Fr. Stephen De Young:

There was in the days of Herod the King of Judea, a certain priest named Zacharias of the division of Abijah. His wife was of the daughters of Aaron and her name was Elizabeth. And they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless. But they had no child because Elizabeth was barren and they were both well advanced in years.

So, we have our time marker in the days of Herod, the King of Judea. And because it’s described as Herod the King of Judea, we know that this is referring to Herod the Great. Because remember, after Herod the Great died, his four sons, the Romans split it up into four pieces. Instead of having one of them inherit, they split it in four and each of the four of them inherit a fourth. So they were known as Tetrarchs, the rulers of a fourth. So, the fact that he is described as King of Judea, the whole thing, tells us this is Herod the Great. It’s telling us when this happens.

So again, it’s important because St. Luke is writing history, so he’s giving us a time marker. He’s telling us when this happens. This isn’t just a fanciful story or mythology or a folktale or a parable. These are events that happen at a particular time, in a particular place.

So now we meet our first two characters, Zacharias, which is the Greek form of Zechariah, who we saw was the name of one of the prophets, in the Old Testament. It means roughly that “Yahweh is wise” and then he is of the division of Abijah. Remember, Abijah was one of Aaron’s sons. So, what this is saying is Zacharias is a legitimate high priest, he’s a legitimate priest descended from Aaron.

Why is this important? Well, at this point in history, in the first century, this is unusual because the priesthood at this time in history was controlled by a different group. It was controlled by the Sadducees, who were descended from, remember Judas Maccabeus’s brother, Simon, who he had made the high priest, and then their family. Later on, John Hyrcanus, one of their descendants, made himself king and priest at the same time. That’s a whole other story.

But so, the people controlling the priesthood are not the people who according to the Old Testament, were supposed to control the priesthood. But Zacharias here is presented to us as legitimately descended from Aaron, who has managed to sort of work his way into the temple authority by hook or by crook here. And they cast lots to determine who in a given year was going to serve the high priest duties on the day of Atonement, on Yom Kippur. And so, the lot fell to him. So even though he’s not part of that ruling family, as we’re going to see, he’s right now for this time period, considered to be the high priest.

This is not high priest in the same sense that Annas and Caiaphas, who we talked about in Mark were high priest. That was a position that you held for life, and that was a position of sort of bureaucratic and legislative authority over the temple and its possessions. Whereas this is referring to Zacharias having a particular liturgical role in that particular year.

And, we read also his wife, again, he is married within his tribe and within his clan, as the priests were supposed to do. And so, it’s not surprising when it adds that they were righteous before God walking in all the Commandments, because we’ve already seen just from the introduction of him and his wife that they’re doing what they were supposed to be doing under the law. So we had this picture here of two people advanced in years, who are following God’s law and doing what they’re supposed to be doing. Yet, surprisingly and this would have been surprising to the original audience, they don’t have any children because at this point in history, having children was seen as a blessing. Not being able to have children was seen as a curse.

And, as we saw at the end of Deuteronomy, the way things are, quote-unquote “supposed to work” is if you follow the law and you do what is right, you get blessings. If you don’t follow the law and you do what’s wrong, you get curses. So, the idea that they’re doing everything that is right, and yet Elizabeth is barren would be a contradiction in the minds of the original readers. So this is a problem that needs to be solved.

So it was, that while he was serving as priest before God in the order of his division, according to the custom of the priesthood, his lot fell to burn incense when he went into the temple of the Lord. And the whole multitude of the people was praying outside at the hour of incense. Then an angel of the Lord appeared to him standing on the right side of the altar of incense. And when Zacharias saw him, he was troubled, and fear fell upon him.

So, Zacharias goes in to do his appointed duty. Incense, remember, is offered to God in the morning and in the evening. It’s his turn to go into the holy place and offer incense.

Now, as a little bit of background, we have to remember the whole issue of the exile. We’ve talked about this before. Remember, we saw back in Ezekiel, for example, Ezekiel’s first vision, he sees God get up and leave the temple. The glory of God leaves the temple. And when he has his vision of the new temple that would come in the future, he sees the glory of God coming to dwell in that temple again.

And that’s sort of symbolic in that vision of this is going to be the end of the exile. People are going to be brought back to the land and then God is going to return to His people.

