This Advent, we’re giving you a weekly gift from Darrell Johnson’s new devotional, Awaken Wonder: Daily Devotions for Advent. Each week, we will share one devotional featuring a short reading, reflection, and prayer: a moment of pause in the midst of the season to make room for the wonder of Christ’s coming and promised return.
This week’s excerpt, from Week One: Sunday, invites you to sit with the story of Mary as you begin your Advent journey.
Read
Reflect
As the story unfolds, the spotlight keeps shining on the infant Jesus. In scene after scene—in the womb in Nazareth, in the manger in Bethlehem, in the Temple in Jerusalem—the spotlight consistently shines on Jesus. He is, after all, what the story is all about. He is what the waiting of Advent and the celebration at Christmas are all about. He is, as they say, “the reason for the season.”
So the spotlight keeps shining on Jesus. But as it does it also shines on the Virgin, on Mary—in the temple in Jerusalem, at the manger in Bethlehem, and in the womb in Nazareth, especially in the womb in Nazareth. Next to Jesus, Mary is the most significant person in the unfolding drama. Rightly does she sing, in her song we call “the Magnificat,” “for behold, from this time on all generations will count me blessed” (Luke 1:48). Blessed indeed! Although some believers might take her blessedness to inappropriate extremes, Mary, nevertheless, is to be highly honoured for at least three biblical reasons.
First, Mary is the mother of our Lord. No one else has had, or can have, that privilege. You and I can be our Lord’s disciples, his apprentices. We can even be His sisters or brothers, and His Bride! But only she can be His mother. For nine months she carried Him in her womb. For years she carried Him in her arms and in her heart. It was she who nursed Him in infancy. It was she who got up at night when He cried. It was she who changed His diapers. It was she who washed His clothes, and probably even made His clothes. It was she who was there to catch Him as He first tried to walk. It was she who put band-aids—or the first century equivalent—on His first cuts. It was she who taught Him to speak! It was she who taught Him to pray the Psalms. It was she who gave Him his facial features: Mary is the only human being who literally bears the image of Jesus Christ. Jesus has her nose, her cheekbones, and her eyes. Mary’s cousin Elizabeth, deeply moved in Mary’s presence, rightly called out: “How has it happened to me, that the mother of my Lord would come to me?” (Luke 1:43).
The second reason she is to be honoured: Mary is the first Christian theologian. She is the first human being to reflect theologically on the consequences of her Son’s birth. She is the first believer to articulate what the incarnation, the enfleshment of God in our humanity, means for the world. This she does in the song she sings at Elizabeth’s home, her Magnificat, her “my soul magnifies the Lord.” I call her song “the Gospel according to the Virgin.”
And the third reason she is to be honoured: she is the model of saving faith, the proto-typical believer. I agree with biblical scholars across the theological spectrum who argue that Luke, the writer of the story, holds Mary before us as the model disciple.
“Do you want to know,” Luke is asking, “what it means to believe in the miracle that is Advent-Christmas, what it means to believe in the grand miracle of the Incarnation? Do you want to know what it means to live the miracle of Christmas? Do you want to know what it means to be a disciple of the One born at Christmas? Look at Peter, and at John, and at Mary Magdalene, and at Zacchaeus, and at the Apostle Paul. And look at Mary, the mother of Jesus—especially look at Mary! Again, Elizabeth rightly honours Mary: “Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what had been spoken to her by the Lord” (Luke 1:45).
Mary, the mother of our Lord, is the model disciple of our Lord. She is the model disciple because she believes the impossible could happen. That is what the text emphasizes and therefore what I want to emphasize today. Mary dared to believe that the Living God could do what had never been done before, and she invites us to do the same.
Pray
Heavenly Father,
who chose the Virgin Mary, full of grace,
to be the mother of our Lord and Saviour,
now fill us with Your grace,
that we in all things may embrace Your will
and with her rejoice in Your salvation;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and forever. Amen.
If you enjoyed this reflection, consider getting yourself a copy of Awaken Wonder to continue your journey through Advent, to gift to a friend, or to revisit in the years ahead.
