Luke 1:38 — And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word. And the angel departed from her.
There are many threads of gold running through the Christmas story. One of them is the thread of submission and obedience.
The central act of obedience, of course, that of Jesus Himself … The Son of God, one of the persons of the Trinity, condescends to be a baby, to grow from child to adult, to be crucified … to redeem us from sin. God Himself takes on flesh and comes to know obedience by experience, as well as by the completeness of Divine knowledge. There are many other elements to the story that tie into this thread:
There’s Zechariah and Elisabeth. Zechariah was a priest in the order of Abijah. The whole priestly structure, or course, was built around the notion of consistent obedience to the service of the temple. Zechariah and Elisabeth were both “righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless.” (Luke 1:6). “Righteous” means they revered God and showed integrity, according to the Jewish law, in all their dealings. But their righteousness was more than legal obedience — “before God” suggests that it was from the heart … not just some kind of “external righteousness”.
Mary, of course, is the very model of trusting obedience to the will of The Lord, as the verse at the head of this devotion shows — but what about Joseph? Joseph, as a Jewish man finding his betrothed to be with child, had every right to put her aside. Indeed as Matthew tells the story, he was “minded to put her away privily” — until the angel of The Lord told him that he should have no fear in taking her — “Then Joseph being raised from sleep did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him, and took unto him his wife:” (Matthew 1:24).
Now you might be thinking “well, fine, but I expect Jesus’s close family to be pretty trusting and obedient” …but it wasn’t just them.
The obedience of the shepherds might be the most remarkable of all. We have to remember … Shepherds were pretty much a despised underclass. Their only value was related to how well they took care of the sheep entrusted to them. Now they didn’t get a direct instruction from the angels, but it was clear what they were expected to do. And they did it. No thought about consequences — “let’s go” … And they went.
Or consider the Magi. David Seal and Matthew Whitehead make the point excellently in the Faithlife Study Bible:
The magi offer us a powerful lesson in faith. They traveled a great length through dangerous country in their desire to see the new King. Despite the humble setting in which they found the Christ child, they believed they were in the presence of Israel’s greatest king and presented Him with lavish gifts befitting that office. Warned by God not to return to Herod, they obeyed by taking a different route to their homeland, thus foiling Herod’s evil intentions. Do we pay such honor to Jesus? Do we go out of our way to seek Him and lavish Him with gifts? Do we demonstrate such obedience?
And that’s where this meditation led me. I know I said yesterday that Christmas isn’t about giving. Maybe I should have said it’s not about giving things — because the Christmas story is about giving heartfelt obedience to God …