As we talked about in St. Matthew’s Gospel, St. Mark’s Gospel, this expectation sort of wasn’t met for the people. The people came back to the land under Cyrus, the Persian Emperor, let them go back to the land. They went back to the land, they rebuilt Jerusalem, they rebuilt the temple, they rededicated the Temple and nothing happened. They went through all the process of doing the sacrifices.

But, unlike when the tabernacle was dedicated in Leviticus and the glory of the Lord rushed in and there was a fire that came out of the Tabernacle, or when Solomon did the sacrifices and dedicated the temple and there was fire in the presence of God, they came back, they dedicated the temple and nothing really happened.

And then, of course, the Antiochus Epiphanes came and desecrated the temple. They came, fought back against him, regained their dependence, reconsecrated the temple, andÖ nothing happened. And Herod has now built this big, glorious, huge temple complex. They went and dedicated that, nothing particularly happened, at least visibly, that anybody saw.

And, at one point, the Roman general Pompeii, when the Romans conquered Judea, was really curious about what was going on in the temple in Jerusalem, because the Romans thought the Jews were kind of bizarre, because they didn’t use idols; they only had one God and they didn’t have any images of him, which was totally bizarre. The Romans said in Latin, they worship God sola mentis, with the mind only. So, they thought that this was a great curiosity. Some of the philosophers among them thought this made Judaism a better religion. “They use only their minds, this makes it purer or better.”

So, Pompeii was curious. He used his legion and stormed through the priest and walked right into the Holy of Holies. And he writes, after he walked through the curtain, he sawÖ nothing. It was an empty room, because the Ark of the Covenant was already gone. So, he pulls back the curtain, expecting to find something, right, some kind of statue, some kind of something, something spectacular. Empty room, completely puzzled.

But to the Jews, the surprise was he didn’t drop dead. He went there and looked and saw nothing and walked back out. That was another sign to them. Because if you touch the Ark of the Old Testament, you dropped dead, so what’s going on here? So, in the mind of the Jewish people at this time in history, they’re waiting, they were back in the land, but they’re still partially in exile because God hasn’t returned to them yet.

And this is part of their expectation of the Messiah. They didn’t quite put the two together at this time. They thought, well, the Messiah is going to come. And then when the Messiah comes, God will return to us. They didn’t put together what we as Christians now believe, that the Messiah came and he was God, and so God came back to them as the Messiah and the person of Jesus Christ. But they had this expectation.

So Zacharias, as he goes in to offer incense, has been going in there, whenever it’s been his turn, over and over again, burning the incense, being faithful, doing what he’s supposed to do. But there’s been nothing there. God hasn’t answered him. There’s no presence of God there like in the Old Testament.

So, when he goes in there this time to offer incense and an angel of the Lord appears next to the altar, this is not just a curious occurrence or a surprise. This is sort of laden with all of the expectations that the Jewish people had at this point. “Is this it?” 

So, when it says, when Zacharias saw him, he was troubled and fear fell upon him. That’s sort of an understatement in our translation. It wasn’t just sort of like, “oh, this is odd” or, “whoa, God popped up and scared me”. This is sort of fraught with “Is this it? Is this the beginning of the end of the exile? Is this the beginning of God returning to us?”

But the angel said to him, “Do not be afraid, Zacharias, for your prayer is heard; and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John. And you will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink. He will also be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother’s womb. And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord, their God. He will also go before Him in the spirit and power of Elijah to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”

So, this is the message he gets. Notice it starts, “Do not be afraid.” As if that’s going to…. “No, it’s okay” as he appears there in the temple. But he tells him, “Your prayer is heard and Elizabeth is going to have a son.”

This isn’t just, we shouldn’t miss the other level. This isn’t just, “Hey, good news. You’ve been wanting to have a baby. You’re going to have one,” at his age. Because as we saw, the idea that he and his wife have been faithful to God, have been keeping the Torah and have been doing what they’re supposed to be doing and haven’t been able to have a child is an injustice. It’s an injustice according to Deuteronomy; it’s something that’s not right.

