Let’s listen in on a conversation between Mary, the mother of Jesus, and Zechariah, her cousin-inlaw. The following conversation is imaginary, but the subject they talk about was very real: Both Mary and Zechariah had been visited by the angel Gabriel telling them about a soon-to be born baby (Luke 1:3-38). ZECHARIAH: I’ll go first. My wife Elizabeth and I were childless, and at our advanced age we had given up on ever having a child. But an angel met me in the Holy Place of the Jerusalem Temple and promised that we would have a baby boy. Unexpectedly we became part of the Christmas story. Perhaps you are wondering what we are doing in the Christmas story at all! You are, I am sure, more familiar with the other Christmas family: my wife’s cousin Mary and her fiancé Joseph.
MARY: I agree with you, Zechariah. I also wonder how I became a part of the Christmas story! Why me? I was just an ordinary, teenage girl from a small town that nobody ever heard of. Why would God choose me?
ZECHARIAH: Let me tell my story. I am a Jewish priest, a member of the order of priests known as Abijah. There were 24 orders of priests serving in the temple; there were 1000 priests in the order of Abijah; and only two priests a day could be chosen to enter the temple to offer the daily sacrifices, so the chances of any priest being chosen to present the offerings were very slim. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity. You can see how honored I felt when I was chosen to go into the temple to present the sacrifice and incense. This was the greatest moment of my life!
For Jews, the incense offering has always been associated with prayer. My prayers on that special day were for Elizabeth and me to have a child, and for God to send the promised Messiah. Elizabeth and I had prayed for 40 years for a son, but the Jews had prayed for 2000 years for God to send a Savior. But neither prayer had been answered. In fact, for the last 400 years God had not spoken to Israel at all! How long is too long to keep praying? Would you pray for 40 days, 40 years, 2000 years? When does your hope fade away? When do you accept that your hopes and prayers are never going to happen– not in your lifetime–maybe never! Let me tell you that I am not the only Jew who felt that way.
But on my special day I was alone in the Holy Place presenting the incense offering. The other priests were waiting for me to come out and say the blessing over them. But I was delayed in coming out because the angel Gabriel met me there inside the Holy Place. He gave me the message that Elizabeth and I would have a son. Then he made me dumb so that when I came out, I was unable to speak.
But now I talk too much. Mary, you tell your story.
MARY: My family was nothing special, except maybe that we were in the line of David and therefore candidates to bear the Messiah. But we were from an unimportant town, Nazareth in Galilee. No girl from there ever imagined that giving birth to the Messiah could happen to one of us. Not me. I saw myself as just an ordinary girl waiting to get married to a carpenter named Joseph. But that changed the day I was visited by the angel Gabriel telling me that I would have a part in God’s plan to bring salvation. My part was to have a child. What made this promise extraordinary was that I was a virgin.
Why did the Messiah have to be born of a virgin? I don’t know. The Bible doesn’t say. But because I was a virgin, there was no question that my baby would be much more than an ordinary human. He would be the Son of God. Maybe the virgin birth was necessary to fulfill the promise to Isaiah that a virgin would give birth as a sign to the nation. My baby would be a sign. But sign or no-sign, you should have been there when I tried to explain this to my parents and to Joseph—that was hard. I don’t know if Joseph would have ever believed me if God had not given him a dream explaining it all. It was all so incredible, so wonderful!
When the angel Gabriel appeared to me, I was scared. When he promised that I would conceive and bear a son who was to be the Messiah, I asked, “How can this be for I am a virgin?”
ZECHARIAH: Just like me. I asked the angel, “How can this be for I am an old man and my wife is well long in years?”
MARY We both asked the angel the same question, “How can this be?”
.
ZECHARIAH: But, Mary, when you asked that question, the angel answered you. But when I asked, he punished me. I questioned him because I had begun to doubt. What Gabriel said was just too good to be true.
MARY: But with God nothing is too good to be true. ZECHARIAH: You’re right, Mary. Gabriel saw your faith, but he saw my doubt. So, he struck me dumb; his way of saying, “Be quiet for a while. Just watch what God is going to do.”
MARY: I suppose you are not the only man to be speechless at the news that he’s going to be a father.
ZECHARIAH: Yes. It’s ironic that as my son John the Baptist would call people to repentance, the first one who had to repent was me. God gave me my voice back after the child was born, when I obeyed his instruction to name him John. Then I rejoiced out loud at God’s blessing. But the angel gave me even better news than that we were going to have a son. It was this . . . God cares. God hears and answers prayer, even if it takes 40 or 400 or 2000 years. And God is bringing an end to this sinful, sorrow-filled, and unjust world by establishing his kingdom. God was raising a Savior for the whole world, and he was preparing a Savior for Mary and for me.
MARY: Faith means seeing the big picture and accepting our part in it. But there is another side to that coin, and it’s just as wonderful. God is building his kingdom and saving his people, but notice how he does it. He does it through ordinary people like Elizabeth and me and through hundreds and thousands of ordinary people who let Him use them. God uses men and women, young and old, rich and poor, famous and ordinary. God is building a kingdom out of little babies, and teenagers, and people who think they’re too old to be useful. He’s building a kingdom using carpenters and kings, wives and wisemen, poor shepherds and foreign scholars. I don’t know why, but God chooses to use ordinary people like us. What happened at Christmas was something wonderful, a story that was and is too good to be true. And that story isn’t over with yet. And we’re all invited to be part of the greatest story ever told— Mary’s baby is God’s Messiah, our Savior, and the coming King.
And that, as we say, is the reason for the season.
Greg Giles is a published author, who, along with his wife Jean, has embraced the call to serve and teach around the globe. Their life together has included missionary work in Liberia, Bangladesh, teaching in China, and raising a family in Bemidji, Minnesota. Between global travels and local commitments, including serving as superintendent of Corn Bible Academy and their current part-time roles at Corn Heritage Village, the Gileses have found “home” in many places; yet, they now happily reside in retirement in Cordell. Please visit his website at reflections-on-wisdom.com.