There was stuff going on that first Christmas that was
normal and ordinary, and then there was the other stuff. The stuff that was neither
normal nor ordinary. We sometimes patronise the characters in the Christmas story
as primitives who didn’t know what we know. That’s why they could believe
promises that clearly were not believable. So writers like Luke concoct stories that we know can’t
be true and therefore are at best mythology, rather than history. The problem is,
this isn’t what they claim to be doing, and it’s not how it reads. Luke claims that he is setting out to investigate what happened and then compile an orderly account so that we may have "certainty". And
his writing seems to be largely like the reporting of ordinary human responses to extraordinary
events.
Take the characters in Luke 1 blogged about previously. You don’t need to
know a lot about the finer points of gynaecology, embryology and development
biology to know where babies come from, and what is necessary to make them. And
Zechariah and Elisabeth on the one hand, and Mary on the other, were pretty clear
on both topics. Zechariah is promised a child, something that he’s wanted for
years, and promised it by an impeccable source. As discussed previously, he gets himself into
hot water by making it clear he is not convinced, no matter where the
information comes from. This is a story that reads like Bible, not Hollywood. Mary receives
disconcerting news in a disconcerting way, and she responds with a question,
which prompts a very interesting response that I’ll return to. But first, what
might seem like a digression.
A couple of thousand years before the events recorded in
Luke Ch1, three men appeared out of the heat haze near Abraham’s camp at a
place called Mamre (you’ll find the story in Genesis 18; you’ll find Mamre just
to the north of Hebron). One of the “men”, it turns out, was God himself; the
other two were probably angels. A conversation ensued with Abraham, while his
wife Sarah listened in the background. It’s in this conversation that God
promises Abraham that Sarah will have a child, even though (spookily like Zechariah
and Elisabeth) Abraham and Sarah were well on the elderly side of old. Sarah
chuckles at this promise; after all it’s clearly preposterous. Like New
Testament characters, Old Testament characters are not stupid; they know about
making babies. God’s response is to challenge Sarah’s lack of belief by posing
a question – “Is anything too hard for the Lord?”. And, of course, it turns out
that delivering on promises about miracle babies if not too hard, because a
child, Isaac, duly appears. This is a story Zechariah would have been familiar
with, and this is perhaps one reason why Gabriel is fairly sniffy with him when
he doesn’t respond appropriately to a similar promise given to him and
Elisabeth. Their child would be miraculous but not unique.
Speaking of Gabriel, I’ve always wondered if he was one of
the two angels with God at Mamre. He’s not named of course. If he was there, this makes his response to
Mary’s question intriguing. Because while Mary is clearly willing to accept
what he tells her, she also has questions, precisely because, like Sarah, she’s
knows where babies come from. Famously, Gabriel tells Mary that something
entirely unique is going to happen in her to bring about her pregnancy. But he
adds something else. This time it is not a question like the one posed to
Abraham. It’s a statement: nothing is impossible with God. Had Gabriel been
here before? Had he heard a similar promise, observed a human, and sceptical,
reaction to it? Did he hear the question that God responded with? He had certainly
seen the promise realised. So perhaps he has learned something. With
confidence, confidence borne of experience rather than belief, he’s able to
reassure Mary. Possibly. I’m speculating
of course.
The rest, as they say, really is history. Maybe angels can
observe, listen, watch and learn. Maybe we should learn from them.