As we’ve talked about when we were going through the prophets in the Old Testament, what is the image of what’s going to happen when God comes to visit his people? When God comes to visit his people, he’s going to execute judgment, meaning all these injustices, all these things that are wrong, all these things that are not the way they’re supposed to be, where the wicked are oppressing the righteous or where the righteous are suffering and the wicked are prospering. All these injustices, God is going to fix, that’s the promise, that God is going to establish righteousness.

When we talked about before, God is going to come and judge the Earth, that was something that made some people afraid. If you’re on the unrighteous side, that’s something to be scared of. But, if you were somebody who was suffering for righteousness, that was your hope, was that God was going to come and judge the Earth, that God was going to come and set things right. So, when the angel tells Zacharias, “You’re going to have a son,” it isn’t just good news, you’re finally going to be able to get pregnant. It’s a concrete example of God beginning to set things right, of God beginning to repair these injustices.

So, it means more to Zacharias than just “You’re going to have a baby.” It also means this is the beginning, this is the beginning of the gospel, this is the beginning of what’s been wrong in the world since Adam being repaired.

This is going to come in part through this son who’s going to be born to you because you’ll have joy and gladness, many will rejoice at his birth and he’s going to go forth in the spirit and power of Elijah.

Remember, we saw those prophecies, particularly in Malachi. Remember, Elijah didn’t die. He was taken up into heaven in the fiery chariot. And so, the belief was that Elijah would come back. And when Elijah came back, that would sort of be the sign that God has returned. So again, we have another reinforcement. This son of yours, he’s going to be the new Elijah, he’s been predicted, he’s going to begin this age. He’s going to bring people to repentance and he’s going to prepare a people for the Lord; because if the Lord is returning, the Lord is coming to his people again. He has to have a people to come to.

So he made himself a people in the wilderness by raising them out of Egypt. Now he’s going to make a new people. That’s going to be the task of St. John.

Notice also, “He’ll be great in the sight of Lord, and shall drink neither wine or strong drink.” What does that go back to? That goes back to the Nazirites in the Old Testament, they would take a vow. One of their several vows was that they would not drink alcohol. The other ones that they would cut their hair and they wouldn’t touch anything.

unclean.

Remember, Samson was sort of our bad example. Samson, remember, Archangel Gabriel comes and announces Samson is going to be born and says he’s not going to drink any wine or strong drink. He’s not going to touch anything unclean. And no razor will touch his head. And then as soon as we see him as an adult, he’s going to parties and getting drunk. He’s eating honey out of a dead lion, which is an unclean thing. And then finally he gets a haircut. He breaks all three of them in sequence. That was our bad example.

Well, St. John’s going to be our good example here. He’s going to live up to that. And then the second piece is “he will also be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother’s womb.” And this seems to be a reference back to, remember Jeremiah, at the beginning of the book of Jeremiah, as we saw, Isaiah sort of had a prophetic call. He was an adult and he has this vision where he sees the Lord exalted in the temple and the Lord sends him to be a prophet.

Well, here or in Jeremiah, he didn’t have a particular call. He was told he was called from his mother’s womb from the very beginning, from his conception. He was set apart by God to be a prophet. And so, we’re seeing the same thing here with St. John. He’s being set apart from his conception to be a Prophet.

And if you ever need any biblical evidence that human life begins with conception, here you go. Or you could go to the beginning of Jeremiah that a person is a person from the time they’re conceived.

And Zacharias said to the angel, “How shall I know this? For I am an old man, and my wife is well advanced in years.”

Now, it easy to be really judgmental of Zacharias here. When you’re hanging out in the temple and an angel pops up and appears in front of you and tells you you’re going to have a baby. It’s probably a good bet you’re going to have a baby, right? Okay. But this isn’t just disbelief.

This isn’t just disbelief, because remember what the angel has just said to him, if we understand the subtext isn’t just “Hey, good news, you’re going to have a baby”. But included in this, is this baby is the beginning. It’s a special baby. This baby is the beginning of the redemption of the world.

And so, we saw how in the Old Testament when there was a prophecy, there would be a sign that was given, for example, in Isaiah 7, the Syro-Ephraimite war is going on. Jerusalem is under attack by Israel and by the Syrians. And so, the King, Hezekiah is scared. He’s facing superior military forces. And Isaiah comes to him and says, “You’re going to win. You’re going to win, trust in God, you’re not going to be destroyed.”

