Let’s say you’re a young unmarried woman living in a time when pregnancy out of wedlock was a great sin and looked upon socially with great disfavor.
And let’s say an angel appeared to you and told you you were going to be pregnant even though you’d never been with a man.
How would you respond? Who would you turn to for help? Who’d listen to you without judging you? Who would believe your story about an angel and a virgin birth?
Not your parents, certainly not your friends and neighbors, they might stone you to death.
How about Elizabeth who is six months pregnant even through she was barren and too old to give birth? Elizabeth and Mary share a similar and yet very different problem; one is old and barren and pregnant; the other is young and unmarried and pregnant.
“Now at this time Mary set out and went in a hurry to the hill country, to a city of Judah, and she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. And she cried out with a loud voice and said, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!’” — Luke 1: 39-42
There is a problem!
We’ve heard this story so often we’ve turned it into a “happily ever after” fairy tale. Elizabeth is delighted with her pregnancy and Mary is honored to carry her baby. But in real life, Elizabeth might wonder how in the world she’ll live long enough for John to grow up and worries that if she dies, he’ll be left alone in the world.
And Mary worries about what people, especially her parents will think of her, and what hardships her child will endure as he grows up without a father. Actually, she’s engaged to Joseph who is apparently an older man, but what man will marry a woman who’s been unfaithful to him?
There are some good signs. When Mary meets with Elizabeth, her baby leaps in her womb and she assures Mary that both these babies are from God. And later, an angel will appear to Joseph and solve that problem.
It’s a wonderful story of love and hope and faith, but I hope you’ll realize it’s not a “they lived happily ever after” fairy tale.
Herod will try to kill Mary’s child. She and Joseph will have to escape to Egypt. Mary will see her son hounded by the Pharisees and Sadducees, ridiculed by the crowds, and beaten and tortured by the Romans and hanged from a cross.
It’s the real-life story of a God who is willing to send his Son to suffer and die for the sins of the people he created — the very people who turned their backs on him!
Charles “Buddy” Whatley is a retired United Methodist pastor serving Dawson Street Methodist Church in Thomasville, Ga
