When the Christmas story is told, we often begin nine months before the birth. We start with the angel Gabriel visiting Mary to tell her that she would be the mother of Jesus. But apart from mentioning that Joseph considered separating from Mary, we go straight to the journey to Bethlehem.
The four gospels in the Bible do not tell us much about the nine months of Mary’s pregnancy, but Luke does tell us a little. It is a part of the story we tell in church sometimes, but it tends to be missed out of most Christmas stories and nativities.
After Mary became pregnant, she went away from her home village to visit family. Although it does not say so in Luke’s Gospel, it does not take much imagination to think that Mary’s family might have wanted to get their unmarried pregnant daughter away from the neighbours and local gossip.
Mary went to stay with her cousin Elizabeth and her husband Zechariah. Elizabeth and Zechariah were dealing with their own miraculous pregnancy. It was not a virgin birth—Elizabeth and Zechariah had been married for years and had been trying for children. Their baby had been conceived in the normal way, but it was miraculous because they were much older and past the age when pregnancy should have been possible.
Their baby would grow up to be John the Baptist, but that is story for another time.
Luke does tell us what happened when Mary and Elizabeth met. By the way, Luke was not there at the time. As far as we know, Luke never met Jesus. But he almost certainly met Mary in the years after Jesus had risen from the dead and ascended into heaven. As he researched for his book and gathered information, he would have had the opportunity to hear from Mary herself what had happened thirty or so years earlier. And although it was a long time, Mary was not likely to forget her first pregnancy.
Mary must have told Luke, and Luke tells us that Mary arrived at her older cousin’s home, and Elizabeth said, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear!”
And Mary burst into song!
“My soul glorifies the Lord…”
The words of Mary’s song can be found in Luke chapter 1, verses 47 to 55. She almost certainly sang in the Aramaic language, Luke translated her words into Greek, and many language experts over the years have translated them into Latin and English and many other languages.
The Latin translation gave Mary’s song the name ‘Magnificat’, the name by which it is still known in the Book of Common Prayer. In more recent times, the hymnwriter Timothy Dudley-Smith put Mary’s song into a four-verse metre giving us the hymn ‘Tell Out My Soul’.
Her song is prophetic in that it looked forward to what God would do through the baby now growing in her womb. This baby would bring to the world a different kind of kingdom, a kingdom in which the normal ways of worldly kingdoms get turned upside-down.
He has performed mighty deeds with his arm;
he has scattered those who are proud in their
inmost thoughts.
He has brought down rulers from their thrones
but has lifted up the humble.
He has filled the hungry with good things
but has sent the rich away empty.
In the old prayer book version:
He hath shewed strength with his arm:
he hath scattered the proud,
in the imagination of their hearts.
He hath put down the mighty from their seat:
and hath exalted the humble and meek.
He hath filled the hungry with good things:
and the rich he hath sent empty away.
Two thousand years later, the world is still a place in which, most of the time, the strong are elevated and the rich are well fed, the humble are pressed down and the hungry are empty.
But one day all worldly kingdoms will be replaced with God’s kingdom. And if we choose to, we can begin to live in that kingdom now. It all starts with recognising the little baby in the manger as our revolutionary king.
Happy Christmas,
Mark