, after he deified his immediate predecessor Julius.
But the fact is that this made the early Christian Church’s use of ‘Son of God’ for Jesus politically subversive. But that use is not relevant here because at that time only Caesar Augustus had claimed it, and he’d been reigning for about 20 years.
Across the history of the ancient Near East, it was a very common title claimed by countless kings and empires. It would have been used by the Persians and the Babylonians, the Assyrians—but especially the Davidic dynasty of Judah, because of the king’s role as the Lord’s regent on Earth.
It was a titular perspective promoted within the Psalms, as the king as God’s adopted son. So, to Mary’s mind, from within her Jewish context, this title could only mean and refer to one person—the true legitimate, divinely appointed Davidic king of Israel.
Even Herod the Great, with all of his pomp and circumstance and self-righteousness, did not claim the title for himself because his earthly power and authority came from Rome. Her initial understanding of this as a kingly title was confirmed by Gabriel when he continued saying, ‘And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.’
Promising that her son would receive the benefit of God’s promise to David, who told him, ‘When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom.
He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son. And your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me; your throne will be established forever.’
So it is no wonder that she was incredulous and so confused by this because the benefits of that promise had been claimed by the royal line for centuries right up until the kingdom fell in 586 BC.
But they were never restored, even after Zerubbabel came as governor following the Exile, because rule over the area of Judea and over the Jews had bounced between all these different factions of Gentiles, warlords, and conquerors like the Hasmonean dynasty of kings and priests who did come out of the tribe of Levi, not David and Judah.
Presently, they were being ruled by Herod the Great, the son of Antipater, an Idumean or Edomite and a cultural convert to Judaism, someone who was called King of the Jews in name only really. So, to all appearances, and to everyone’s honest expectation, the Lord’s promise to King David had failed long ago.
It didn’t matter anymore, but there was still a faithful remnant trusting to hope in God. Later, Luke will present a genealogy of Jesus, and because it’s different from the genealogy in Matthew, we interpret Luke’s as being Mary’s genealogy and Matthew’s as being Joseph’s.
But the important thing to learn from both is they demonstrate the natural descent from King David, proving how Jesus legitimately inherits this blessed prophetic benefit as God’s Son and as David’s Son.
But this unexpected prophecy to this betrothed young woman was still beyond shocking. As far as she was concerned, as far as her culture and her community were concerned, Mary was a nobody from nowhere and her fiancé was a nobody from nowhere without any fortune or influential family.
It’s reasonable to think that before this moment, Mary simply expected to live a quiet and simple life of poverty and subsistence living as the wife of a carpenter. Furthermore, her shocked reply questioning the angel of ‘How shall this be since I am a virgin?’ is also an understandable response because people did not make this kind of pronouncement about an expected child unless there was a child presently being expected.
Did Mary now wonder if people thought she looked pregnant? Did Mary worry that people were gossiping about her and Joseph, or maybe her and some other guy? Did Mary just think that this guy, the angel standing before her, was just crazy?
So really her initial response was to defend her honor because chastity was greatly valued and important. Because although it is translated here as ‘since I am a virgin,’ the Greek is more simply read as a euphemism: ‘since I have not known’ (ginosko) ‘a man.’
She was defending herself and asserting that she had not done anything improper, immoral, unchaste, or dishonoring to her family or her betrothed. Yet still, the angel took her response as a legitimate question rather than an assertion of her disbelief or denial.
When she asked, ‘How will this be?’ he explained and described how. The angel answered her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore, the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God.’
Sadly and unfortunately, religious liberals over the past 150 years have done repeated violence to this passage by claiming that what Gabriel describes to Mary is akin to divine rape or, as I heard recently, that through this story, Mary was giving permission to God to allow her to be the mother of Jesus.
They intentionally insert the otherwise helpful idea of consent into the story and then imply that because Mary was given a choice to not be Jesus’s mother, that she had more rights than some American women in places where abortion access is limited or prohibited. It’s crazy because really none of that is present within this passage.
