Mary and Zechariah

Mary and Zechariah Contrasted

Tuesday, December 16th, 2008

Read Luke 1:26-38.

There is something appropriate about reading this encounter betwen Mary and the angel Gabriel on the heels of yesterday’s encounter between Gabriel and Zechariah.  The contrast between their reactions to the Angel’s news could not be more striking.  (This by the way is also the text for Sunday’s sermon.)

Yesterday, when we read the story of Zechariah and Gabriel we encountered a deeply religious man, a Levite priest of the Jewish people, who was told that God was going to bless him with a child.  Zechariah had trouble accepting this news because he was old and Elizabeth, his wife, was well past child-bearing age. Recall that these folks lived long before fertility clinics and envitro.  For Elizabeth to conceive a child was an outright miracle not simply a “miracle” of modern science.

For his disbelief of the good news brought to him, Gabriel strikes Zacharias mute until the prophecy of John’s birth comes to pass.  Do you remember that when Zacharias finally speaks again he sings loud praises to God. 

Mary’s response to her own miraculous pregnancy is utterly different.  While she is afraid of the angel and perplexed as to how this will happen, she eagerly accepts the message.  ”I am the Lord’s servant,” she says.

Maybe age had somethign to with their different responses.  Mary is young and perhaps naive so she willingly accepts what angel tells her without thinking about the possibilities.  Zechariah is older and wiser. His skepticism is not driven by lack of faith so much as depth of experience.  

I suspect that each of us can put ourselves in these respective places.  There have been times when we, like Zechariah, see the possibilities that God reveals to us as too difficult to accept.  We may even find ourselves “struck dumb” by the consequences of not following the leading of the Lord.  But, there have been times when we, like Mary, have eagerly received the leaning of God and replied with an open and obiedient heart.

The thing is that Mary was asked the harder thing to do.  She was asked to face public scorn and carry a baby.  Zechariah was asked to believe that he would have a son.  How often do we take Mary’s posture in our own lives when the thing that God is leading us to do is difficult?  I suspect that more often than not we have Mary’s accepting outlook only when the road ahead looks easy or fits within our plans. 

Both John the Baptist and Jesus Christ tell us that the path to the kingdom of God begins in the same spot: repentence.

At its most basic level repentence literally means to “turn around.”  Sometimes this is easier said than done. Praise God that we serve a Lord who is willing to meet us where we are and take whatever repentence we can muster at this time and use it to transform us through the Holy Spirit into children of God.  God is in the business of saving all the Marys and Zechariahs of the world.

If you read all of Luke 1, you will find that both Mary and Zechariah end up in the same place: joyful with a song to the Lord on their hearts. 

Whether we are Mary and throw all of ourselves into God’s care or we are Zechariah and we have to be dragged along; whatever we can muster for God during this Advent season, we will get to that moment of profound praise, too.

May it be so among us.