Hezekiah is kind of like “Easy for you to say,” right? How do I know? And so Isaiah says to him, “Well, look, one of these women standing here is going to get pregnant. And by the time her baby is old enough to think for himself, by the time he’s two or three years old, you will already have been delivered. So this war is only going to last a few more years.”

And so, when he saw that woman have that baby, he would know that would be a sign to him. Okay, this prophecy is going to come true. Frequently, there were two stages. So, this isn’t just raw disbelief from Zacharias. Zacharias wants, “Okay, well, what’s going to be the sign that all of this is going to come to pass?”

Especially since he’s in his old age, his wife is in her old age. When they were young, they tried to have kids and couldn’t. Now they’re elderly.

Interlocutor: Father, how old were they, were they in their 30’s or 40s?

Fr. Stephen: No. We’re not told, but we’re talking well advanced in years. We’re talking, yeah, we’re talking probably 60s or 70s, advanced in years. And just a note here, we tend to think you’ll read somewhere that the average life expectancy of the first century was 31. And that gives us the idea that people got to 31 and then died. That’s not what that means.

Average life expectancy means you take everybody who dies and you average out their ages. So, what you have to realize is that there were huge numbers of people dying in infancy at this time in history. There’s a huge infant mortality rate. And so, when you have infants dying at one month, two months, three months, one year, that pulls down your average.

The reality was if you made it past about twelve, you have pretty good odds of making it into your 60s or 70s at this time in history. Most of the people who had what we would now see as some kind of genetic ailment or some kind of what we now call a food allergy or something like that, they didn’t make it past childhood in this world. With the medicine they had and with the world the way it was, they didn’t make it out of childhood.

So, if you did make it out of childhood, that generally meant you were sort of a heartier stock and genetically pretty well set up, and so, you’d have a pretty good odds of getting into your 60s or 70s, barring an accident or some other kind of death. It wasn’t that people were all dying in their 30s. It was that we had a lot of people dying in childhood and then a much smaller group getting into their 50s, 60s and 70s.

So they were probably in their 60s or 70s.

The angel answered and said to him, I am Gabriel, who stands in the presence of God and was sent to speak to you and bring you these glad tidings.

First, he identifies himself. Why is this important? Well, because we’ve already seen Gabriel, if you know the Old Testament, which of course Zacharias did, Gabriel is one who showed up to predict Samson. And Gabriel went and spoke to Daniel, in the Book of Daniel, in Daniel’s visions, in the second half of the Book of Daniel.

So, when he identifies himself to Zacharias as Gabriel, this is in and of itself is sort of a credential. “I’m not just some guy who snuck in here in a white robe. I’m not just any angel. I’m the angel who in the past, I’m the one who prophesied that these things would come to pass through Daniel. I’m the one who came and predicted Samson’s birth. Now, I’m predicting the birth of your son.”

So that should be pretty good evidence to you that you should accept this and believe it. But then he goes on:

But behold, you will be mute and not able to speak until the day these things take place, because you do not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their own time.

So we say, oh, he’s being punished for not believing. A little bit, but also, he asked for a sign, and he got one. How will I know that this is true? Okay, well, you won’t be able to talk until the baby’s born. And so when that happens, when you can’t talk and then the baby’s born and suddenly you can talk, that’ll tell you that I was telling you the truth about who the baby was going to be. So the moral here is, be careful what you ask for, you might get it.

And the people waited for Zacharias and marveled that he lingered so long in the temple.

All the people have come to pray and worship. Remember, they’re in the outer court. The priest goes in and offers the incense along with prayers for the people. So, all the faithful people have shown up. He goes in there to offer the prayers, and they’re out there, looking around. Normally, he’s in there ten minutes. It’s getting late. That was a sun dial [Laughter]. So, they’re waiting and waiting and waiting. And what is going on? What is going on?

But when he came out, he could not speak to them. And they perceived that he had seen a vision in the temple, for he beckoned to them and remained speechless.

So when he finally comes out, he’s mouthing, he can’t talk. He’s gesturing and pointing. And so they say, “Wow, something must have happened to him there in the temple. He must have seen something. He must have had some kind of revelation.”

And so it was, as soon as the days of his service were completed, that he departed to his own house.

