I’ve sometimes thought about the life of Mary, and wondered about the qualities in her life that made God decide to choose this unknown teenage girl to be the mother of His Son, the Saviour of the world. As Christmas approaches, we think again of how Mary was visited by the angel and how she started out on a journey that would change her life - and our lives - for ever.
A couple of weeks ago, at a church service, I watched two actors perform the part of the story that the Bible doesn’t tell us about. Their drama piece depicted Mary’s dilemma as she had to go to her fiancé and break the news to him that she was pregnant. It was sensitively written and performed, and suddenly my eyes were opened in a deeper way to the cost that Mary faced when she agreed to be obedient to what God asked of her.
It hit me in a new way that, when this teenage girl said yes to the Father’s will, she wasn’t only saying yes to a nine-month pregnancy; she was actually declaring herself willing to pay the price of a whole lifetime of shame and misjudgement. In saying yes to God, this godly young woman knew that she was probably going to be judged and found guilty by her family, friends and maybe even by the man she loved. Because, let’s face it, it’s extremely unlikely that anyone was going to believe a far-fetched story about a baby conceived by the Holy Spirit. Mary knew that; and yet she was willing to say yes to God, even though it meant that her former good reputation might be destroyed and lost for ever.
And, in marrying her, Joseph knew that too. Even though time passed and people’s memories perhaps faded a bit with the years; even though Mary and Joseph continued to live godly lives and went on to have more kids of their own… it’s possible that people continued to whisper behind their backs, and that the people of Nazareth always thought of Jesus as, “Mary and Joseph’s eldest son. He was illegitimate you know!”
Thirty years passed before Jesus began His public ministry and gave any evidence at all of being anything other than the biological son of Mary and Joseph the carpenter. And, even then, there were many who didn’t recognise who He really was. My heart hurt to think that Mary had lived for thirty years, or maybe even for her whole life, knowing the truth about what had happened, and yet being constantly confronted with the fact that other people were judging her and believing a lie about her. (Because you usually can’t change history, as it was perceived, and it’s unlikely that people ever changed the impressions and the judgements they’d formed about her at that time.)
What sacrificial love! What costly obedience! We sometimes say, or sing in hymns, that no price is too high to pay and nothing is too much to give up for the One who loved us and died for us. Thinking last week about Mary’s situation, about her willingness to embrace a whole lifetime of shame and misjudgement, maybe even of gossip and rejection, allowed me to understand “radical obedience” in a new light. And yet this radical obedience of a teenage girl has allowed hundreds and millions of us to experience friendship with the Messiah and God of the universe.
As we think about how the Son of God gave up everything and came to be born on earth at Christmas time, my prayer for my own life is that I will continually grow in my capacity for sacrifice and in my willingness to say yes to the Lord; my readiness to say, “No price is too high, no sacrifice is too great, no pain or shame is too deep… if the result is that I and others can know the living God in a deep and personal way.” I still have a lot of growing to do in this area: saying yes is one thing, but embracing the consequences and hanging in for the the long term can sometimes be a real challenge that involves daily dying to self. The depth of Mary’s sacrifice still leaves me stunned but, deep down, I know that this kind of unconditional surrender to God is the deepest desire of my heart. Quite simply because He deserves it and He can always be trusted with lives that are committed to His purposes. Wow!
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