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Ready for Christmas

David Esau

Are you ready for Christmas?

Have you finished your Christmas shopping? Have you sent out your Christmas cards and parcels? Have you purchased all of the items for the Christmas parties that you’ll be hosting? With Christmas coming, we frequently check up on each other’s level of holiday preparedness. I wonder if we have considered our spiritual preparedness for Christmas. Are our hearts and lives open to receiving what God has prepared for us during this holiday season?

As I was reading the Christmas story again, I was challenged by the example of Christmas preparedness that I found in Mary, the mother of Jesus. What struck me as I studied her reaction to the angelic news of a new birth was that other pre-birth announcement. The pre-birth announcement to Mary, as it appears in Luke 1:26-38, is deliberately framed with stories about John the Baptist (the announcement of his birth comes before it, and his birth itself follows it). We have, then, two annunciation accounts. In both it is the angel Gabriel who delivers the news (1:19,26), and in both cases the recipients are, as one would expect, rather overwhelmed by the whole thing.

But the main point that comes out as one compares these two stories is not so much their similarities but their differences. Notice, for example, the different settings of the two events. While the angel’s appearance to Zechariah takes place in the city of Jerusalem in the most holy place in all Israel, the very centre of the Temple, in the second birth announcement Gabriel appears to a young girl in a town so insignificant that Luke adds “in Galilee” (cf. 2:4,39) to help orient his readers geographically. If the temple was at the top of the list of most holy places, Nazareth in “Galilee of the Gentiles” (Matthew 4:15) was close to the very bottom.

Notice also the different recipients of the angelic telegrams. In contrast to Zechariah, the righteous elderly priest, Mary is an unmarried teenager with no official position. In fact, Mary is among the most powerless in her society: young, female and poor. It is from Zechariah that we would expect to learn the most about faith and the kind of spiritual openness that we are to model ourselves after. But as the story unfolds, it is Zechariah who is struck silent by unbelief while Mary comes forth as an amazing model of faith (“I am the Lord’s servant. May it be to me as you have said.”).

It is not as though, humanly speaking, it wouldn’t have been natural for Mary to raise some objections. Being pregnant before her marriage in a conservative Jewish setting was bound to cause a scandal among her family and close relatives. We know from Matthew 1:19 that her fiancé Joseph (from whom she must have desperately needed a sensitive listening ear) seriously contemplated divorcing her as a result of the situation. And if her pregnancy went public with no husband in sight, the accusation of adultery was sure to arise, subjecting her to public disgrace at the very least, with the very real possibility of a public stoning (see John 8:1-11).

Mary’s quiet, humble acceptance of this situation shows us the kind of young woman through whom God had chosen to fulfill His purposes. In a world where, “seeing is believing” and where we want “satisfaction guaranteed or our money refunded”, the kind of faith and commitment that Mary expresses seems like utter foolishness. I would have asked more questions, I would have wanted more evidence by which to test the truth of what Gabriel had said, and I most certainly would have wanted more guarantees on how things were going to turn out. I would have been more like Zechariah.

Why? I think part of our hesitation is related to our life experiences. Living as we do in a world of broken promises and broken homes, we are all acquainted with so much betrayal and disappointment that our natural reaction is to shrink back from the kind of radical wholehearted commitment that God seems to ask of us. Seldom in our experiences, even the best of them, are we ever given reasons to believe that there is anyone with real integrity, anyone who is worthy of our total trust. Examples like Jim Bakker, David Koresh or Bill Clinton are fresh in our memory, constantly reminding us that even our leaders, whether political or religious, can’t be trusted. And so we harbour doubts and reservations that influence our reactions to God.

This text, with its example of Mary, stirs the embers of our faith and invites a reawakening. For it is in Mary that we find a true model of faith, the kind of faith that Jesus would later say could move a mountain. Mary does what we often find so impossible to do: Mary simply trusts God. She believes what the angel says to her because she trusts God as unquestioningly as the child who jumps off a high ledge into her parent’s arms. We, on the other hand, tend to project our own lack of trustworthiness upon God, making Him over into our own image, and therefore we are unwilling to sign our lives over to Him in the form of a blank cheque.

I have found it helpful to consider what Gabriel’s perspective in these two situations must have been. Here we encounter someone who has lived his entire existence not in a fallen world of broken promises but in heaven, in the very presence of God. While Zechariah doubts whether this kind of promise can come true, Gabriel, who has stood in the presence of God since creation, has never seen one of God’s promises fail. Zechariah’s unbelief must have been as great a shock to Gabriel as Mary’s wholehearted belief is to us.

In both situations, a sign is given. For Zechariah, his “sign” of silence seems to stir up his faith, while for Mary the sign of Elizabeth confirms her faith. Faith in both settings, as always, is a gift from God (Ephesians 2:8). Faith is God’s initiative as His Spirit stirs our hearts, inviting us to a change in perspective. For those who have eyes to see, God’s signs (Zechariah’s muteness and Elizabeth’s pregnancy) are tangible evidence of the greater spiritual reality of God Himself at work.

Today, God continues to give signs to believers like Mary and unbelievers like Zechariah. Some are miracles of physical healing. Sometimes God’s sign is a word spoken at exactly the right time so that it confronts or comfort us with supernatural force. Sometimes it is the evidence of changed lives, perhaps an otherwise unexplainable peace and joy that radiates from a person, giving witness to the inner presence of God’s Spirit. We need to heed these signs.

Are you ready for Christmas?

David Esau is senior pastor of Cedar Park Church in Delta, B.C.

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Last modified December 16, 2002.

© 2002 Mennonite Brethren Herald.
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