FINDINGS IV By Harry T. Cook

Harry T. Cook

By Harry T. Cook 

12/17/12 

The abiding figure of Mary, said to have been the mother of Jesus, is writ large in the gospel for Advent IV - C in a narrative that follows immediately upon what is known as "the annunciation." In that text Luke depicts a divine messenger known as Gabriel making a visit to Mary at her home in Nazareth to inform her that she is pregnant with a child destined to reclaim the Davidic throne and make it an eternal one.
 
It is enough to receive such a visitor, but the message conveyed is astonishing. She who is (in the Greek text at hand) "virgin" (παρθενος-- parthenos literally "one who has not been known by a man") is nevertheless with child. Luke apparently decided to avoid the semantic problem of Matthew 1:23 where the Greek παρθενος (lit., "virgin") may be a bad translation of the Hebrew עלמה -- almah ("young woman of marriageable age"), which appears at Isaiah 7:14). However, the Septuagint may have been the text from which Matthew worked.
 
Such uncertainty has never prevented the purveyors of dogma from pronouncing the birth of Jesus a miracle accomplished without the inconvenience of sexual intercourse, making the deity Jesus' father both in spirit and in truth.
 
It is worth noting that by the time whoever Luke was compiled the text of this gospel passage nascent Christianity was in the process of moving beyond its contest with post-Temple Judaism and into more aggressive competition with the Graeco-Roman myth religions and, in particular, we must suppose, with the cult of the Caesars.
 
It remained for Suetonius in his Lives of the Caesars ("The Deified Augustus" 94:4) to "report" the assignation of the god Apollo with Atia, the human mother of Octavius (by his own later declaration, "Augustus") resulting in the latter's miraculous birth thus entitling him to be considered a god as well. While Suetonius's work appeared some 30 or more years after Luke, the myths of the birth of Octavius and Jesus bear an eerie resemblance.

Luke's account, however, came first. The question is why Suetonius's story of the conception of Augustus is scoffed at as fantastical and consigned to mythology while millions of Christians do not bat an eye at Luke's story and take it literally. Of course, this kind of anomaly has furnished such aspiring scholars as I with work for, lo, these many years.

Luke seemed not to have considered how what might well have been a 160-mile round trip, no doubt on foot, through rugged terrain, would have affected a young woman said to be pregnant. He has Mary go from Nazareth of Galilee to an unnamed village in the Judean countryside. It will be less than a chapter from now that Luke, slavishly following Matthew, will have Mary and the cardboard figure known as Joseph travel 90 miles from Nazareth to Bethlehem presumably in the same fashion.
 
The burden of this proper's passage, however, is neither the itinerary nor the mileage, but the transition Luke makes between the foretelling of Jesus' birth and the actual birth of John the Baptist. Luke invents a kinship of sorts between Mary and Elizabeth, said here to be John's mother. Is this Luke's way of trying to tie together what probably were the eventual opposing traditions of the sons, which may have persisted as their posthumous followings competed for attention?
 
The story becomes melodramatic as in 1:41 Luke tells us that the fetus in Elizabeth's uterus "leaped" at the exact moment Mary announced her presence to Elizabeth. In the evangelist's imaginative scheme of things, the fetus evidently by then taking shape in Mary's uterus has no similar reaction to the presence of Elizabeth and her leaping fetus. Is this Luke's subtle and coded way of saying that the future Jesus would have nothing to fear about John eclipsing him, while the pre-natal John already knew the identity of Jesus as messiah and himself as a lesser figure?
 
Luke has Elizabeth marvel that the vessel of the messiah's journey should come to her (1:43), thus underscoring Luke's ranking of Jesus above John, but here not in opposition since they will be kinsmen even as their mothers are depicted as kinswomen. However, see Genesis 25:22, another scriptural instance of in-utero leaping -- the twins Esau and Jacob depicted as "struggling together" in Rebekah's body, set against each other from the beginning.
 
Elizabeth continues with her praise (1:45) thus setting the stage for Mary's peroration known fondly in the Christian tradition as "Magnificat," as in "My soul magnifies the Lord." Whence the Magnificat: vv. 47-55? Allusions to no fewer than a dozen Hebrew Bible texts are obvious: Deuteronomy 10: 21, I Samuel 1:11, Job 22:9 (a negative approach), Psalms 25:5, 99:11, 103:17, 107:9, 111:9, 113: 5-6 and Micah 7:20.
 
The theology of the passage is as follows: The biblical god, by whatever name, is savior or is found in the saving person of messiah (v. 47). This is so, we are asked to believe, because of the divine intention to honor someone of the peasant class (vv. 48-49). Divine favor will be conferred on those who respect the divine bias for the lowly (v. 50). God deals with the high and mighty: The failing of their fortune is of divine initiative (v. 51-52). God intervenes in the distribution of resources among rich and poor (vv. 53-54).
 
Homilists who, on this Advent IV, preach the virgin birth as a primary dictum of biblical religion will miss the mark by so much that they will surpass their level of usual irrelevance.  The RCL invites those in charge of the liturgy to omit the Magnificat text from the gospel reading, but it is offered as a responsory between readings one and two. Either way, it is the centerpiece of the day's lections. (The Micah reading will be helpful; the one from Hebrews not so much.)
 
The Magnificat is a brief for a mythical Israel against the world, for the poor against the rich. There are not two sides to this story. It illustrates what Luke (after Matthew at 5: 3-6) will have Jesus say at Luke 6: 20-21 ("Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom (rule) of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled . . ."
 
There can be no mistaking the partisan nature of this passage and that of its author(s) and editor(s). It is the original liberation theology derivative of the eighth century BCE public intellectuals: Amos ("Let justice roll down as waters...") and Micah ("to do justice, to love mercy"). That is why the enjoining of neighbor-to-neighbor love will be for Luke the doing of justice in the way his Samaritan outcast will minister tenderly to the one we may assume was in Luke's imagination one of the privileged Judean elite -- all depicted in the famous passage at 10:30ff.
 
With Christmas having already infringing on the public consciousness since mid-October, these coming homilies will be the last chance before myth and pageant tune out logic and common sense for the preacher to orient his or her auditors to the central theme of the Hebrew and Christian bibles. That theme is justice: social justice, economic justice, political justice. However homilists can use the drama of the stories surrounding Christmas to put over that point, more power to them.