So remember, when your time came to serve as a priest, you went and you lived in the temple court because you couldn’t be polluted with uncleanness, that would mean you couldn’t serve as a priest. You couldn’t be with your wife during that time. He’s not at home with his wife. He’s living there. So, his turn is up. His time serving the temple is up. He comes back now to his home and to his wife, still unable to talk.

Now after those days his wife Elizabeth conceived and she hid herself five months, saying, “Thus the Lord has dealt with me, in the days when He looked on me to take away my reproach among people.”

So, taking away her reproach again, remember, it was seen as sort of a curse if you weren’t able to have children. And in fact, people assumed, “Oh, well, they must be doing something bad and that’s why God is punishing them.”

So by her getting pregnant, it’s taken away her reproach. Why does she hide for five months? Well, she’s an elderly woman who has just gotten pregnant, and gossip was sort of the same then as it is now. This is sort of a strange thing. After five months, presumably, it got to the point where it was so visible, you kind of had to just tell everybody. But for the first five months, she hid it.

So now we’re going to leave Zacharias and Elizabeth for a moment. We’re going to go over to shift to another place and another new character.

Now in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. And having come in, the angel said to her, “Rejoice, highly favored one, the Lord is with you; blessed are you among women!”

So, we leave Zacharias, but we follow Gabriel, because Gabriel is not done. Gabriel’s got another announcement to make. And notice here we’re presented with Mary: she’s now living in Nazareth.

As we talked about last time, when we talked about in St. Matthew’s Gospel, the word used here for virgin is not only a reference to virginity in the sense that she was not married, she had not had sexual relations with anyone, but Parthenos, the Greek word that’s translated “virgin” also referred to “dedicated virgin”, what we would now today call nuns.

The most famous pagan version of that were the Vestal Virgins who are dedicated to the goddess Vesta. But we know from, for example, Second Maccabees, remember when they returned to the temple, the virgins come out, virgins who lived there came out and rejoiced. That, in addition to men who dedicated themselves by taking the Nazareth vow like we just heard with St. John dedicating themselves to Lord’s service, there were also women who dedicated themselves to the Lord’s service.

Now, they typically did this at a much more advanced age. They typically did this, but they were much older because, of course, remember from the Torah, women’s menstruation was seen as unclean. And so, while a woman was still menstruating, she couldn’t be in the temple. So typically, these were people of advanced age. But as we know from history, in the case of Mary, she was actually brought to the temple and dedicated to God as a child. But when the time came that she reached puberty, she could no longer stay in the temple because of that.

And so, this is why she was betrothed to Joseph, who was an older man who already had children. She was betrothed to him so that he could protect her until she was of much older age, at which point she could have returned to the temple. And so, Joseph was sort of trusted then to take care of her, to protect her. And she’s betrothed to him and he is from the house of David. Why is that important? Because the Davidic line, remember the Davidic kings, that’s where the Messiah is going to come from.

So, St. John, that we just saw as being born from the priestly line, the line of Aaron. Now we have Mary and Joseph here with Joseph from the Davidic line, the kingly line.

Interlocutor: Father, it says that Joachim and Anna were elderly as well, same thing with Zacharias and Elizabeth, same thing with Abraham and Sarah, what’s the significance of that?

Fr. Stephen: And Samuel’s parents also the same thing, and they went and dedicated him at the temple. Well, this is an image of again, two people being unable to conceive children was one of the curses of the Law in the Old Testament. One of the blessings was that you would have many children. And so, barrenness is sort of a depiction, to be in your old age and still be barren, having been barren through all the years when you could have had children. It’s sort of an image of being under the curse. It’s an image of being afflicted.

If you’re a righteous person who’s suffering in that way, then that’s a problem that you need to be delivered from by God. And so, we sort of see that over and over again as an image of the problem in our world that the righteous suffer and the wicked prosper. So, it’s an image of that, where we see these righteous women who can’t have children and they’re looking at these other wicked women who have plenty of them. So, it’s an image of that, and then having a child, the blessing of having a child, after that, is sort of emblematic of that being set right by God. And so that’s why it’s something we see, because it’s in the culture, the Jewish culture, that was very symbolic. And so, that’s why it’s a sign that we see repeatedly.

