Every journey begins with a single step and the first step in the Christmas story is found in Luke 1:26. Now we have heard this so many times that it may not strike us as being out of the ordinary or even very significant, but that God sent an angel to Nazareth, for the people who first read Luke’s gospel this would have been startling because at this point in time Nazareth was not well known at all. The village of Nazareth is not mentioned in any of the official secular history recorded by the historian Josephus, and even in the Jewish writings, Nazareth is not mentioned at all. The town of Nazareth is not once mentioned in the Old Testament and it is not mentioned at all in the expanded Jewish writings known as the Talmud. Nazareth is a totally obscure and insignificant place with maybe a population of 400 people.
While Nazareth was not well known it was the suburb, if you could even call it that, of the much larger and well known city called Sepphoris. Sepphoris was known as the ornament of Galilee and it was the city that Herod Antipas chose as his capital in 4BC. At the time of Jesus’ birth, Sepphoris was an affluent and prosperous city that boasted a population of over 36,000 people. Sepphoris was not only the capital but it was known for the luxury villas that people built on the hillsides and many of those villas had beautiful mosaic floors. (show picture) So Sepphoris was well known and important – Nazareth was obscure. Sepphoris was wealthy and prosperous, Nazareth was poor and struggling. Sepphoris was the home of rulers, leaders and the wealthy businessmen of the day, Nazareth was the home of farmers, servants and the laborers who installed the mosaic floors. If God was going to choose a woman to be the mother of the Messiah and he was looking at this area, most people would have thought that Sepphoris would have been the place God would look. So that an angel went to Nazareth would have been surprising.
While Sepphoris held all the money and artistic beauty of the area, Nazareth did have one important feature that made it vital to the larger community – it had a spring that provided water for the surrounding area. Being such a dry region, villages usually developed around springs of water and it is believed that this is how Nazareth became a village in the fist place. Why that spring is important is because there are some who believe that the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary at the spring when she went to draw water. Drawing water would have been Mary’s job as a young girl and so much of her time would have been spent at the spring and so the Orthodox Christian Church believes that Gabriel appeared to Mary and spoke to her not at her home but at the spring.
I have to say that I found this fascinating because I always pictured this story in Luke taking place in Mary’s home, in a simple bedroom during the middle of the night. Again, some stories are so familiar that we don’t really listen to them, but if we go back and look at Luke 1, nowhere in the story do we hear that Mary was at home or that it was at night when the angel appeared so this encounter could very well could have taken place at the spring early in the morning or in the evening when Mary went to draw water. But let’s push this idea a little further.
The Orthodox Christian Church also believes that while Gabriel was an angel - he appeared to Mary not as a heavenly being with wings and radiant light, but as a man who simply walked up to Mary and began a conversation. When we read the account in Luke1, this again makes some sense. Nowhere does it say that Mary was terrified by the sudden presence of a heavenly being like the shepherd were, so Gabriel could very easily have been a messenger in human form who simply walks up to Mary and brings her this message from God. This makes a lot of sense because that is often how angels appeared to people in the Old Testament.
In Genesis 18 there is the story of 3 visitors who simply walk up to Abraham and Sarah and give them the message that even though they are well beyond child bearing age, they will indeed give birth to a child just like God had promised. It is clear from the story that these men were considered angels or messengers of God but they aren’t heavenly beings, they are simply men who come with this message that a promised son will be born to a woman who physically shouldn’t be able to give birth. Sound familiar? This story of the angel Gabriel visiting Mary to tell her that she is going to have a son even though that seems physically impossible since she is a virgin is actually very similar to the story of the angels visiting Abraham and Sarah.
When we think about how God sent angels in the Old Testament, we begin to see how this visit of Gabriel to Mary may not have taken place in Mary’s home at night, but at a spring during the day and how appropriate for the announcement of the Messiah coming into this world to take place at a spring because just like a spring provided life to the larger community, the Messiah was coming to bring life to the world and Jesus himself said that he was the living water and that those who drank it would never thirst again. I don’t know about you, but I find it exciting to see this story in a different light and if the first step of the journey is different than what we thought, then maybe the entire journey will hold new insights and more surprises for us.
That the journey begins in Nazareth is also significant because the word Nazareth comes from word netzer which means a shoot or branch, and for Israel that word brought hope. After the nation of Israel was destroyed and the people carried away into captivity in 722 BC, the prophet Isaiah began to talk about a ruler who would one day come and unite God’s people and lead them into freedom. Isaiah said that this ruler would come from the line of David but his exact words were that he would be a netzer or a shoot or branch rising up from the stump of Jesse. Look at Isaiah 11:1-3. Jesse was the father of David, so a netzer from the stump of Jesse meant that this ruler, or Messiah, was going to be an ancestor of David. For generations the people of Israel found hope in this netzer and the word itself brought them hope so while the village of Nazareth might have been an insignificant town in the shadow of Sepphoris, the name brought people hope.
