27 Jan 2024
The passage covers the announcement of Jesus’ birth to Mary, her visit to Elizabeth and Mary’s “Magnificat” of Praise.
We see the contrast between Mary’s reaction and Zechariah’s reaction following the visits and announcements of the angel to both of them.
We see the simplicity and sincerity of Mary’s faith in the Lord – a simplicity and sincerity we might well emulate. Trust and faith in God is not dependent on age, rank, or position. Mary was not so concerned about how she could explain to Joseph or how she could face the shame of being unmarried and pregnant – she simply wondered how God will perform this miracle and make her, a virgin, mother of the Messiah. When Gabriel explains the miracle, Mary’s response immediately was, “I am the Lord’s servant” (v38).
A servant is one who does the will of his or her master and sets aside personal concerns in order to fulfil any commission given by the master, even when the task involves personal inconvenience, pain, misunderstanding from others, and even ridicule and suffering of various kinds. How do we fare when compared to Mary? Do we often query God with ‘anger’,’bitterness’, ‘fear’, and like Moses in the OT before his calling, we ask God to send somebody else, and we give all sorts of reasons why the task should not involve us, and why God should not allow us to be in such a predicament?
Mary’s response was one that commits herself fully to do God’s will, whatever the personal cost. It reminds us of one unparalleled response: the response of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane when He said to the Father, “Not my will, but Thy will be done”. In the face of pain and suffering of the highest degree, Jesus, in His love for His Father, and in His love for mankind (including us), made the decision to go to the cross, even if means drinking “the cup of wrath”, and even if it means bearing the sins of all generations of the human race, and “being separated from the Father” with whom He has intimate eternal fellowship – none can fathom the depths of His suffering for the descendants of Adam and Eve after the Fall. In comparison, we often abandon ‘trust in God’ and ‘faith in God’ for the slightest pain (in comparison to His) in our life, and seek to respond with unbelief and self-centeredness.
In Mary’s Magnificat (vv46-55), one of the most impressive elements of Mary’s praise is its saturation with Old Testament phrases and concepts. Even the construction of thoughts clearly echoes patterns found in the psalms and in the Old Testament Scripture (Ps.34:3;Ps. 69:30; Ps.71:19; Isa.42:13 etc.). Some have queried how a young girl, probably in her early teens at that time, could have spontaneously produced a pem of such depth and so filled with biblical allusion. We need to remember two things: the Jews in the first century remained at heart a theocratic community; it was their relationship with God that gave them their identity as a people, but also was the foundation of their hope for the future. They were truly a people of the Book, and biblical phrases and images were woven into daily speech, memorised and sung, and discussed in the synagogue every Sabbath.
The second thing is that Mary was a young woman of deep faith and spiritual insight – she was an exceptional person. On her way to visit her cousin Elizabeth, a journey of about three to four days, Mary composed these wonderful words of praise (no doubt with the enabling of the Holy Spirit).
This is a challenge to us today: if we expect to be used by God in our day, we need not be great in the eyes of the world, but we must saturate ourselves with the Scriptures until the thoughts and concepts revealed by God become an integral part of our hearts and minds too.