Rejoicing in God Our Savior

God on the Ground - Day 2

Day 2 - Rejoicing in God Our Savior

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So, the baby to be born will be holy, and he will be called the Son of God. What’s more, your relative Elizabeth has become pregnant in her old age! People used to say she was barren, but she’s now in her sixth month. For nothing is impossible with God. Luke 1:35b-37

I only recently realized the birth of Jesus is not told in the Gospels of Mark or John. Old Testament prophesies aside, Matthew and Luke alone tell the story. Matthew hones in on the lineage of Jesus, line after line of begats, followed by nine verses of straightforward facts. “This is how Jesus the Messiah was born.” (Remember, Matthew was a left-brained numbers guy.)

But then there’s Luke. Two chapters painted with verbs, dripping with emotion, stitched together with the sturdy thread of a community who encountered its savior by preparing a place for its neighbor.

Luke’s visual feast is described by the author himself as a “careful” account, including a robust justification for why he wrote it in the first place. Luke investigated. He decided. He leaned on story and appealed to the human experience; hopeful the reader would be “certain of the truth.”

Method and intention guided Luke’s writing, which is why I find it fascinating that his version begins not with Mary, or Jesus, but with Mary’s cousins. Zechariah, a Jewish priest, and his wife Elizabeth, are described as honorable and old. “Very” old.