Mary, Favored One

I remember being thirteen. It is those awkward years when everything begins to change. You wake up and like your voice changes and like you start speaking like a different language. Instead of SpongeBob bubble soap you are asking your parents for facial cleanser. At thirteen you are trying to be cool. You would do anything to fit in and be liked by others. At thirteen you display overzealous amount of self-confidence but on the inside you are afraid of making an idiot of yourself.

Imagine being thirteen, sitting on your bed texting your friend, “Did you notice the new boy at school today? OMG. LOL” and an angel appears and says, “Hey, young lady, God has noticed you.” An angel shows up and your childhood is gone. This one brush with heaven and your life is forever changed. OMG.

The angel Gabriel appears to Mary, and we are told she is “confused and disturbed.” Now all the angel has said to her at this point is “Hi! What’s up? God has noticed you” and she is afraid and confused. She has not even been told what she must do. She is confused over the Gabriel’s simple greeting. Of course, it is not everyday that angels want to have a conversation. When heaven does come down it usually means something is going to be different. Like when Abraham and Sarah are told in their old age they would have a baby. The voice of heaven is no laughing matter.

The text says it wasn’t so much the appearance of this heavenly being that startled Mary. It was the words that he spoke. “She was confused by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this could be” (1:29). The angel called her favored. A thirteen year old, favored. A thirteen year old engaged to a carpenter, favored. A young, teenager from a nowhere town is favored. A girl from the wrong side of the tracks is favored. She has been noticed. God has looked her way. Heaven has focused on her. Insignificant, and yet, favored. Unimportant, and yet, favored. “Greetings, favored one!” “Who me? Who you talking to? Who am I? Why am I favored?” Peasant girl to prophet. Mary to mother of God. It is one thing to believe in God it is quiet another to live knowing God believes in you.

Mary, a poor teenager who lives at the end of the dirt road, does God know what God is doing? She is not the stuff of legends. She will never wear a crown. She will never sleep on a bed of roses. She will never have her own line of clothing or thousands of twitter followers. God’s hope of redemption rests on a teenager from Bethlehem. This is like picking Auburn University to win the National Championship over the University of Alabama. What seems to be a plan B becomes God’s number one plan.

Why? Why Mary? That is the question isn’t it. God says, “You are favored.” Why? Grace. Mary’s story is a story of grace. It is a reminder that because of grace we have all found favor with God. It is not because we got talents, good looks, or have been wonderfully successful that God has taken notice. It is because of grace. I don’t earn it. I don’t deserve it. The good news is not in what we believe about God but in what God believes about us. “For God so loved the world that he sent his only Son,” replace “world” with your name and you get the idea of God’s grace. Mary believed the angel's message that nothing was impossible with God because she first heard and believed the word that she was favored with God. The real miracle of Christmas is hearing and accepting that God believes in us.