Jesus and the Dawning of a New Creation

Sunday morning I began a new series called “Jesus” (which, I realize, won’t win me any awards for cleverness or originality), during which we will be looking at some of the highlights of Christ’s ministry, including his baptism, his temptations, his teaching, his parables, his miracles, and of course, his death, resurrection, and ascension.

We began with a consideration of the announcement of his birth by Gabriel to Mary, a few details of which I’d like to comment on.

First, I find it curious that the angel seems to be tripping over himself, as it were, to come up with language high and lofty enough to address this virgin peasant. He begins with the command “Hail” (or “Rejoice” in some versions) which should immediately hearken the reader back to the Old Testament prophets and their encouragement to Israel that in the age of the Messiah Yahweh would again dwell in their midst. Thus Mary is addressed as though she were the embodiment of Jerusalem herself, whose daughters would be cheered by the birth of a Son whose reign would usher in an eternal era of blessing and shalom.

Further, the angel does not address Mary by her name, but by a title—he doesn’t say, “Hail, Mary” but instead says, “Hail, full of grace.” This and other English translations are but groping attempts to render the perfect passive participle of the Greek verb “to favor” (kekaritomene). If Luke had desired to communicate Mary’s being “full of grace,” then there was a much easier way to do that, as seen in Acts 6:8 (pleres karitos). Instead he sees fit to use a construction unique to the biblical canon, one that can perhaps best be translated “fully graced.”

The question arises as to why the angel saw the need (or was commissioned) to use the kind of grandeur of language he did. I think the answer lies in the nature of what was being proposed. I shudder to use the word “merely” here, but Gabriel was not merely promising to a young virgin that she would have a baby in her virginal state (as unprecedented and miraculous as that would have been). No, what was being suggested was that Mary would be a new Eve, the mother of a completely new creation.

The reason for this is seen in Gabriel’s promise that the power of the most high would “overshadow” Mary, a term that is suggestive of the Holy Spirit’s activity in the first creation when he hovered over the empty and void heavens and earth that God had made with the word of his mouth. In the same way, the Spirit brought forth from the emptiness of the virgin’s womb the Head of a new creation whose offspring would be as numerous and the stars of heaven and the sand upon the seashore.

Thus all that came before the birth of Christ is now deemed “flesh,” whether Adam or physical Israel or Torah, because it all is characteristic of, and bound up with, the old order of this passing age. All of reality is now reconstituted in relation to the person of Christ, in whom the old order is both recapitulated and retold, and its heavenly hope regained.

In a word, it’s not the “virgin birth” that is the real wonder, but who it was who would be born.