22 Dec Sunday, December 22, 2024
As if out of a scene from Call the Midwife, two pregnant women converse in Poplar. One of them has traveled from the modest home of her husband’s family in the West End of Judea to a village in East London to call on kin, her eldest cousin. The women represent two different generations. Mary is young, perhaps even still a teenager. Elizabeth is described as “advanced in years” by a husband who calls himself “an old man”.
At any rate, Elizabeth is old enough to be Mary’s mother or aunt, and for some reason, she’s hidden herself in seclusion for the first five months of her pregnancy. Perhaps Elizabeth feels like the older pregnant ladies of Poplar who show up at the clinic looking tired and somewhat embarrassed. After all, here they are in the family way at an age when most women become grandmothers. Of course, many women, including my paternal grandmother, were both at once.
Mary, the younger and less pregnant-looking of the two, steps onto the front stoop, a large stone which takes the place of a step. She knocks and opens the narrow door in Poplar which turns to face a side street. Just down a dark narrow hallway past a short flight of stairs that lead upward, Mary enters Elizabeth and Zechariah’s small tidy kitchen. This is a scene so ordinary, everyday and common. Could this be an example of how Luke the physician/author describes himself as “following things closely with the hope of giving an orderly account”?
What makes the scene of today’s episode extraordinary, is that Elizabeth was already in her sixth month when the angel Gabriel announced to Mary that the Holy Spirit would come upon her and that the power of the Most High would overshadow her such that the child she bears would be considered holy and the Son of God. There’s nothing ordinary in fashion about that.
It was not ordinary to have the birth of both babies predicted ahead of time. There were no scientific instruments or laboratories back then. No fertility clinics or pregnancy tests. And according to “the Jews of Jesus’ day, the Holy Spirit had not been active for more than 400 years since there had been no prophets or prophecy since the time of Malachi.” (ESB, p. 1942)
More extraordinary still, an angel predicted that John “would be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother’s womb…” (Luke 1:15). Imagine them discovering such a thing via ultrasound today. The technician wouldn’t say anything since they wouldn’t dare, but they would notice that the male baby was filled with something unusual, something unseen with the naked eye, but visible to those with special tools of discernment. Not ultrasound, but ultra sensitivity to what God has in the works.
Neither woman had a clue about their pregnancy ahead of time based on natural, old fashioned ways of knowing, by experiencing changes happening to their bodies due to special hormones they were producing. When Luke includes the birth narratives of both John and Jesus in his gospel account, he is highlighting a parallel between God and humankind.
In the same way that we, like Mary and Elizabeth, are able to share similarities and similar life experiences, God is able to share them with us, too. God in the form of Jesus communicates en utero with his birth mother, Mary to her cousin, Elizabeth and to her cousin’s future offspring, John.
Rather than enter this world as a fully mature adult, Jesus begins life in the same way that every human does, by a form of conception. Now, I’ve never given being conceived a thought, but I have thought of what I imagine it was like to be inside my mother’s abdomen. She was a dear sweet woman, and in the memory of my imagination, I recall life en utero as somewhat calm and blissful. It was dark and quiet. I was cared for without any effort on my part.
I received everything needed directly through an elaborate system designed with the sole purpose of helping a fetus to become an infant. But the system had failed before, three times to be exact. And in my case, something being released into my mother’s system made her blood pressure steadily increase until her entire body became swollen near to bursting.
This caused my initial debut to be unexpected and premature. However, I was lucky enough to thrive, having been blessed with a healthy appetite and strong determination. And my mother recovered nicely once I was delivered.
The point is, Jesus and John were real people, like us, who shared an ancestral tree through blood and traceable DNA. The evidence that proves the existence of a historical figure named Jesus who was also God only begotten Son begins here.
While Jesus was still developing inside of his mother’s womb, he was already able to show up. His spirit brought the Holy Spirit into the home where Elizabeth and Zechariah lived. His spirit made the Holy Spirit’s presence palpable to feel and able to be known through John and in such a way that Elizabeth his mother exclaimed of Mary, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.”
