“Little Mary, Big Faith”

 

Scripture: Luke 1:26-38https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%201:26-38

What do you know about Mary? What does our text today teach us about Mary as a person and why in the world did God choose Mary out of all of the other women that God could have chosen to be the mother of Jesus? What can we learn about Mary and about her faith for our lives today? According to v. 26, we know that Mary lived in the town of Nazareth in Galilee. Nazareth was an insignificant little town whose population is estimated to have been between one hundred and four hundred people. People who lived in Nazareth were mostly peasants, farmers, laborers and shepherds who made their living by selling their goods and services to the people who lived in a larger and much more affluent city called Sepphoris, which was only couple of miles from Nazareth. Mary was most likely uneducated and probably came from a poor family who may well have been servants in a household in Sepphoris. When the angel Gabriel came to Mary, Biblical scholars estimate Mary's age to be between 13 and 16 years old. At the time, she was already engaged to be married to Joseph. Although we may find it strange today to see a girl of 13 years of age engaged for marriage, it was a common practice in those days for young girls to marry early. It is because most people didn’t go to school in those days and girls were considered to have become women soon after they had their first menstrual period and that the average life expectancy at the time was less than 35 years.

So why in the world did God choose a peasant girl like Mary to be the bearer of the promised Messiah? What qualification does she have to carry out such an awesome and important task on which the destiny of humankind depends? In today's term, Mary has no resume whatsoever to speak of to be qualified for such an important position and task. Ultimately, we can never know exactly why God chose Mary to be the bearer and nurturer of the promised Messiah since God's ways are often different from our ways. Even though we can never know why God chose Mary to serve as the mother of Jesus in this world, we can get a glimpse of the kind of person of faith Mary was that may have prompted God to choose her for the awesome task. We can get a glimpse of Mary's faith in the response she gives to the angel in v. 38:“I am the Lord's servant. May it be to me as you have