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 . . .” Luke 1:30-31.
About six months have gone by on earth before Gabriel again leaves the presence of the LORD to appear in Galilee, a province of Roman-occupied Palestine and the breeding ground of prophets, cult leaders, and zealots. The object of the angel’s visit is none of those notable persons, just an unremarkable Jewish girl of fifteen or so, going about her business.
She’s a good girl; we can say that much. An obedient, dutiful girl, most likely busy with the same domestic chores as all her friends and acquaintances, and her mother’s and grandmother’s friends and acquaintances. Like most girls in their mid-teens, she is engaged—betrothed, in the formal, legally-binding sense of that word. Her parents have made a suitable match with Joseph the carpenter, and within the year she’ll be married. A good girl, but nothing in the record indicates she was notably pious or holy.
Then Gabriel shows up.
Does her world go sideways when he appears? Yes, although she may not recognize at first just how disruptive his presence is.
How can this be? is her first question, and though it sounds similar to the response of Zechariah, it’s not. He was asking for proof; she, for clarification. She knows how babies are made, and is quite certain that the necessary deed has not yet taken place. Gabriel’s explanation can’t be that helpful, for he describes something that has never, ever, happened before—not even to the revered matriarch Sarah, who conceived in her nineties.
“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.”
We only see Mary. We can’t read her mind. I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me as you’ve said is a positive response—but really, what can you say to a heavenly being who suddenly blazed up beside your kneading trough? The angel’s words make grammatical sense but don’t match up with anything in her experience or knowledge. Her answer does not indicate comprehension, merely obedience. And that is enough. Her faith may be smaller than a mustard seed, but it’s real faith.
Perhaps not even Gabriel knows the full dimensions of what he’s saying, or how this story will tell itself. The Lord of Hosts is making his move, that’s certain, but what does it mean? The very heavens will look on with growing wonder while events unfold.
Meanwhile, Mary waits.
When did it happen? Sometime between the messenger’s visit and Mary’s journey to visit her cousin Elizabeth; that’s all we know. The Holy Spirit will come upon you . . . In the old days, the Spirit was known to “rush upon” people, like the mighty Samson;1 Mary may have wondered if it would be like that. Did she recognize the moment of conception, or did it steal secretly upon her? Only one thing we can know for sure: There was a moment. A biological clock was ticking as a tiny egg made its way down the fallopian tube, in the manner of all women since Eve, and in a moment, the power of the Most High overshadowed it.
They say the universe exploded from a single, impossibly dense speck of matter. The power that exploded the universe is suddenly packed into a single cell.
How can this be?
The first time Yahweh visited his people it was on a mountain with thunder and lighting and an earthquake—they couldn’t miss it. This time, almost everybody missed it. The last time, Yahweh delivered detailed instructions for a tent and holy furnishings and elaborate sanctification rituals to accommodate his Presence. The main ingredient was blood—lots of blood.
This time he delivers his Presence, slipping silently into the forward motion of time. Rather than gold and incense, he is surrounded by pulsing veins and twitching cells. The holy has taken up residence within the lowly. From a single cell, Christ is formed.
And he brings the blood. Six weeks pass as cells feverishly divide and separate, knitting the Son of God in the form of a son of man: a head, eyes, limbs, lumps of flesh that will become fingers and toes and then . . .
With a spasm, a tiny, mighty heart clenches in its first heartbeat. Ka-thump ka-thump ka-thump Ka-thump Ka-thump—
the life
is in
the blood.2
It beats and beats and beats and floods the little body with the same oxygen, the same fuel and food as we all receive in this stage of our lives. But the life of the world is in that blood.
Our mothers don’t know exactly when our hearts began beating, and Mary isn’t aware of it either. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit keep their counsel. But she knows the unthinkable has happened—she has been caught up in heavenly councils and entrusted with a heavenly secret. “My soul magnifies the Lord, sings the peasant girl, because her soul has been magnified.
- When did your heart begin beating? When will it stop? Does it make any difference to you knowing that there was a similar moment for Jesus (both starting and stopping)? Do you think his heart beats even today?
1 For example, Judges 14:6
2 Lev. 17:11
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wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger”—”swaddling clothes” and “manger” being archaic terms that we only use around Christmas. It’s a little shocking to read manger translated as “feeding trough” in the HCSB. Like pigs would eat from, if these people kept pigs. The angel may have seen no incongruity in the combination of Savior, Lord, and feeding trough–angels, as pure spirit beings, live an existence completely incomprehensible to us, and vice-versa. The shepherds would have noticed a contradiction, if they weren’t so immediately dazzled with the glory of the Lord. It might have struck them later. At any rate, it was the first real-world, real-time indication of what sort of Savior this would be: homeless, gritty, secret, glorious, spun out of earth and sky with dust and pollen in his nostrils and the whole universe in his heart.