Advent 4 – Luke 1:26-38
'In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth...' Some Bible stories are so well known that it's easy to hear them without really listening. Luke's story of the Annunciation is a classic example. We've heard it at so many carol services. It's among the most often painted biblical scenes, seen on millions of Christmas cards every year. But this very familiarity may prevent us really listening to what is going on in this extraordinary encounter between the angel and Mary.
So let me offer a perspective which may be new to some of you, in the hope of blowing some of the dust of over-familiarity off this story, by drawing some comparisons between this biblical story and the Islamic version of it. Jesus and Mary are very important figures in Islam; in the Qur'an, there are accounts of this story, the Annunciation, which are similar in some ways to Luke's, but crucially different in others.
Before I explore some of those differences, I admit that drawing attention to differences may not seem a great idea. Surely we should be emphasizing what Muslims and Christians have in common, not what they disagree about? Yes and no. It is very important to recognize and build on shared ground between Muslims and Christians, such as belief in God the creator and our human responsibility to be humble and wise in our care for the beautiful creation God has entrusted to us. But good Christian-Muslim relations also require respectful understanding of where we differ. Muslims will often ask Christians why they believe certain things which seem very strange to them, and we should be able to respond to such questions.
The most striking similarity between the story in Luke's Gospel and the versions in the Qur'an is that the Qur'an also records Mary's surprise when told that she will become pregnant: 'how can I have a son when no man has touched me?', she asks in the Qur'an (19:20), very much as in Luke. Islam affirms that Jesus was conceived in Mary's womb by God's creative word. He is often referred to as 'Jesus, Son of Mary', because he had no father: an amazing sign of divine power.
But, at a deeper level, a stark contrast emerges if we ask what this miracle means. Here we must grasp the 'big picture' painted by each faith of the history of God's dealings with the world. For Islam, the goal of that history is God's sending of Muhammad, six centuries after Jesus, as the final prophet. In this account, Jesus was the last great prophet before Muhammad and looked ahead to him. (The role of Jesus, in Islam, is rather like that of John the Baptist in Christianity; the Islamic Jesus is great but penultimate; he is a forerunner, pointing ahead to the ultimate figure, Muhammad.) Islam teaches that Jesus brought a divine revelation and worked miracles, so it was natural for his birth to be miraculous. But in this he was not unique: after all, Muslims point out, Adam was created without a father or a mother, but that doesn't make him God's Son. So for Islam the miracle of the Virgin Birth emphatically does not mean that Jesus was the Son of God, or God incarnate, as Christians believe; the very thought is alien to the Islamic sense of what is conceivable for God. As the Qur'an says: 'It would not befit God [it would not be appropriate for God] to have a son. He is far above that.' (Qur'an 19:35)
In the Bible, in contrast, it is the birth of Jesus (together with all that followed in his life, death and resurrection) that is the long-awaited culmination of God's dealings with Israel and the goal of divine revelation. This is the coming into the world of one who is more than a prophet. In today's Gospel, Gabriel calls him 'the Son of the Most High', the 'Son of God' (Luke 1:32, 35). Jesus is also called 'Emmanuel ... God with us' (Matthew 1:23). Not just a prophet or holy man, but God-with-us. Out of love for the world the transcendent God does indeed embrace the way of Incarnation: God taking on human flesh.
Two different accounts of the birth of Jesus. (1) For Islam, the coming of a great prophet, who will point ahead to the greatest prophet, Muhammad. (2) For the Christian faith, Emmanuel, God with us. Incarnation: God in flesh.
We are so familiar with the story of the Incarnation, the birth of Jesus the Son of God, that we easily forget how strange a claim it makes. For many millions of Muslim believers in God this claim is at least mistaken, possibly blasphemous. For Islam, God does not, God cannot behave like that. God is above such things. This is how one Muslim writer puts it:
'There were several ways of establishing contact or communication between man and God. The best would have been incarnation... [he acknowledges the attraction of the idea of Incarnation as a way for God to communicate with us, 'but' he goes on...] Islam has rejected it. [Why?] It would be too degrading for a transcendent God to become man, to eat, drink, be tortured by His own creatures and even be put to death.' (M. Hamidullah, Introduction to Islam)
The best way would have been incarnation, but it would be too degrading for God.
