Readings: 2 Samuel 7.1–11, 16; Canticle: Magnificat (Luke 1.46–55); Romans 16.25–27; Luke 1.26–38
“The angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth.”
In the name of …
Prequels.
Do you enjoy prequels?
Did you watch Endeavour as a prequel to Morse?
Or perhaps The Phantom Menace and others as prequels to Star Wars?
And what about books?
As a teenager
I worked my way avidly through CS Forester’s Hornblower novels,
reading them in story order,
and finding that all the earlier books were written after the later ones.
The conclusion of the story was already pre-determined –
Hornblower’s failure to achieve this or that;
the death of … spoilers.
Much of this was fixed by throw-away lines in the later books that were already in print.
And today’s gospel reading is a sort of prequel as well.
What’s it a prequel to?
Well, we heard a couple of weeks ago
the start of the gospel according to Mark.
(Mark the evangelist, that is, not Mark the vicar.)
Mark’s account is very widely regarded as the first gospel to have been written,
and so there was a time,
a short time perhaps,
when it was the only gospel in existence.
Perhaps you can remember from two weeks ago how it starts:
The beginning of the gospel [or: good news] of Jesus Christ, the Son of God[1]
and then it describes that beginning:
the preaching of John the Baptist,
and how Jesus arrives on the banks of the Jordan and is baptized by John.
So,
what was Jesus doing before the start of Mark’s account?
I think that’s a natural question to ask.
And in the culture of that time
it might not have been obvious
that he had been born,
or that he had grown from a baby to an adult man.
That’s a somewhat bizarre thing to say, isn’t it? What do I mean?
Well,
ancient mythology is full of stories that skip all that stuff.
Just one example
from the Roman poet Ovid,
who lived just a year or two ahead of Jesus and Luke.
His long verse collection Metamorphoses includes such a tale –
how the immortal gods
Jupiter and Mercury
decided one day to pay a visit in disguise to the mortal world.
They are spurned by everyone
until they meet an impoverished elderly couple,
Philemon and Baucis,
who invite them in and cook them supper
from their own meagre resources,
and gradually realize,
when the goblets of wine never empty,
that their guests are divine.[2]
Now if you think this is far-fetched,
then have a look at the Acts of the Apostles, at chapter 14,
where in an echo of Ovid’s tale, Luke tells us that
Paul and Barnabas are themselves mistaken for exactly the same two gods.[3]
So you can see perhaps
how the sudden appearance of Jesus in the earliest gospel account
as an adult acclaimed as God,
might also be open to misinterpretation.
That Jesus wasn’t really human,
but was a god in disguise.
Perhaps Luke was aware of speculation
about the origin of Jesus and his early life,
but whatever the reason,
he gives us two whole chapters about Jesus
before getting to John baptizing in the River Jordan
(where Mark had begun, remember?).
And here we are:
in the story it’s nine months before the birth of Jesus,
and Luke introduces us to Mary.
We don’t learn much about her though:
that she lives in Nazareth,
and is engaged to be married;
and via the angel that she is favoured by God,
and is related to Elizabeth,
who is herself expecting a child –
that’s the boy who in adulthood will become John the Baptist.
That’s pretty much all the story says about her.
And that’s because the story isn’t really about Mary.
It’s about Jesus.
The things that Mary says and does point us to Jesus.
The angel tells Mary she will have a son,
and that the Holy Spirit will overshadow her,
so that the child will be holy
and called “Son of God”.
Mary, then, will be the bearer of God the Son,
and we can see our Old Testament reading as a parallel to this.
King David wants to build a permanent home for the ark of the Covenant,
the holiest possession of the ancient Israelite people,
and regarded by them as the place where God dwelled.
But the prophet Nathan tells David
that it is not for him to build such a place,
that will come later;
but God will instead establish David’s line for ever.
Two prophecies for the price of one!
First, because Luke traces Jesus’s own ancestry back to King David –
seeing Jesus as fulfilling Nathan’s statement
that David’s line will reign for ever.
And secondly because
we have just heard how Mary will be the bearer of God –
it is her womb that will house God: God the Son.
So what does Mary do?
In the verses immediately after our gospel reading
she legs it,
and seeks out her relative Elizabeth.
And it is while she is with Elizabeth
that, Luke tells us, she praises God.
And earlier in our service today,
we sang a version of the words Luke records:
“With Mary let my soul rejoice”.
(You might like to have the words in front of you now.)
This song, the Magnificat, is not just a song of praise.
It’s also
a trailer or teaser for the story of Jesus,
for the story of Jesus’s mission and teaching,
the story of Jesus’s proclamation of God’s kingdom,
God’s rule.
Because in the Magnificat we can see parallels with Jesus’s later teaching:
These are the themes we have seen and sung in Mary’s Song,
and they are the themes that continue throughout Jesus’s ministry:
lifting up the hungry and poor,
exalting the humble and meek –
sending the rich away empty.
And in today’s gospel reading
we see them announced at the very start,
at the very moment that Jesus’s conception is first revealed.
Even as Jesus is conceived
Luke tells us that this message is proclaimed.
So is Luke’s account a good prequel?
Well, it’s the prequel that
to much of society
is almost the only bit of the story they remember.
In that sense, yes, it’s a really good prequel.
And yet …
The world around us
is drawing to the end
of its annual orgy of extravagant spending and extravagant consumption,
whilst all about we see:
poverty,
misery,
hatred,
war.
And though we shouldn’t begrudge people a bit of light and fun
and – above all – hope
in the midst of such difficulty,
nonetheless
our job,
our mission,
yours and mine,
is to make sure
that the rest of Jesus’s story is remembered too –
the proclamation of the good news that is the Kingdom of God,
where the poor and the hungry,
the homeless and the refugee,
the war-ravaged –
all who suffer, the downtrodden of society –
are raised up and satisfied,
and enemies are reconciled to each other.
And – our response should be to make that happen,
now, at Christmas time, yes – and also all year round.
Because all that is foreshadowed
in the news that we like Mary, heard today.
The good news
that the baby whose birth we are about to celebrate
saves us
and teaches us how to move
from lives governed by the prince of this world
to lives governed by the prince of peace.
Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.
[1] Mk 1.1 (NRSVAE)
[2] Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book VIII
[3] Acts 14.11, 12
[4] Lk 4.18,19 (NRSVAE)
[5] Lk 6.20–25 (NRSVAE), abbreviated