This Christmas season, Mary's experience has something to say to us as we strive for professional accomplishment, relational intimacy, and significance.
As told by Luke, Mary was a young woman, engaged to be married to an average man. Blue collar. Unlikely that she aspired to worldly greatness. What Mary likely wanted was to live a normal life: have a few kids, keep a roof over her head and food in her family's stomachs, and enjoy her husband's companionship. Similar to many of us.
But God had a different plan for her, something other than eeking out a normal life. He chose her to mother the king of the universe. An angel appeared to Mary explaining all of this, and that angel told her that she was "favored."
For much of Mary's life, being favored wasn't an enjoyable experience. Apart from a select few, no one knew or could believe that Mary was pregnant with the Holy Spirit's baby, instead believing her guilty of infidelity to her future husband. And her husband-to-be, being one of those people, would have left her had it not been for an angel's intervention. To many, Mary was an adulterous kook. When it came time to deliver her baby, she was exposed to the elements and surrounded by livestock. Had something changed since the angel had spoken with her?
What about life as the mother of someone promised to be the Savior of the world? What women in the community could relate to that? As her son grew into a young man, he began talking about this stuff, and no one much wanted to hear it. Most people ostracized him, others plotted to kill him. What was it like for a mother to witness her son constantly mocked and isolated? Who could encourage her in that? Her own children refused to believe her. The end of all of this was Mary watching angry men beat her son beyond recognition and kill him.
Instead of comfort, wealth, and respect from her peers, God's favor brought Mary alienation, fear, and sadness. But it also brought her hope. There was something in the way that Jesus spoke that helped Mary to hang on. Something in his words rang so true that not even death could silence him. His suffering was necessary to rescue all of God's people (including Mary) from their own guilty hearts and brokenness. One day he will return to set everything right.
Having the Spirit of Jesus dwelling in us, we experience God's favor in the same ways. At work, our own goals and hopes conflict with our managers' and with the bottom line. At home, we experience conflict with our spouses, and we suffer the pain of seeing our own children suffer. Even in our own hearts we seesaw between despair and self-worship. Though now we only experience God's goodness in fits and starts, a day is coming when we will dwell in the fullness of his goodness forever. On this day, God's favor will finally be all that we had hoped it would be. Merry Christmas.
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