Text: Luke 1:26-38 Page 724 in the Pew Bible
26 In the sixth month, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a
town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of
David. The virgin's name was Mary. 28 The angel went to her and said, "Greetings, you
who are highly favored! The Lord is with you." 29 Mary was greatly troubled at his
words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. 30 But the angel said to her,
"Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. You will be with child
and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. He will be great and will
be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father
David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never
end." 34 "How will this be," Mary asked the angel, "since I am a
virgin?" 35 The angel answered, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the
power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the
Son of God. Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age,
and she who was said to be barren is in her sixth month. For nothing is impossible
with God." 38 "I am the Lord's servant," Mary answered. "May it be to
me as you have said." Then the angel left her.
We can tell something of the importance that God attaches to this announcement based upon the angel who delivers the message. This is none other than the Archangel Gabriel. This same Archangel was sent by God to tell Daniel about the events of the end of time. When Jesus returns, an archangel will announce his coming again. That will probably be Gabriel. The very presence of Gabriel signals this as an important event of the highest magnitude.
1. This was Jesus in the Womb, "who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness." (Ephesians 2:6-7)
2. When Elizabeth met Mary, they were both pregnant.
When Elizabeth described the fetus within her (Luke 1:44) she said, "the baby in
my womb leaped for joy." The Greek word used here is brephos. It is also used
to describe Jesus before he was born (Luke 2:12--"This will be a sign to you. You
will find a baby (brephos) wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.") The same
word is used to describe Jesus after he was born. (Luke 2:16--"So they hurried off
and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby (brephos) who was lying in the
manger.") This is not profound because we still talk that way. A pregnant woman
speaks of the "baby" within her. Even though it is not profound, let us let the
meaning sink in.
3.God did not just announce the birth of Jesus, he announced the conception. Our theme sentence for this Sunday is this: "Jesus was Jesus from the moment of conception, not just the moment of birth."
Annunciation, the announcement of the conception of Jesus, teaches us what God thinks of life. In recent years I have emphasized the fetal development of Jesus. I have written a little booklet, which is for sale at the information desk, to detail that development. We were instructed about life as we saw him develop in the womb.
Here is the importance of seeing what happened to Jesus. In every way, he is the prototype of humanity. He was fully human, illustrating our own lives. If Jesus was Jesus from the moment of conception, then you were you.
I was Joe Fuiten from the moment of conception. They hadn’t yet given me my name, but it was still me. That somebody who was kicking was me. From the moment of conception, it was me. I had all my own DNA and it was different from my mother’s. Although I was within her body, I had my own body with my own DNA, my own personality, my own purposes to fulfill, my own destiny. You can see that I am different from my mother. Alike in some ways, but clearly quite different.
If someone had said back then that I was my mother’s body, I would have to beg to differ. I’m a male. She’s a female. That is fairly different. Just because I am riding in a car doesn’t make me a car. Even if I sleep in the garage every night, I am still not a car. Even if I don’t come out of the garage for nine months, I’m still not a car.
When people say that a woman should be able to decide the fate of the person within her because its her body, they are confusing the car with the garage. It is not her body! It is somebody else. Every one of us in this room are proof that it wasn’t her body. Later on, many of us parents deny there was every any connection. We say, "I don’t know where this kid came from. Must have been somebody else’s body."
The second conclusion we come to is that present ability is not the basis of human value. Think about Jesus in that womb. What good could he do there? Absolutely none! He couldn’t help anybody. He was useless. He could not speak. He was barely conscious a good part of the time. He really had nothing to offer other than his potential. The most important aspect of his potential was the eternal impact.
The value of his life was not based upon his ability to think or his ability to take care of himself, or the quality of life at that moment. It is really all about his potential. That is the sum of his value.
At his moment of helplessness, when he had no meaningful quality of life, when all he had to offer was potential, he had value.
What makes us valuable is that we are created in the image of God with a spiritual capacity to know God and to enjoy him forever. Our principal value is not on this planet. It is our eternal ability. We do not judge the value of people by their productivity or by the concept of quality of life. Arguments about "quality of life" are deceptions and misunderstandings about human value.
Yesterday I saw a teenage boy walking down the street kicking the heads off of daffodils. He was obviously an angry young man and must be very difficult to live with but God loves him and he has the ability to know God. That makes him valuable. Adolf Hitler believed you had to be the right kind of person to be valuable. There are a lot of people the world would probably be better off without. There are a lot of wasted people, twisted people, sick people, and perverted people. But every one of them is valuable because of their capacity to be in God’s presence once day. Even people who seem to be born as odds and ends of humanity have a spirit. Even people who never reach consciousness have that spirit. Although as far as you are concerned, they are a vegetable, they have a spirit. That spirit can and will have a relationship with God.
The Apostle Paul connected our physical body with the Spirit of body is the essential human distinction. He said, "Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God? You are not your own. You were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body." (1Corinthians. 6:19-20).
Christianity pays the utmost respect to the body because of its connection to the Spirit of God. When you are old and sick and somebody has to wheel you around, you are still of ultimate value. Nothing of your value changes with age or strength of mind or body.
This week my son Ben had four wisdom teeth removed. He is six foot two. At 195 pounds he is all muscle. But Linda had to help him from the car to the house. The anesthesia was still wearing off. Neither his former strength nor his temporary disability has any bearing on his value. His value is in his capacity to know God and to enjoy him forever. That is what a human being is and that is why we are valuable.
Eight years ago a couple lost their baby through miscarriage. Since it happened at home, they were left with a very tiny baby that would fit inside their hand. When they showed me his body it was incredible. The hands were so thin they looked almost like waxed paper. The body was perfectly formed, just very, very tiny. The father built a small wooden box and brought it to the church for burial. They planted a small flower over that tiniest of graves. For these last eight years it has managed to bloom as the earthly reminder of a child’s very short life.
I have been thinking about how all this relates to miscarriage, abortion, and still birth. Somehow we need a way to value life. Many women who have had abortions find themselves troubled by it years later and lack a way to deal with the grief. People with miscarriages are sometimes made to feel that it was nothing and they should just move on. If Mary had miscarried, would it have been nothing?
For many years I have thought about a memorial park where such issues could be memorialized. Maybe a good name for such a place would be the Garden of the Annunciation. It could feature the Annunciation and allow women in particular, but families in general, to give proper acknowledgment of the life that has been within them but has been lost to them. Maybe each couple could plant of flower, a shrub, or a tree; something that continues to live, because life once begun, never ends. We are eternal because we have a spirit. Based on what happened to Jesus, I believe we acquire that spirit at the moment of conception.
There was a time when we did not exist. There is not some giant spirit bank in heaven where all these spirits are stored waiting for delivery. We are created at conception. Although there was a time when we did not exist, there will never be such a time again. We are eternal. Our destiny is eternal. We have this eternity so that we might know God and enjoy him forever.