One other note about Mary. Notice in the Torah, in the Pentateuch, we have Moses who’s the leader of the people, who is the prophet, and then who are the two people who are with him? Who were sort of his inner circle, his right hand and left hand? Aaron, who’s the high priest, and then on the other side, his sister, Miriam. The name we translate as Mary is Miriam.

So, St. Luke is doing something a little subtle here by the way he set this up by making the point that St. John, we’ve seen St. John the Baptist, St. John the Forerunner, we’ve seen him in the other Gospels, but none of them have made this point about the fact that he’s descended from Aaron.

So, St. Luke’s making that point rather deliberately. We have the descendant of Aaron, the person who would be the rightful High Priest,

Zacharias’s son. This is the person who should be High Priest. He’s not the person who’s High Priest, the person who is High Priest shouldn’t be. But this is the person who should be High Priest, descended from Aaron. And then we’ve got Miriam here on either side of Jesus. So St. Luke is, there’s sort of a resonance there that he’s playing with the Old Testament.

And now, when Gabriel approaches her, you notice he approaches her a little bit differently than he’s approached anyone else. He approaches her differently than he approaches Daniel, then he approached Samson’s father and mother, then he approached Zacharias, remember, with all three of them, he sort of appears to them and says, don’t be afraid because they freak out. They freak out and panic.

Notice, Archangel Gabriel shows up, and says, “Rejoice highly favored one, the Lord is with you, blessed are you among women.” He’s speaking to her with a certain familiarity that he didn’t speak to the others. What’s translated here as “highly favored one”, they’re going from the New King James. It literally says in the Greek, he calls her the “one filled with grace”, the one who God has filled with his grace, the one through whom God is working. It says, “The Lord is with you and blessed are you among women.”

And then the next verse. But when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying and considered what manner of greeting this was. Notice she’s not troubled by the fact that an angel just appeared to her. Right? As if maybe, this has happened before. Or as if this isn’t something unexpected for her.

So, this tells us something about Mary and her spiritual life leading up to this point and her intimacy with God, to the things of God. She’s just thought he greeted her in a strange way. That’s a weird way to say hello, as an angel appears to her.

Then the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bring forth a Son, and shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Highest; and the Lord God will give him the throne of his father, David. And he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.

So she says to him, you’re going to conceive and have a Son. You’re to give Him the name Jesus. And then pretty clearly identifies him as the Messiah, in about three different ways.

He’ll be called the Son of the Highest, the Son of God, which remember the title for the Davidic king in the Old Testament, says he’s going to have the throne of his father, David, and that he’s going to reign over the house of Jacob. Remember, Jacob’s other name was Israel. So, the house of Jacob is another way of saying Israel. Forever and of his Kingdom, there will be no end. So that’s three different ways. He’s the Messiah, he’s the Messiah, he’s the Messiah.

Interlocutor: Might be getting a little ahead, verse 34, we will see that Mary also has some doubts.

Fr. Stephen: Well, let’s go ahead and read that verse then. “Then Mary said to the Angel, ‘How can this be, since I do not know a man?’” Now, obviously the word “know” here is not being used literally. She obviously knew some male humans.

But remember, the Semitic word underlying this? yada is used, for example, in Genesis 3, “Adam knew his wife Eve and they gave birth to his son.” So “knew” here, it’s not referring to just “I know somebody who’s a man.” “Knew” means she hasn’t had sexual relations with any of them.

So, Zacharias and Elizabeth had been trying to have a baby their whole lives. So, when they come and say, “You’re going to have a son”, it’s just sort of, “Well, we’re kind of old now”, but there seems to be a bigger obstacle in the case of Mary, because she’s not trying to have a baby. She hasn’t had sexual relations with anyone.

And notice, it tells us something else. It tells us something else because our more recent Protestant brothers and sisters and I specify it that way because the actual Protestant Reformers didn’t believe this.

But our more recent Protestant brothers and sisters believe that Mary was married to Joseph and had other children. John Calvin didn’t believe this. Martin Luther didn’t believe this. Ulrich Zwingli didn’t believe this, but more modern Protestants do.

Now, if that was the case, if Mary and Joseph were betrothed in the sense that they were engaged to be married, and this was just a young couple, why wouldn’t she raise this objection? Wouldn’t she just assume that Gabriel meant after they got married?