Knowing that the name Nazareth refers to the hope people placed in the coming of the Messiah and knowing there was a spring of water that would reflect the living water the Messiah would bring both lead us to think that maybe this is why God chose Nazareth to begin this journey, but asking ourselves why God chose Nazareth is the wrong question. The more important question is what does the choice of Nazareth tell us about God? That the journey of Jesus begins in a obscure and insignificant town tells us that God looks for the meek and humble to fulfill his purpose. God could have sent his messenger just a few miles away to the important and powerful city of Sepphoris, but he didn’t. God made a conscious choice to send the angel to Nazareth and this tells us that God is willing to choose the humble to accomplish his work. God doesn’t always look for the rich and powerful (although he will use them as he uses all people) but God delights in choosing the least likely person and the most obscure places to do his work because then we know that the work and the power really belongs to God.
This is good news for us to hear as we begin our Advent journey because while we may feel like we don’t have anything important to offer God, God’s choice of Nazareth shows us that God delights in using the simple and ordinary. God loves taking our simple and ordinary lives and doing something extraordinary with them. Jesus took simple fisherman and used their lives to change our world and God can use our lives for something significant if we will allow him to and Luke 1 shows us that Mary was willing to do this.
Mary was a simple humble girl. Being from Nazareth we believe she was poor, uneducated and probably a servant for one of the wealthy families in Sepphoris. Mary may have only been 13 or 14 years old when the angel visited her because that was the age that young girls got engaged and we hear from Luke 1 that Mary was engaged to a man named Joseph. While we don’t know much about Mary, what we do know is that she found favor with God. Now this doesn’t mean that Mary is God’s favorite or that he likes her more than any of the other young girls on the planet, favor means grace and so a favored one was one whom God fills with his grace and grace is the undeserved power, love and kindness of God.
Now unlike the Roman Catholic Church which views Mary as being born without sin, the protestant church believes that Mary was just an ordinary girl whom God filled with his grace. While she was humble and faithful and willing for God to move in her life, Mary didn’t deserve or earn God’s love and kindness it was an act of grace or God’s favor. So it’s God’s grace that stands at the center of the Christmas story because it was God’s grace that chose Mary and Joseph, and it was God’s grace that filled Mary and brought forth a child. The Christmas story is all about God’s grace and the central force and power of Jesus’ life was God’s grace. It was God’s grace that reached out to tax collectors, prostitutes and sinners. It was God’s grace that took sinful ordinary fisherman and made them disciples and transformational leaders in the world. The work of God in and through Jesus is all about grace and that grace has power for those who are willing to receive it and Mary was willing to receive it.
Look at Luke 1:38. This is Mary’s response to God’s grace, she simply says Yes, but Mary said yes knowing that it would begin a journey in her own heart and life that would not be easy. For Mary to be pregnant before she was married meant that she could be stoned. Even if that didn’t happen, she certainly must have thought Joseph would dismiss her in disgrace. I’m sure Mary wanted to ask Gabriel, what about Joseph? Will you go and make sure he knows everything that is going on here? She may have wanted to ask that, but she doesn’t. There is no mention of Joseph or the problems Mary might encounter during the journey to come. None of that is mentioned and it might be because Mary somehow knew that God’s grace was sufficient for her. What an act of faith and strength and courage we see in this young girl.
Just as God’s choice of Nazareth reveals something about the character of God, so does God’s choice of Mary; by choosing Mary, we see that God’s passion is for those who are humble and simple and those who are willing to walk with Him one step at a time. God desire is to fill us with his grace so that we can do more than we ever thought possible or imagined and I believe this grace is working everyday of our lives to do just that. John Wesley talks about prevenient grace, which is the grace of God at work at all times and in all places and it is a grace that draws us closer to God even before we say yes. God’s grace fills us so that we can hear God’s message for us and begin to understand God’s will for our lives. God’s grace is also what gives us the courage and strength to finally say yes to God and follow His plan - like Mary.
So we begin our advent journey today at the very same place Mary began her journey (and I don’t mean in a small town next to a big spring of fresh water, although when you stop and think about it, the similarities between Nazareth and Bellefonte are quite striking), we begin like Mary, with some uncertainty about where the next step will take us. We begin like Mary – wrestling with how God’s grace will accomplish in our lives all that God wants to accomplish. We begin like Mary - trusting in God’s grace to help us say these simple words, Here I am, the servant of the Lord, let it be with him and in me and through me according to you word.
Next Steps
Begin an Advent Journey of listening daily to the messages of God.
• Read through the new Faith Church Advent Devotion, the Upper Room or the Daily Bread.
• Read Luke 1 with fresh eyes and an open heart.
Reflect on the work wants to do in you and through you. What will it mean for you to say, let it be with me according to your will.
Give thanks for a God who not only chooses Nazareth and chooses Mary but chooses us as well.
