An ordinary girl

Mary was a young lady who had grown up in a village in Galilee. She was probably thought of as nothing special and the idea of anything remarkable ever being reported from Nazareth was laughable. Mary was engaged to the local carpenter, a good solid craftsman, but not nobility or even wealthy; she must have expected just to settle down to a domestic family life - hopefully a happy one. However, she was a faithful follower of God whose commitment was about to be tested. Her response led her becoming one of the most famous women in history. As we enter the fourth week of Advent, we turn our attention to this seemingly ordinary girl, who was chosen to become the mother of Jesus.

So there she is, minding her own business, when an angel suddenly appears in the room. It's really scary. OK, after a quick mental calculation it clearly isn't a ghost - it is an angel, but it's big, probably glowing rather, and why is it there? Gabriel - that's its name - tells her that God is really pleased with her and has decided to give her a baby. In a big build up he reveals that this baby is going to be the Son of God and will reign over an everlasting kingdom.

This must have sounded rather far fetched and people had laughed at angels for announcing lesser messages. However, Mary took it surprisingly calmly. She didn't doubt what Gabriel said but did ask how it would happen, because she was a virgin. She presumably expected, or at least hoped that this would happen after she was married, but no, it was going to be now and the father was going to be the Holy Spirit rather than her fiancé. Mary wouldn't have been under any illusions: if there was a sniff of adultery you could be stoned to death and she must have seen or heard of this on several occasions. Being engaged was pretty much as good as married, so even if she wasn't killed there would be a major scandal. Yet Mary just replied that she was God's servant so let it be as he wished.

Mary of Nazareth was the ultimate servant of God, humble and courageous, entrusted with the motherhood of his own son.

Her cousin, Elizabeth, was pregnant in Jerusalem, so she made arrangements to visit her there for an extended holiday, which must have seemed innocent enough to her family. Elizabeth recognized that she was pregnant with the Son of God, which must have been good confirmation for Mary. However, when she came back to Nazareth about three months later, her husband to be, Joseph, didn't think that her slightly changed shape was the result of too much good eating up in the capital. Mary must have tried desperately to get him to understand, but it was beyond him and he was going to cancel the engagement quietly to keep her safe if possible. So God had to intervene in a dream to tell him that Mary was telling the truth. Joseph then married her, although they didn't sleep together until the baby had been born.

Opinion is divided over Mary and the terminology used about her by some people causes others to downplay her importance. However, if there was no man ever born who was greater than John the Baptist, as we saw last week, then there was no woman ever honoured as highly as Mary, who was chosen by God to bear and bring up his own son as a human. She willingly accepted a major disruption in her old life and had faith that God would sort out the necessary details to make her new life work out. The responsibility that she took on was enormous. Let us not become overwhelmed when God disrupts our lives, but take our cue from this supreme example of a handmaid of the Lord who agreed to whatever God wanted despite potential consequences - which indeed there were.

A neck on the line

As we approach Christmas, we sometimes have a thought for the turkeys. If you eat meat, then you will perhaps consider the death of your Christmas lunch sad but a worthwhile sacrifice. If you are vegetarian or vegan, then your view will be different and you might even find it unjustifiable that other people eat turkeys on Christmas day. What is rather more distressing, though, is people losing their heads - something not uncommon in the Bible.

Looking further into the life of John the Baptist, we see that he wasn't just a warm up act for Jesus - although surely that would have been enough for anybody! He also made a stand for holiness in his own right. When people asked him how they should live after being baptized he was uncompromising in his advice; when they didn't ask his advice, that didn't stop him from giving it, even to the king. This was certainly putting his neck on the line.

John told soldiers to be satisfied with their wages and not force people to give them anything by threatening them or making false applications. Similarly tax collectors were instructed not to demand more than the legally required amount of revenue. More generally he said that people should share their possessions if those around them were in need. That's all good stuff if you've really given your life to God and are willing to comply.

John the Baptist was totally committed to God in life and willing to pay the price of death.

When John saw Pharisees and Sadducees coming forward for baptism, though, he knew that they were mostly there because being baptized had become the done thing - be there or be square; make sure that you're seen in the right places. He warned this 'bunch of snakes' in no uncertain terms that they needed to live lives that showed they were actually repentant. He explained that there was a judgment coming and that everyone not bearing good fruit would not come out well. This is, of course, all part of the message that Jesus continued in his own ministry.

