in Zacharias’ life there was tragedy. He and Elizabeth were childless. The Jewish Rabbis said that seven people were excommunicated from God and the list began, ‘A Jew who has no wife, or a Jew who has a wife and who has no child.’ Childlessness was a valid ground for divorce. Not unnaturally Zacharias, even on his great day, was thinking of his personal and domestic tragedy and was praying about it. Then the wondrous vision came and the glad message that, even when hope was dead, a son would be born to him.
The incense was burned and the offering made in the inmost court of the Temple, the Court of the Priests. While the sacrifice was being made, the congregation thronged the next court, the Court of the Israelites. It was the privilege of the priest at the evening sacrifice to come to the rail between the two courts after the incense had been burned in order to bless the people. The people marvelled that Zacharias was so long delayed. When he came he could not speak and the people knew that he had seen a vision. So in a wordless daze of joy Zacharias finished his week’s duty and went home; and then the message of God came true and Elizabeth knew she was going to have a child.
One thing stands out here. It was in God’s house that God’s message came to Zacharias. We may often wish that a message from God would come to us. In George Bernard Shaw’s play, Saint Joan, Joan hears voices from God. The Dauphin is annoyed. ‘Oh, your voices, your voices,’ he said, ‘Why don’t the voices come to me? I am king not you.’ ‘They do come to you,’ said Joan, ‘but you do not hear them. You have not sat in the field in the evening listening for them. When the angelus rings you cross yourself and have done with it; but if you prayed from your heart, and listened to the thrilling of the bells in the air after they stop ringing, you would hear the voices as well as I do.’ Joan gave herself the chance to hear God’s voice. Zacharias was in the Temple waiting on God. God’s voice comes to those who listen for it – as Zacharias did – in God’s house.
GOD’S MESSAGE TO MARY
Luke 1:26–38
In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a town of Galilee called Nazareth, to a maiden who was betrothed to a man called Joseph, who belonged to the house of David. The maiden’s name was Mary. He came in to her and said, ‘Greetings, most favoured one. The Lord is with you.’ She was deeply moved at this word and wondered what a greeting like that could mean. The angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour in God’s sight. Look you – you will conceive and you will bear a son and you must call him by the name of Jesus. He will be great and he will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father; and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and there will be no end to his kingdom.’ Mary said to the angel, ‘How can this be since I do not know a man?’ The angel answered, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the Spirit of the Most High will overshadow you, and so the child who will be born will be called holy, the Son of God, and – look you – Elizabeth, too, your kinswoman has also conceived in her old age; and this is now the sixth month for her who is called barren, because there is nothing which is impossible with God.’ Mary said, ‘I am the Lord’s servant. Whatever he says, I accept.’ And the angel went away from her.
MARY was betrothed to Joseph. Betrothal lasted for a year and was quite as binding as marriage. It could be dissolved only by divorce. Should the man to whom a girl was betrothed die, in the eyes of the law she was a widow. In the law there occurs the strange-sounding phrase, ‘a virgin who is a widow’.
In this passage we are face to face with one of the great controversial doctrines of the Christian faith – the virgin birth. The Church does not insist that we believe in this doctrine. Let us look at the reasons for and against believing in it, and then we may make our own decision.
There are two great reasons for accepting it.
(1) The literal meaning of this passage, and still more of Matthew 1:18–25, clearly is that Jesus was to be born of Mary without a human father.
(2) It is natural to argue that if Jesus was, as we believe, a very special person, he would have a special entry into the world.
Now let us look at the things which may make us wonder if the story of the virgin birth is to be taken as literally as all that.
(1) The genealogies of Jesus both in Luke and in Matthew (Luke 3:23–38; Matthew 1:1–17) trace the genealogy of Jesus through Joseph, which is strange if Joseph was not his real father.
(2) When Mary was looking for Jesus on the occasion that he lingered behind in the Temple, she said, ‘Your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety’ (Luke 2:48). The name father is definitely given by Mary to Joseph.
(3) Repeatedly Jesus is referred to as Joseph’s son (Matthew 13:55; John 6:42).
(4) The rest of the New Testament knows nothing of the virgin birth. True, in Galatians 4:4 Paul speaks of Jesus as ‘born of woman’. But this is the natural phrase for any human being (cf. Job 14:1, 15:14, 25:4).
But let us ask, ‘If we do not take the story of the virgin birth literally, how did it arise?’ The Jews had a saying that in the birth of every child there are three partners – the father, the mother and the Spirit of God. They believed that no child could ever be born without the Spirit. And it may well be that the New Testament stories of the birth of Jesus are lovely, poetical ways of saying that, even if he had a human father, the Holy Spirit of God was operative in his birth in a unique way.
In this matter we may make our own decision. It may be that we will desire to cling to the literal doctrine of the virgin birth; it may be that we will prefer to think of it as a beautiful way of stressing the presence of the Spirit of God in family life.
Mary’s submission is a very lovely thing. ‘Whatever God says, I accept.’ Mary had learned to forget the world’s commonest prayer – ‘Your will be changed’ – and to pray the world’s greatest prayer – ‘Your will be done.’
THE PARADOX OF BLESSEDNESS
Luke 1:39–45
In those days Mary arose and went eagerly to the hill country, to a city of Judah, and went into the house of Zacharias and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting the babe leaped in her womb and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, and she lifted up her voice with a great cry and said, ‘Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb. Why has this been granted to me – that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For – look you – when the voice of your greeting came to my ears the babe in my womb leaped with exultation. Blessed is she who believed that the things spoken to her from the Lord would find their fulfilment.’
THIS is a kind of lyrical song on the blessedness of Mary. Nowhere can we better see the paradox of blessedness than in her life. To Mary was granted the blessedness of being the mother of the Son of God. Well might her heart be filled with a wondering, tremulous joy at so great a privilege. Yet that very blessedness was to be a sword to pierce her heart. It meant that some day she would see her son hanging on a cross.
To be chosen by God so often means at one and the same time a crown of joy and cross of sorrow. The piercing truth is that God does not choose a person for ease and comfort and selfish joy but for a task that will take all that head and heart and hand can bring to it. God chooses us in order to use us. When Joan of Arc knew that her time was short she prayed, ‘I shall only last a year; use me as you can.’ When that is realized, the sorrows and hardships that serving God may bring are not matters for lamentation; they are our glory, for all is suffered for God.
When Richard Cameron, the Covenanter, was caught by the dragoons they killed him. He had very beautiful hands and they cut them off and sent them to his father with a message asking if he recognized them. ‘They are my son’s,’ he said, ‘my own dear son’s. Good is the will of the Lord who can never wrong me or mine.’ The shadows of life were lit by the sense that they, too, were in the plan of God. A great Spanish saint prayed for his people, ‘May