The Trouble with Jesus
by Constance Hastings
The Trouble with Jesus is his story sells hope, but not in the usual way.
For with God, nothing is usual.
“For nothing is impossible with God.”
Ok, while the world, or most of it, has a big celebration this time of the year, let’s face it. The stories we propagate around it are a stretch. Old men fly around the world in one night dropping off toys to good, and usually not-so-good, kids. Crippled children find nineteenth century benefactors in stingy old men. Ugly green creatures have a change of heart about holidays. Single women find the love of their lives in snow scenes with mistletoe. And then there’s the biggest one of all. An angel tells a virgin girl she’s going to have a baby with no man involved. You people really are suckers for whatever you can make up to make you feel good. People, get over it. The world doesn’t run on your fantasies!
True, fantasies are as solid as thin air. Empty promises hung on the mantle are not going to bring lasting hope, let alone meaning. But hope sells, so support the economy and at least make a dime off of it. The thing is though, these stories are all told with the understanding they’re just make believe, a way to have fun and feel good. But the last one about that virgin is not a sugar-coated cookie when you take a good look at it.
So put aside the implausibility of it. Its details are tough and centered in a world as mean as you’ll find today. This girl, Mary, lives in the small village of Nazareth, no place where you want to be from. The joke had been going around for years, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” Hear the derisive laugh while eyes roll, the stories whispered about what goes on and comes out of that miserable hole in Galilee. Whatever is good there will be soiled soon, and that goes for young girls as well.
Bring in the special lights now, follow her as she walks alone, maybe she is finding a secret seclusion where she can be a vision in prayer. Actually, that’s not the story. She is just Mary, lucky enough to be engaged to a guy named Joseph who had good ancestry if nothing else to his name. One day an angel named Gabriel showed up in this desolate place with a preposterous message for her. He calls her “favored” and that “The Lord is with you.”
Enter into what possibly could have gone through her mind with that greeting. First, she had to accept an angel was speaking to her. For all of us, that would have been a shift of reality. Then, he called her favored or blessed, and that God stands by her? This ordinary girl, just a few years out of her childhood, whose best hope in life was for a man to take care of her? What could the God of her ancestry and heart possibly want with her? Confused, disturbed, this isn’t making sense on any level.
“For nothing is impossible with God.”
The angel understands. As others will meet this celestial creature in several parts of the story, he reassures her, “Don’t be afraid.” But the message for her is strange, so outside the way life is supposed to work. She was going to get pregnant, have a son, name him Jesus. And this child would be “Son of the Most High”, secure David’s throne, reign over Israel forever?
Mary knew what this meant. Her people had been oppressed by foreign powers for centuries now. Nazareth was no place good, but even in Jerusalem, the site of the Hebrew Temple, the powers in place kept an iron grip on the Jews. The only hope they had was for a leader who would raise up as King David had and drive out in defeat these invaders. Wow! God was going to do this, and God was saying she’d have a part in it?
Yet, that wasn’t all of it. The angel assured this virgin girl that her baby would be conceived, if you will, when, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the baby born to you will be holy, and he will be called the Son of God.” If you can explain this one, you’re way ahead of many.
Poor girl. Her head was really spinning now. Ok, but get this. Good news for the nation is ultimately going to be bad news for Mary. First, what would Joseph think? Exactly what any man would think, certainly. You think you have trouble believing this story about an angel? No one would blame him if he called off their marriage.
But worse, according to Jewish law, if a woman was found not to be a virgin before marriage, she should be stoned to death. (Deuteronomy 22:20-21) Mary’s very life would be in jeopardy. This was how God favored her?
“For nothing is impossible with God.”
The angel had said it, “The Lord is with you.” With you. If God is with you, then you are with God. And with God, nothing is impossible. That is, anything is possible. Whatever is implausible could happen. But why this way, why by a life disrupted and risked and in a way that, well, is just outside how things work, how babies are made, how life is supposed to go? What’s the purpose in all of this the angel says God is doing?
Consider this. In an unforeseen, bewildering even, movement of God, the prayers of the people were being answered. Yes, they had prayed to be delivered from oppressors for centuries. Everyone knew at this point what it would take. The Romans were the greatest regime to ever rule. Only an immense revolution would drive them out and be able to defend against being reinvaded. They knew how it happened before through their King David. The ancient writings said another such leader would come again to deliver them. All in all, it would mean a mighty revolution on such a scale the world had never seen. Revolution was their prayer.
“For nothing is impossible with God.”
Revolution. That is, the implausible becomes a reality. That is, a child is born to a virgin. That is, he is the Son of the Most High. That is, he is God, and God is coming to be with the world in the impossible, implausible way in which God is with us. God with us will act in ways that we don’t see coming but will revolutionize and reverse what is to what is meant to be. Places where there is no good will produce not just the good, but the holy.
Stories of hope sell, and they are not going away. The old tales will continue. But the source of them is in us, what we want and hope will be. Mary’s story raises its questions but rests in a different form. It’s not based in our hope for us, but in God’s hope for us. God with us in the form of a baby, not born in the usual sense, but then again, with God nothing is usual.
Mary’s answer: “I am the Lord’s servant, and I am willing to accept whatever he wants. May everything you have said come true.”
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