Sermon Tone Analysis
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Introduction
There have been some great announcements in history.
I can remember being at Yankees stadium as a child enjoying my birthday present when the game was interrupted.
The loudspeaker rang out that the first men had safely landed on the moon.
I can remember when I was watching cartoon one November afternoon when the broadcast was interrupted by an announcement that President Kennedy had been shot.
I can remember listening to Michael Jordan’s return to the NBA.
The next thing I heard was that a plane had flown into the world Trade Center.
These announcements break into time, and one remembers where they were and what they were doing when they happened.
These are some of the announcements I remember.
Some remember the announcement on Sunday afternoon in December that Pearl Harbor had been attacked.
Important announcements have been made throughout the centuries.
But no announcement is greater than the one that God was about to become personally involved in our history.
God the Son became incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth.
Let us look into the text further to see the implications of this announcement.
Exposition of the Text
Verse 26 begins with a marker of time.
It was the sixth month.
The context tells us that it was the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy.
The previous verse had said that Elizabeth had hid herself five months.
The timing of this announcement then was one month later.
At first, the mention of the sixth month appears as detail used to narrate a story, that it is not important of itself.
However Luke is not one to record detail for detail’s sake.
The sixth month is repeated at the end of this passage.
This frames the announcement with the time marker.
This means that it is significant.
In chapter 2, Luke uses a time marker to announce the birth of Jesus, dating it during the reign of Caesar Augustus and one Quirinius who was Roman governor of Syria.
One should notice that the six months’ time marker comes first in Luke.
What Luke is telling us is that while the world was ignorantly going about its own business that God had declared a new epoch of time.
A new calendar is declared in the world.
Until recently, this division of time was celebrated by BC and AD.
The world is trying to stamp out the significance of the change of calendar by changing this to Common Era (CE) and Before Common Era (BCE) without any note of why it is common.
This division of time is slightly off the timing of God.
Besides the mistake in calculating the birth of Christ by at least four years as Herod died in 4BC, the timing of God divides time by the conception of John the Baptist, not Jesus.
For four hundred years, the voice of God had been silent.
But when the angel Gabriel announces the birth of John the Baptist, this silence had been loudly broken, even while Zachariah remained mute.
With this announcement, a new epoch had begun.
In this sixth month, the angel Gabriel came with the sequel announcement to a home in Nazareth.
Inside this house was a young virgin named Mary who had been promised to a man from another village named Joseph.
As virginity was essential for the marriage to take place, the family would have taken every precaution to keep Mary from knowing a man.
Women in society in that day tended to be shut in anyway, and this would have been jealously guarded.
Her mother would have guarded the room she was in.
So Mary would have been deeply troubled by an Angel in the form of a man appear suddenly in her sequestered room.
In the world of that day, this would have been dangerous.
Roman soldiers were known to break in and rape young girls amongst others.
It’s hard to say exactly what went through Mary’s mind when Gabriel came, but in the very least, she would have been startled and frightened, even if she recognized that it was an angel and not a man.
She would have been even more startled when this stranger greets her: “Rejoice, you who have been given grace by God.
The Lord is with you!”
The word “grace” in Greek here is in the perfect passive tense.
The passive is often used as a divine passive and this gives the idea of “God-Graced” one.
It his God who favored her.
The perfect tens of the word indicated that this favoring had ongoing implications.
The Greek verb also is a causative form.
So what Gabriel is emphasizing is that God had caused his favor to rest upon Mary, a favor which would have enormous and permanent consequences.
The emphasis then is not on Mary, but what God was going to perform through her.
Mary was of course overwhelmed by the greeting.
But this was nothing compared to what Gabriel was about to say.
Gabriel tells her that she is about to conceive and have a son.
This would be no ordinary son.
She was to call Him Jesus (Joshua, Yahweh Saves in Hebrew).
But He would also be called the Son of the Most High.
This great son would be both Son of David in human terms and Son of god in divine terms.
David’s kingdom had an end, but the Kingdom of David’s greater Son would be without end.
Mary was engaged and was probably taught what we call the “birds and the bees” here.
She responds to the announcement, “How can this be?
She exclaimed!
I haven’t had relations with any man.
In other words, a child has to have a father as well as a mother.
Virgins don’t simply conceive.
Women were thought of as incubators of the man’s seed.
Other than nurture, some ignorantly thought she contributed nothing genetically to the project.
I don’t know how they resolved the fact that many children resemble their mothers physically more than their father.
Nevertheless, Mary asks a very appropriate question.
A cynical generation would have Mary thinking “Have you come to do the job?”
However, I do think we need to be a little more reverent.
Mary was not perfect.
I do not believe like modern Roman Catholics since Vatican 1 do that she was immaculately conceived without sin, but I do think she was virgin in mind as well as body.
But Mary needed to be favored with God’s grace even as much as we do.
Gabriel then tells Mary how this conception would happen.
It would be the work of the Holy Spirit that would overshadow her in cloudlike fashion and cause her to conceive.
Even though it was by all human experience and knowledge, at least in the age before in-vitrio fertilization and cloning impossible for a virgin to conceive.
But Gabriel reminds Mary that everything is possible for God who is not limited to human understanding and capacity.
Gabriel also offers the pregnancy of her cousin Elizabeth as proof that God is able to make this happen.
Mary must have known Elizabeth, although they lived some distance apart.
She must have known that Elizabeth was old, well past the time of childbearing.
Gabriel tells Mary that her cousin is six months pregnant.
The same God who made this conception possible would make it possible for the Virgin Mary to conceive.
Mary believes what the angel told her and shows her faith by submitting to the Lord.
She says: “So let it be unto me, your maidservant, even as you have said.”
We see here the link between faith and works.
Faith is never dead, but living.
Works proceed from faith.
We must also see that her faith is not just a leap into the dark.
She will take steps to confirm this faith.
She would go to see her cousin Elizabeth, and her faith would be confirmed and grow, even as that child grew within her.
Homily
How many great announcements of the past have faded into trivia or even lost to history.
Despite the world’s attempts to silence this great announcement, it will be proclaimed to all the world until the end of the age.
At this time, the calendar will cease and time will be no more.
Time only has meaning in a finite world.
It is a limitation.
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