Testimony which proves the fulfillment of ancient OT prophecy as well as the veracity of message-bearing angels are primary themes within Luke’s biblical account of all that comes to be. To quote the Book of Hebrews, “When Christ came into the world, he said, “…a body you have prepared for me.”
In his book entitled The Empathic God, author Frank Woggon states that “The Jesus event encompasses more than the traditional saving initiative…more than traditional narratives about Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection and their interpretations among early Christian communities. It comprises primarily the storied traditions about Jesus’ life and public work. It is about [begins with] the mystery of incarnation…”
The incarnation of God is truly a most fascinating and amazing aspect of our faith, though it is not unique to world mythology. Krishna is often depicted as a baby born to a mortal woman, with his birth being heralded as a miraculous event but he is considered only an avatar, a manifestation of a deity or released soul in bodily form on earth of Vishnu in Hinduism.
Horus, the Egyptian god of the sky and healing, is born as a baby to Osiris and Isis, with his birth often involving a virgin, too. The Aztec sun god, Huitzilopochtli, is also born as a baby, with his mother being a virgin and his birth associated with great cosmic significance. And even some interpretations of the Greek myth regarding Zeus notes that he is born as a baby to Rhea, hidden from his father Cronus to prevent him from being devoured. (Source: Google AI Overview)
But what really sets the Jesus narrative apart from other myths about deities is… (Now remember: A myth is not necessarily a made up story or falsehood. It’s a story that attempts to explain the origin of a thing that we know exists, such as the creation story to explain how elements of the earth and universe, humans, animals and other things came into being.)
Unlike other religious followers, Christians believe that Jesus is in fact, really and truly fully God and fully human, not God in human form, or a divinely infused extra special man. In terms of establishing one’s reputation in the world among humans as the one and only god, making yourself out to be supreme and incomparable, above and beyond any other divinity ever known, how does it make sense, for Jesus as God to both enter and leave this world completely helpless and vulnerable, to spend his lifetime among us being in every aspect but one, (sinful) as one of us?
The key focus of Jesus’ life is relational. Woggon states, “God’s call upon us is about communion with those who were excluded and marginalized, about healing those who were hopelessly afflicted, and about a passion for just relations among humans and with God…”
His “argument is that salvation, as it was proclaimed and enacted through the Jesus event, restores wholeness of self and wholeness in relationships…rather than providing salvage from divine judgment.” In every way, Jesus joins in on every one of the struggles that will ever be experienced by every other human being ever born. In other words, by having his beginnings en utero and his life’s end be defined as a corpus mortuum, a dead body removed from the cross and claimed by loved ones just as he was welcomed into the world by human parents and cousins.
Jesus chooses to experience every one for everyone. As Luther described his theology of the cross versus a theology of glory, he suggests that God does not do things or desire for us to do things for the sake of glory, but instead to identify more with suffering. Jesus enters the state of becoming human taking the bitter with the sweet, joy with sorrow, for better or worse.
The circumstances of his conception, birth, life and death reveal his entire journey as such. In a devotional book written by Sarah Young entitled Jesus Calling, she writes, “The One who walks beside you, holding you by your hand, is the same One who lives within you. This is a deep, unfathomable mystery. You and I [meaning Jesus and you] are intertwined in an intimacy involving every fiber of your being. The Light of my [Jesus’] Presence shines within you, as well as upon you. I am/[Jesus is] in you, and you are in Me/[Jesus]; therefore nothing in heaven or on earth can separate you from Me[Him]!”
Let us pray. Thanks be to God for choosing us to receive God’s very own sacred story, the back story of Jesus’ birth as well as the present witness of Jesus among us. We are grateful to be so close to your very being that we are inhabited by and part of your body that remains on earth. Lord, may we be not only a reflection of your image, but the continuation of your ministry to heal and make whole, to restore and redeem relationships between you and ourselves and us to each other. In your holy name we pray, Amen.