How do you understand your life? How do you make sense of what happens to you, good and bad? How do you respond when plans go astray, when the charted course is interrupted by the strange, surprising and scary?
Mary was a peasant girl, meek and poor, who was told she would carry in her womb the very Son of God. God intrudes into her life. Mary’s plans of starting a family with her fiancé were interrupted by God. We stand to learn a lot from how Mary took the news.
Mary’s story begins in Luke 1:26. A young woman, she was engaged to be married to Joseph, a descendant of David and resident of Nazareth.
One day an angel appeared and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you” (v. 28). Mary was frightened by the angel’s appearance. He reassured her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God” (v. 31).
Twice in the first two lines the angel spoke to Mary using this word “favor.” That’s a word we see a lot in the Bible, a real churchy word. But in the Greek, both instances are from the word group we usually translate as “grace.” When the angel speaks to Mary, he begins by assuring her of God’s grace.
Let’s get this right from the very beginning. When the angel calls Mary “favored one,” he is not saying God was looking around the earth for one who was exceedingly good, holy or religious. The reason Mary’s life would be radically and forever changed is because of God’s grace on her. God was showing his unmerited favor to Mary by making her the mother of the Promised One.
Mary, confused, asked how this would happen since she was virgin. The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God” (v. 35). The angel then went on to tell her that her relative, Elizabeth, an older, barren woman, was with child. And he ended his words to Mary with, “Nothing will be impossible with God.”
So Mary went to visit Elizabeth. When Mary walked in to say hello, Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and the child in her womb (John the Baptist) leapt with joy. Elizabeth then confirmed for Mary what the Lord was doing through her.
That is when Mary opened her mouth to sing one of the most beautiful hymns in all Scripture. These verses have traditionally come to be known as the Magnificat, which is the first word of the passage in the Latin translation.
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These words from Mary demonstrate the spontaneous response to encountering God’s grace. As such, Mary becomes a model for how we react to God’s greatest of gifts.
Mary begins, “My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior …” (vv. 46-47). It is interesting that in the Greek, while “glorifies” is in the present tense, the verb for “rejoices” is in the aorist, used to communicate something begun in the past with ongoing effects. So it might be translated, “My spirit has begun rejoicing in God my Savior.” The shift in tense may mean something new has started, something different has begun. Mary has found a new joy in God and the promise of this child. That joy is connected to the fact that God is her Savior.
Do not ever doubt that Mary was a sinner in need of grace. Like the rest of us, Mary needed a Savior. With the promise of the Messiah to be born through her, a new joy in the God of salvation rises up in her.
Mary’s experience here, though admittedly unique in many ways, is in other important ways exactly the experience of all who come to know Jesus as Savior. Mary’s first joy is the same first joy of everyone who meets Jesus: the joy of salvation; the knowledge that God no longer merely is God the Creator and God the Judge, but God my Father and God my Savior. Do you recall the joy from when you first believed?
I do. I remember being 12 years old that Thursday evening at summer church camp. As we sang of God’s holiness, I felt an increasing burden, the reality of my sins becoming ever clearer in comparison to God’s righteousness. The reality of my need for a Savior became overwhelming.
Then I recalled the message I’d heard a thousand times on all those Sunday mornings my whole life. Jesus died for me. I believed. Immediately, that heaviness gave way to joy inexpressible and filled with glory. God interrupted my life. His grace invaded my heart. Something new began in me that day as I rejoiced in God as my Savior.
One moment, Mary had plans that included marrying Joseph, setting up house and starting a nice, quiet life in Galilee. The next moment an angel brought news that would lead to rumors of promiscuity, fleeing to Egypt and one day seeing her son executed. But the joy experienced because of the grace received would carry her through as she fulfilled her purpose in God’s plans.
When we know Jesus, our plans often get set aside. But we rejoice in knowing our lives have been grafted into a story much larger than any one of us. We are certain that through all that comes our way, good and bad, God our Savior is glorified in us.
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