Page 14 2024 Worship Guide LINCOLN DAILY NEWS December 2024 A “Magnificent” Christmas By John Castelein Preposterous! That’s what both Jewish and Gentile religious people must have thought when told that, sometime in their own lifetime, God had become a baby in some peasant woman’s womb and then proceeded to live a completely human life. The more exalted a person’s concept of God is, the more ridiculous that story sounds! What a contrast with how that young girl herself, Mary, responds to these astonishing events that so intimately involve her own life. You can read and hear her amazing words in Luke 1:46-55. These words are often referred to as “the Magnificat,” based on the first word in the Latin translation (it is the verb “makes great”). I honestly don’t know what to call these verses—a poem, a hymn, a canticle, a psalm, a prayer, or a song. Are you as astonished as I am by her apparent complete willingness to become pregnant though unwed? Jewish culture and society took pregnancy outside of wedlock very seriously. Jewish scriptures even prescribed death by stoning for an unwed mother in Deut 22:22-29. Yet here is Mary, over the moon because she believes God is directly involved in this pregnancy. In all honesty, it is unnatural, to say the least. You would expect that Mary will be obsessed with what her parents will think or dreading what the neighbors will whisper. Will she be shunned at the synagogue and ostracized by the other women of Nazareth? But, instead, she is overwhelmed with the greatness, the goodness, and the love of God! (Luke 1:46-55)
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