Instead, those are just examples of people trying to force Scripture into saying whatever it is that they wanted to say rather than what God says. Instead, what Gabriel describes here, and the language he uses, is reminiscent of Genesis 2:7: ‘Then the Lord formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.’
The Holy Spirit coming upon her echoes God forming man from the dust of the earth, and where God’s power overshadowing her is an echo of God breathing into Adam the breath of life. Because as Adam was formed from the dust of the earth, and Mary was his natural descendant and thus also dust, so too the Lord by his Holy Spirit working upon and within her, and causing her to conceive without the participation of a human male, is not actually a different miracle from his original creation of Adam.
So, Adam and Jesus do share a similar origin and both are justly called the Son of God, as Luke will tell us. The comparison that’s made will be used by Paul explaining our expectation of the Resurrection.
So then, after explaining how this will happen, Gabriel gives her a final reason and offers evidence to help her believe that what he has said is true and will come to pass, saying, ‘And behold, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren; for nothing will be impossible with God.’
Elizabeth, Zechariah’s wife, an older woman presumably older than childbearing age, and Mary’s relative, was pregnant—a fact that had only recently become publicly known.
So if what the angel was now saying was true, and since she knew that Elizabeth was now pregnant—a miracle like other miracles recorded in Scripture—then everything else that he had just said might also be proven true because, like Gabriel said and has been proven throughout history, nothing will be impossible with God.
So Mary finally responded, ‘Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.’ And the angel departed from him.
She said this not as her giving consent but as her assenting and affirming God’s decree. Mary willingly submitted herself to the Lord’s will and providence.
She affirmed that if this is what the Lord wills for her, then so be it because it is truly a work of grace and favor upon her despite all the challenges and fears and troubles that will accompany and eventually come from it.
Mary’s agreement to Gabriel’s announcement is like our agreement to be saved by Jesus. We neither agree nor give him our consent to save us because we were dead in our trespasses, and the dead cannot consent to anything.
Yet we do respond to God’s grace by giving him our assent, by acknowledging and agreeing with what the Lord has himself chosen to do in our lives. Because God doesn’t need our agreement since he is sovereign over all things, her response is one more of acceptance than agreement, which is totally appropriate because God’s grace is God’s free gift to us—especially the gift of his Son, Jesus Christ.
‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.’
Again, God does not need our consent to save us, but we do have to give our assent, and we must agree with what he has done.
So before we can live the changed life of those regenerated and redeemed in Christ, ultimately, Mary heard the angel’s prophecy, and she believed it. She trusted God, and she had faith in him because her faith in the Lord was all that she would have one day to carry her through everything yet to come.
So what does this story and Mary’s faith and example teach us today?
First, that the promises she received build up and explain our faith and confidence in who Jesus is—the Son of God and the eternal king.
Second, that the promises she received and their first-century fulfillment strengthens and encourages our faith to continue believing, even when hope seems lost or when it feels like God has abandoned us. We are reminded to trust him and his promises because he is faithful and true, and he will always achieve his sovereign purposes even when he seems slow to us.
Third, Mary’s questioning of the angel’s word reminds us that it is okay to question God—to ask questions about our faith, about what we believe, and why we believe it. Asking questions is not a sign of disbelief or the absence of faith, but a sign of our desire to know more and to know God better.
Asking challenging questions honestly of our faith and of God’s word is a sign that we do have faith because our faith is not meant to be blind or unreasoning.
Fourth, that Mary’s response of submission and assent exemplifies how Christians should respond to the Lord’s decree and God’s commandments with humility and faith, trusting that what the Lord has declared is both for our good and our duty to accept as his subjects and as his beloved and loving children.
So this Advent season, whenever you hear tell about Gabriel’s announcement to Mary, remember how that story fits perfectly into God’s great narrative of redemption and how her response of faith and trust in God is a wonderful example for us to follow once we know that Jesus, God the Son, has saved us. Amen.