So how might we, as Christians, respond to that quite understandable reaction? Perhaps we might say: Certainly, we have no right to expect such things of God. We can demand nothing of God. God is God; God will decide what is or is not appropriate behaviour for the Creator of all things. But surely we must not insist that God cannot do such things. We cannot forbid God to come among us in human flesh, to become incarnate, to identify with us that closely.
The message of Christmas, the Good News, is that God has done just this. Because God loves us, God has done what any 'self-respecting' God would be above. God is not a prisoner of his transcendence. God is not locked up in preconceived notions of divine majesty. God will not be protected. God follows the logic of love far beyond what we might imagine. So, in Jesus, God 'degrades' himself, becoming fully human. For God to do this is not to give up being God, not to abandon God-ness, but to follow the logic of the love that God is eternally in Godself. And God doesn't burst into the world with unmistakeable glory, but comes as a child, recognized by very few. Will the world be humble enough to accept the humble way God comes to the world in Jesus? All of this is going on in Luke's story. God is about to do what God should perhaps not be doing, and the angel tells an unknown young woman that she will play a crucial role in God's crazy plan.
Which raises another interesting difference between the versions of this story told by Luke and the Qur'an. Luke's account ends with Mary giving her consent to God's call: 'Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.' Intriguingly, this response by Mary has no parallel in the Qur'anic versions. The Bible and the Qur'an both emphasize God's sovereign power. They agree that the coming of Jesus is not a human initiative. For the Qur'an, it perhaps goes without saying that Mary obeys God; what other option is there? Anyway, we hear no response from Mary at the end of the Qur'anic versions. But Luke highlights Mary's response to Gabriel: 'Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.' 'OK,' she says, 'I'll do it.' That's the story's punchline, leaving us aware of the drama, the dignity but also the precariousness of human co-operation with God. The God who calls Mary leaves space for her response; God does not override the freedom of this young woman. Indeed, true human freedom is only possible when God makes it possible in us and for us; we are only truly free when, like Mary, we accept the authority over our lives of the logic of the self-giving love of God, and we let go of the illusion that we can ever make ourselves free.
So Mary's response at the end of the story leaves us with an invitation and a challenge. Do we also say to God: 'Here I am. Use me as you will.'? Mary's specific calling was unrepeatable, but her story continues to speak of a God who does not judge it inappropriate to become incarnate in this world, a God who calls and works through unlikely people – like you, like me – giving us space to decide whether to co-operate with him and the things he wants to bring about in this world: God's purposes of love and justice. A God waiting for us to say yes.
How might Muslims who are open to dialogue respond to that? Very interesting, they might say, very moving. OK, maybe, about Mary saying Yes to God. But on the Incarnation, God becoming human, well, the Qur'an clearly says otherwise. God does not do that. At which point it becomes a question not of what arguments I can put forward but of what my life says, the lived message of Christians generally, the life and witness of the Church, the Body of Christ. Do our lives speak of the self-giving love of God made flesh in Jesus, the love echoed by Mary's willingness to play her role in the purposes of God? If not, all our fine-sounding words, to Muslims or to anyone else, are nothing but noisy gongs and clanging cymbals.
Mary said yes to God and in her flesh God's love took shape and came to birth. The cost to Mary was enormous. Her calling would one day involve watching her son be crucified. But she was indeed 'highly favoured' and 'blessed among women'. She was drawn into the story of Jesus, into the heart of God, into the way of God's love in this world. And each of us will have opportunities – today, over this Christmas season, throughout the coming year – to say yes to what God asks of us. It may sometimes be costly, as it was for Mary, but in the end we will not regret giving ourselves to the God who, in Jesus, gives himself to us.
Revd David Marshall