Now making enemies of the Pharisees and Sadducees was one thing, quite dangerous but a calculated risk. Making an enemy of King Herod Antipas, though, was beyond a risk. Antipas had decided that he wanted his brother's wife for himself, so he took her. John told him off and ended up in prison. Antipas' new woman, Herodias, didn't seem unhappy with the arrangement and, in fact wanted John dead, rather than in prison. The king, though, knew that killing a national prophet was bad for public opinion. So John languished in prison for a few months, keeping up to date with what Jesus was doing by sending messengers.

The time came eventually for Herodias to have her way. There was a royal feast and at that her daughter, Salome, danced for the king, apparently very well. He was really pleased and offered her whatever she wanted as a gift. Herodias told her to ask for the head of John the Baptist. So as not to lose face in front of his powerful guests, Antipas agreed and John's head was brought in.

John held out for what was right and lost his life in the bargain. He was not only the greatest person born before Jesus while alive (Luke chapter 7, verse 28; Matthew chapter 11, verse 11), but also the first martyr in the New Testament. He joined the ranks of the Old Testament prophets who gave their lives for God and set a New Testament precedent of total commitment to Jesus. No wonder he is given a whole week in Advent for us to consider his example.

Pointing to Jesus

I was always taught that it's rude to point. Well at least, pointing at someone is impolite, but pointing to somebody is completely different. The bees who made John the Baptist's wild honey did dances on the honeycomb to point their friends to the pollen. John himself knew that he had been born to prepare people's lives for the coming of the Messiah and to send them on to Jesus. He had been baptizing people for maybe a couple of years, when Jesus turned up in the queue. It took John a little while to recognize Jesus. They were related and their mothers knew each other, so they could well have met a few times as children, but John grew up in Judea and then left home to go to the desert; Jesus' early life was also in Judea (in Bethlehem), but he was taken south to Egypt after a couple of years and then his family moved him to Galilee in the north.

However, as Jesus stepped forward, John realized who he was and that he was the Messiah - the one about whom he had been teaching. The apostle John, in his Gospel, tells us that John the Baptist had been at pains to tell people that he himself was not the Messiah, but only his herald. Luke and Matthew go on to say that John had been proclaiming that Jesus was so much greater than him that he wasn't worthy even to untie or carry Jesus' sandals. Yet here Jesus was, coming to be baptized. John protested at first but, after Jesus had explained, he happily baptized the Son of God. Certainly, no one else ever had that privilege! John then was one of the witnesses to the Holy Spirit coming upon Jesus as a dove - and staying on him - and the voice of God sounding from Heaven to say that Jesus was his son. After this, there was no question for John, or presumably the other people present, who Jesus was.

John the Baptist was the greatest man ever born before Jesus, but never sought to take the glory for himself.

After this, John made sure that he let people know that it was Jesus whom he had been speaking about previously. He described Jesus as the lamb of God, who would take away the sin of the world. This might imply that he understood that it was through Jesus' death that we would receive forgiveness, which he could well have gleaned from some of the Old Testament prophecies, but may have also been told directly by God as well. He told two of his own disciples about Jesus, and they started Jesus' own core following. John never tried to hold on to the glory for himself.

He kept on baptizing for a while after Jesus had started his own ministry, continuing to point the way to Jesus. John's team, though, became a bit concerned when they realized that Jesus and his friends were also baptizing people and that the crowds were migrating that way. John had to explain to them that he had always made it clear that he was not the Messiah and could do only what was required of him by God. He said that, just like the friends of the bridegroom rejoice when they hear the voice of the bridegroom as he arrives, so his joy had been made complete by the arrival of Jesus on the scene. He went on to add that Jesus' ministry was going to increase while his own would decrease. He pointed out that Jesus was the one who had come from Heaven and that only through him was there eternal life for those who would believe in him as the son of God - and the consequences of God's anger for those who would not.

John took his job very seriously. He was born to usher in the Kingdom of God and direct people to Jesus. His message was that the Kingdom had arrived and Jesus was the Messiah, through whom there would be both salvation and judgment. He was totally humble, recognizing that his role was to support that of Jesus, not to have a ministry of his own which would remain centre stage. We too need to recognize that our role is simply to worship Jesus and show others the way to him, whatever form that might take.