CHAPTER 1

LENT 1

You Have Found Favor

The Mystery of Grace

LUKE 1:5–38

"And the angel said unto her, Fear not,Mary: for thou hast found favor with God"

(Luke 1:30, KJV)

How does the lifelong journey of discipleship that's condensed and intensifiedin Lent begin? That's the first question we'll look at together. But beforesketching an answer, however, let's be clear on what this journey involves.Here's a definition that will guide us throughout the following chapters:Becoming a disciple involves coming to understand, own, and live the gospel—thatis, the good news that God has acted in Jesus to save us.

It's an ongoing navigation between two poles. The negative pole is what theChristian tradition has called "mortification," that is, "putting to death"those parts of our selves that don't conform God's will as it's disclosed in theBible. Discipleship (in part) is a lifetime of unlearning those attitudes andhabits that come all too naturally to fallen human beings, that appear sonatural and wholesome, that are so enslaving.

The positive pole, "vivification," is just the opposite. It's the slow processof being "made alive" in and through Christ. It's the Holy Spirit-enabled anddirected practicing of those habits and virtues through which our minds arerenewed, our bodies controlled, our selves transformed. It's a process throughwhich our consciences become guided by principles like moderation, patience, andgenerosity as we learn to love God with our whole hearts, our neighbors asourselves, and within the boundaries of such love, to enjoy the gifts of God'screation.

Finally, this journey of dying and living is one that we take with others,beginning and ending in community. Becoming Christ's disciple begins and endswith sisters and brothers alongside us, struggling with us, bearing our burdensas we bear theirs, forgiving and being forgiven, praying with us, for us, andperhaps sometimes instead of us. It's a journey undertaken in and with theChurch as the Church hears in Word and sees in Sacrament God's promise andcommand.

With that in mind, we turn to the text that will occupy us for the next twochapters: the angel Gabriel's announcement that Mary is to be Jesus' mother.First, an overview: although Mary is present only in the opening two chapters ofLuke's Gospel, there, she is central. This is unique among the New Testament'sfour Gospels. In the earliest and shortest Gospel, Mark, Mary is mentioned byname only once, and in her only appearance she is in fact one of Jesus'opponents.

In Matthew's Gospel, oriented as it is toward Jewish Christians, Mary ispassive, caught up in the events that revolve around Joseph, who is the maincharacter of the opening chapters. We may even say that the scandalous situationin which she finds herself—unmarried and pregnant—is the focal point of conflictearly on in Matthew's narrative. It's both an obstacle that only God can at onceaccount for and remove, and a foil against which Joseph, the righteous servantof God, displays his upright character.

The Gospel of John is totally different again: never named, the mother of Jesusappears at a wedding where water is transformed into wine (chapter 2) and at thecross when Jesus' mission is accomplished (chapter 19). In this Gospel, theanonymous woman is lost in the symbolic way she's tied to the coming of whatJohn calls "Jesus' hour." At the wedding she is present when the hour hasn'tcome; at the cross she's present when the hour arrives. Mary ties both scenestogether.

Even though much of Luke's Gospel closely resembles Matthew and Mark, hisportrait of Mary is different yet again. His Mary is the most sharply drawn ofseveral characters—Gentiles, women, children, and the poor—who didn't fit easilyin proper Jewish society. In Luke, stories and descriptions involving thesekinds of people are always significant and sympathetic. Luke wants us to noticeand to feel for them because they're on the margins of the community of faith.His Gospel isn't for saints, but for sinners.

Luke's audience—embodied in a character named Theophilus, to whom the story isaddressed—is made up of people attracted to Jesus' words and example, butconscious of their place on the periphery of organized faith. Luke has good newsfor these people whose relationship to God is unclear, whether they live amongGod's chosen people (such as the shepherds in Luke 2) or are obvious yetsympathetic outsiders (such as the faith-filled Roman officer of Luke 7).

Mary, a young, single woman with a pregnancy that would have provoked questions,is one of those people on the margins. She's one of God's people who appears toalmost all to be trapped by social convention in a scandalous situation. Onlyshe and Elizabeth apparently know that what looks like scandal is, in fact, thegreatest of all miracles. From this perspective, Mary truly is a three-dimensionalcharacter. Only here is she in the narrative's foreground, the onearound whom the conflict seems to revolve.

She's introduced in Luke's second announcement story, which opens with thewords, "In the sixth month" (1:26). Were we simply to jump in there, we mightconclude that this refers to the sixth month of the year, but we'd be wrong. AsLuke makes clear a few verses later (1:36), the "sixth month" refers not to acalendar but to Elizabeth's pregnancy. Luke uses this little phrase to tieMary's story to the first announcement story: Gabriel's announcement thatZechariah and Elizabeth are soon to become the parents of John the Baptizer(1:5–25). To understand Mary's story, we must begin with Zechariah andElizabeth's.

Luke's first announcement story is full of rich allusions to the Old Testament,found in even the plainest of phrases. Consider the opening: "It happened in thedays of Herod, King of Judea." At first glance, this looks like astraightforward way to anchor Luke's story in everyday history. When we lookdeeper, though, we find that Luke uses it also to ground his story in biblicalhistory.These opening words look very much like the opening verses of the Old Testamentprophetic books Jeremiah (1:2, 3) and Amos (1:1), a resemblance that's bothdeliberate and significant. It's a technique for Luke to situate his story intwo ways. First, he signals to his readers that his story happens in the realworld—their world—and not in one of the many legendary worlds of Greekmythology. Second, he invites readers to anticipate that the story will be abouta mighty act of God similar to those in the Old Testament, from the days of thekings and prophets.

Moving past this introduction, there are even more hints of older biblicalstories in the way the main characters are described. The couple, Luke tells us,is childless—Elizabeth is barren and both she and Zechariah are old....