“How can this be?” There are many who will say
“it can’t” or “it wasn’t” but then Mary is the only one who can say for sure.
If Luke is half the historian my father is he will have checked his sources and
I don’t doubt Mary could have been one of them. Of course we don’t just talk
about the virgin birth we confess it and even though that might sound like the
same thing it isn’t. Confessions are not explained; they are confessed which is
to say, believed. Not like Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy though some would say
the virgin birth is a fairytale. Confessions are not constitutions though some
would make them equally binding. But the Christian confession of faith ddoesn'tso much bind us to a set of beliefs as it identifies us as those who adhere to
a particular story of what God is about in our world. This is the story of “God
with us” which is “God for us” in every space and place and time from before
the beginning into the forever future. “Let it be to me according to your
word.” Mary entered the story in a time and place where people threw rocks at
unwed pregnant teenagers until they were dead. (God help us those places still
exist) She accepted what would likely lead to her death because she trusted her
life was in God’s hands. “Let it be to me according to your word.” There is no
greater statement of faith in the scriptures and though she is venerated as
“Theotokos” (God-bearer) her faith was worthy of praise even before the Spirit
overshadowed her and the little Lord Jesus lay asleep in her womb. Faith bears
God into the world even now so that you and I enter Mary’s story, which is
God’s story, whenever in the face of an uncertain future we say, “Let it be to
me according to your word.”
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