Luke 1:29-33 tells us of Jesus' origins. The angel appears to Mary and says:
"Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him 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 Jacob's descendants forever; his kingdom will never end."
What I continue to find stunning about the estate of parenthood is not only that my son once didn't exist and then did, but also that he delights in things tucked away in words or phrases or games or songs that I didn't see. I couldn't count the times he has said something that left Jessica and I scratching our heads, thinking "now what is that from?" only to realize that he likes something in a phrase that we had never quite stopped to appreciate. People do this. Toys don't. Our Buzz Lightyear action figure says the same five things. Every human being has a world of things they notice, take in, and perhaps express. And this is what stuns moms and dads. They have participated in the origin of someone they wouldn't necessarily have thought of or invented. They would not have been able to conceive of the person they literally did conceive.
Mary is invited to conceive a future king. She is the new Eve, whose seed will bring blessing to the world rather than a curse. As the Magnificat in the next section testifies, Mary is also a new Hannah and Sarah, whose child represents for herself and her people what it represented for them when they were given the news of being with child: that God's plans were going forward for his downtrodden people. Throughout the Bible, God's redemptive work is often spelled B-A-B-Y. This is because human beings, though fallen, are restored to what they were intended to be. They are not abolished, they are redeemed. New life, new people, new community.
But what is truly new about this birth is well captured by the 17th century poet John Donne in his sonnet "Annunciation:"
Salvation to all that will is nigh;
That All, which always is all everywhere,
Which cannot sin, and yet all sins must bear,
Which cannot die, yet cannot choose but die,
Lo! faithful Virgin, yields Himself to lie
In prison, in thy womb; and though He there
Can take no sin, nor thou give, yet He'll wear,
Taken from thence, flesh, which death's force may try.
Ere by the spheres time was created thou
Wast in His mind, who is thy Son, and Brother;
Whom thou conceivest, conceived; yea, thou art now
Thy Maker's maker, and thy Father's mother,
Thou hast light in dark, and shutt'st in little room
Immensity, cloister'd in thy dear womb.
Malcolm Guite points out that Donne has filled this sonnet with paradoxes: God cannot sin, yet bears sin. He cannot die, yet he dies. From when time was created, Mary was in his mind, who would be her infant Son. She is the maker of the Maker. She is mother to her Father. Light in the dark of her "little room" (delightfully, "little room" is also the literal meaning of the word "stanza" in Italian). Immensity cloister'd in her womb.
And my favorite: in such concise expression, Donne puts forward that the one who "conceivest" Mary, at a certain time, was "conceived". The first refers to the thought, the way God conceives that there would be a 'me' or a 'you', or that I conceive that my leaving the car light on all night would burn the battery down. A picture appears in the mind. It isn't real, but it could be. The second is the beginning of a human life.
Two things are worth noting about paradoxes. First, they delight. Babies are not gods. Nobody's more helpless. Yet, there it is. As the hymn "In Christ Alone" puts it, "fullness of God in helpless babe." In a paradox like this, we find ourselves juxtaposing two qualities which normally couldn't be farther apart. It doesn't just fit into the world as it is set up to be, where winners win and losers lose, and the market measures what is truly most valuable. It is either ignored, rejected or fastened upon with rapt attention and increasing wonder. Second, this revives a sense of wonder at the world. "All things bright and beautiful / all creatures great and small; all things wise and wonderful / the Lord God made them all." Something small that doesn't draw attention to itself - such as a family in a manger in Bethlehem - might be more important than we might at first think. Not all those who bellow and holler are significant. And not all those who are quiet and withdrawn are insignificant. We become a little more like John Donne, and all sorts of little words like 'conceive', 'immensity', and 'little room' regain their sparkle in the light of Christ.
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