“Well, we’re getting married in a few months. He must mean once we’re married, we’re going to have a baby and I’ll name him Jesus, he’ll be the Messiah, that’s great.” Right?

The fact that she says, “How could this be? How could I get pregnant since I haven’t had sexual relations with anyone”, implies not only that she hasn’t had it in the past, but that she’s not planning on having them in the future. This is another piece of evidence that she is a virgin of the dedicated virgin type. The type dedicated to God, not just someone who hasn’t happened to have had sexual relations, although that’s included. But not in that sense.

Because, otherwise she’d just say, “Oh, okay, honeymoon baby.” Because that would make perfect sense. So, she’s telling us here, not only hasn’t she, but she isn’t planning to. And so, the natural question then, if you haven’t and you’re not planning to is how am I going to get pregnant then? Meaning “Are you telling me I should?”

Remember Abraham and Sarah, they’re both about 100. God said, you’re going to have a baby and Abraham’s like, “Well, it’s not going to be with Sarah.” So, he goes and finds a slave girl and has a baby to try to figure out how to make this happen.

So, Mary’s question here is less doubt and more of a logistical question. She’s not planning on being sexually intimate with anyone. “Are you saying I should cease being a dedicated virgin and marry Joseph or marry someone else and actually have children with them?” And notice the answer she gets isn’t “Yes, that’s what I’m saying, you and Joseph are going to have a baby.” That’s not what is said.

And the angel answered and said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Highest will overshadow you; therefore, also that Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God.

Now, here, “Son of God” is meant in a different sense than it was just a second ago. Remember, he said he’ll be the Son of the Highest, he’ll sit on David’s throne. That’s using Son of God in that metaphorical way from the Old Testament, where the king is the son of Yahweh, the king is the son of God.

Here he’s saying to her, no, you’re not going to know a man. You are not going to have sexual relations with a man. Rather, the Holy Spirit is going to come upon you so that the baby you conceive will have only one father and that father will be God.

And we refer to this in a lot of our hymns in Vespers. It’s called the Dogmaticon, but it’s the name of the Theotokos in Vespers, refers to how Christ had no human father and no divine mother, and he’s begotten to the Father before all ages without a mother. And he’s begotten in our world, in the incarnation, without a human father, and so that’s what Gabriel’s communicating here.

“Now indeed, Elizabeth your relative has also conceived a son in her old age; and this is now the sixth month for her who was called barren. For with God, nothing will be impossible.”

Why does he add that extra part? “Oh, by the way, your cousin, she’s having a baby, too.” This is the sign, right? This is the sign again, because that may be a little hard to believe. “Not only are you going to get pregnant, but you’re going to get pregnant without having sexual relations.” This is something that has never happened before or since.

So what’s the sign? “You know, your cousin who’s been barren her whole life, your elderly cousin? She’s six months pregnant. So when you go visit her and see that that’s true. You’ll know that what I’m telling you.”

Even though it may seem kind of out there, so is a 70-year-old woman being six months pregnant.

Then Mary said, “Behold the maidservant of the Lord! Let it be according to your word.” And the angel departed from her.

This also is very important. This also is very important, because certain people will come and question, “Well, why is Mary important? I mean, yeah, she gave birth to Jesus, but she didn’t do anything to conceive Jesus. And Jesus is born. Well, okay. She served her purpose.” Right?

They may not come out and say it straight that way, but some of the arguments tend in that direction.

But St. Luke is making a point here that Mary wasn’t just sort of a passive receptacle. Whom Jesus came and lived in for nine months and then came out, went about His business. She wasn’t the sort of passive receptacle. Mary here says positively, positively, “Let it be to me according to your word. May this be true. I want this to be true.” She signs on for the plan.

Now you may say, “Well, who wouldn’t sign on for this? This is great. You’re going to get to give birth to the Messiah, okay?” Realize she’s a probably about a 13-, 14-year-old girl. She’s a 13- or 14-year-old girl who’s dedicated as a virgin to the temple. So, when she gets pregnant, this is not going to be a good thing. One of the Vestal Virgins in Rome was found to have slept with someone. They were buried alive.

Now, the Jews wouldn’t go that far, but this was the end of her life as she had known it. This was the end of her life as she had known it.

