Greetings Favored One?

particularities, names, and unknown stories: Advent 4, 2023,

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2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16
Psalm 89:1-4, 19-26
Romans 16:25-27
Luke 1:26-38

In the gospel of Luke, the story of the incarnation—of hope—begins with names. Specific names. People and lineages are named. The messenger Gabriel is named. Mary is named. We are told she is betrothed to Joseph (another name) and that king David (yet another name) from long ago is in her ancestry.

These names give a particularity to the story. It is not a faceless angel who brings the message. It is a specific angel. And the angel comes not to a nameless girl from a nameless family, but to Mary of the line of David. These names shape the story into one of beings and people who felt, hurt, hoped, and witnessed miracles.

The specific people lived in a specific time and a specific place. They had lives outside what we read about, feelings that made them complex, and stories of their own. It’s easy for us to read this story and think that the players knew their place in the revelation of the incarnation, but they didn’t. Even the angel Gabriel only knew his mission: go to Nazareth, to Mary, and announce the coming of the messiah through her participation. Gabriel didn’t know Mary would say yes. All he knew was that he was to go and deliver the message he was commissioned to carry.

These players didn’t know their place in the divine unfolding of history. All they knew is what was happening to them at the time.

Gabriel goes to Mary and greets her, saying, “Greetings favored one! The Lord is with you.” Mary was perplexed by this greeting. And with good reason. She was a girl in an occupied land, under the thumb of Rome. The land had seen war and turmoil, and now had an uneasy peace in the Roman empire. In a homeland that was not her own, she was favored?

Mary was also not well to do. She was part of the working class, and a woman within that social strata. She was being given by her father to another man who would be her husband. Mary had no land, no wealth, no position of power in society. She was just another person in the crowded streets of Nazareth. She didn’t have upward mobility or hope for a better life.

No, Mary didn’t feel favored. I imagine she was also questioning if the Lord was really with her? The Lord had been silent for centuries, letting the Exile to Babylon happen. There was the eventual return to the land, but it was under the rule of the Persian empire. Was the Lord with Mary’s people when empires rose and fell, all the while controlling or warring with the land of Israel? And what about now? Rome sat heavily on the throne of the world, and no matter how much the people of Israel cried out for deliverance from their oppressors and a restoration of their own kingdom, there was no movement from heaven. No savior to come lead them to military victory over the oppressors. Was the Lord with Mary when she was part of a people who longed for deliverance but never received it?

Of course she was perplexed; she didn’t know the rest of the story. She didn’t even know what Gabriel’s greeting meant.

Then came the news: She had found favor with God—she was favored after all—and she had been chosen to conceive and bear a son: Jesus, another name in the story. This Jesus wasn’t just any child, though. No, he was the messiah, the one that would rule over Israel forever, his kingdom never stopping.

This was the promise God had made to her ancestor, David. David was another particular person, part of his time and place in history. After he had defeated his enemies and peace was established in Israel, David saw that the Lord didn’t have a temple. The nations around him had gods who lived in extravagant houses, temples where people would gather to worship these idols. The Lord, God of Israel, had a tent.

The state of affairs didn’t sit well with David. Here he was in a luxurious palace, and God was dwelling in a tent. It didn’t seem right to David. So, he set out to build a temple. The first thing he did was to consult the prophet Nathan to see if God would bless this building campaign.

While Nathan first agreed that David should build a temple, the Lord had other plans. The Lord said God didn’t care about temples and buildings. Instead, The Lord was about to build a house out of David and his descendants.

God established a promise, a covenant, with David saying that God would establish a forever kingdom through David’s offspring.

Well, David had sons, and they all eventually died. Israel fell to the Assyrians and then the Babylonians, and thus began the long night of occupation and war that was the reality for Mary hundreds of years later. So where was this forever kingdom? Where was the son of David, the one who would sit on the throne? Where was the Lord who needed to keep his promise?

Then Jesus.

Mary must have been stunned. The promise of her ancestor David was about to be fulfilled in her womb. “But, Gabriel, how can this be? I haven’t been with a man?” was the only reply she could muster.

It makes sense. I mean, how is there going to be a child if there has been no sex involved? That is how we humans procreate. How was this child to come from the line of David if there was no earthly father?

Again, it’s easy to read into this story the nativity. It’s easy to jump ahead and guess that Mary knew what was about to happen, she just didn’t quite know the logistics. But, confined to a specific place and particular time, we humans are not omniscient. Mary didn’t know any of it. All she knew was that she had been offered the chance to bear the messiah, the liberator of Israel.

Gabriel explained that the Holy Ghost would overshadow her, conceiving through divine means, so the child, so Jesus would be consecrated from conception, and called the son of God.

Mary responded meekly, “Here I am, the lowly servant of the Lord; let it be according to your word.”

Turns out Mary was favored by God, specifically favored, even when she didn’t believe it at first, even when she didn’t understand, even when she didn’t know the whole story.

 And we are favored, blessed, beloved by God even when we don’t know the whole story we are in. It’s easy to look around at this world, at its broken power structures, violent political systems, and grinding, greedy economics and question if the Lord is really with us. It’s easy to lose hope. It’s easy to get swallowed up by questions of, “why did this happen” and “when are you going to save us, Lord?”

But the messengers of God come to tell us another truth. They tell us the Lord is with us and we are beloved by name. Each and every one of us is specifically loved by God. God knows us by name, knows our particular time and place, knows our specific circumstances. And into that time and place and circumstances, God speaks our name and whispers, “Jesus is coming” to each of us. That’s what Advent is all about, the coming of Christ, the coming of the light, the coming of love.

Even when it’s hard to believe, even when we don’t understand, Jesus is here, with us, breaking into the world, favoring each of us by name.

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