And do you really think the other folks around the village of Nazareth, were going to buy that she was a virgin who got pregnant and gave birth to a child, when she’s betrothed, not married, betrothed to an elderly man not supposed to be sleeping with anybody. Pretty clearly it wasn’t him.

We’re going to see this. We’ve already seen in a couple of Gospels, but it’s very clear that in Nazareth, at least, the circumstances of Jesus’s birth were questioned.

So, she’s here signing on to participate in God’s plan. But that’s going to mean for her shame, public shame and humiliation, rejection. She’s never going to have the life she would have had otherwise. She’s not going to be able to go back to the Temple when she’s older.

Joseph is an elderly man. As we’ve talked about, women didn’t have rights. They couldn’t go and get a job in this culture. Who’s going to take care of her? Well, I guess God.

So, this is an overwhelming amount of trust and belief and faithfulness coming out of Mary here, when she says this. This isn’t just “Okay”, right? Because she’s signing on for a very difficult road and she’s going to find out very soon in Luke’s Gospel, it’s going to be even more difficult than she imagines right now because she’s going to hear pretty clearly that Jesus as the Messiah isn’t going to be sort of the glory train.

There’s going to be a whole lot more suffering for her, as she watches what happens to Him. And all this she is agreeing to voluntarily because of who she is.

And the contrast is frequently made by the Church Fathers, of course, between her and Eve. Eve sort of did the exact opposite. Eve wasn’t the one, remember, who received the command from God. That was Adam.

God said to Adam, you can eat from any tree in the garden except this one. It was him who got the command. But Eve was the one who went over there and started talking to the serpent, and Eve was the one who started eyeballing the fruit of the tree and seeing how good it looked. And Eve was the one who ate off of it and then went to Adam.

You’ll notice in the story, when Eve takes the bite of the fruit, that’s not the fall of humanity. That’s not where everything falls apart. That’s not where everything comes crashing down. She’s not the one who got the commandment. When she goes to Adam and she convinces Adam to do likewise. And that’s when it all falls apart. And so, she participates.

She participates by what she did in Adam’s fall, in Adams sin, in Adam’s wickedness.

Same way, here we have Mary as a parallel. She’s not the one who’s going to save humanity. She’s not the one who’s going to deliver humanity from sin. That’s her son. That’s Jesus Christ. He’s the only Redeemer, He’s the only Savior.

But she, by her agreeing to participate by taking this upon herself voluntarily, is participating, is participating, in the plan of God that’s going to come about through her son. And St. Paul, we’ll get there in a while, it’ll be a couple of years probably, but St. Paul is going to say, in this passage that’s now infamous because it’s been so misinterpreted, when he talks about Adam and Eve and the fall and Eve’s participation in the fall, and he ends up with saying, “But Woman”, he uses a general word for Woman. “But Woman will be saved through childbirth.”

And people, especially recent theologians, have gone in all kinds of crazy directions with this. Like women need to have children in order to be saved or they need to be married, or this, that and the other, doing all these weird things with it. But what St. Paul is saying there is Woman, not a woman, a particular woman. Woman, womanhood, right?

It’s the way we talk about, you’ve got Man, you can talk about a man or you can talk about Mankind. He’s talking about Woman. Womanhood will be saved through childbirth. He’s contrasting the mother of God, the Theotokos, the one who gave birth to God, Mary, with Eve.

And so, after he talks about the fact that Eve was the first to sin, that Eve participated in this, that Eve, therefore, was under the curse also, right? She receives the curse. That’s not the final story in terms of God and women, contra the people who would want to say women are second class, which was everyone in St. Paul’s day. For the Romans, for the pagan Romans, women were barely human.

Against all that. St. Paul says no, look womanhood, Woman, is redeemed from that. Is redeemed from that, because yes, a woman Eve, participated in the fall but another woman, Mary, participated in our redemption and in our salvation and you can’t take the first part without taking the second part.

And so, women then are going to come to have a very different role in the Christian Church then what they had in any culture, society or religion in the first century, on this Earth. And that they’re going to be treated as equal, before God, with men. Where St. Paul can say there is no more male or female in Christ.

So timewise and everything I think this is a good place to leave off for this evening. So, we’ll come back and pick up here next week here at verse 39 where all of our characters will come together because Mary’s going to go visit her cousin Elizabeth to see if what the angel said is true. So thanks, everybody.