Luke 1: Love wraps around

Captain Wan Gi Lee unwraps the reality of the divine love revealed in the Incarnation.

Key texts

• Luke 1:26–33

Once again, we are busy preparing Christmas presents for those we love. And, of course, with the presents comes the wrapping. It’s the decorative part that covers what’s inside – the real gift.

You may recall lovely wrapping paper or gift bags adorned with beautiful ribbons. You might have already prepared some yourself. Sometimes, the more valuable the present, the more extravagant the wrapping.

Pause and reflect

• If you were presenting the most precious gift to someone you love, how would you wrap it?

We are often told that the coming of our Lord Jesus is the greatest gift from God. That is why we celebrate Christmas as the time to receive the Messiah into our lives. 

During Advent, we are invited to reflect: how did God wrap his most valuable gift – his Son – when presenting him to us?

Here comes the shocking revelation. In sending his most precious gift, God didn’t use any decorative wrappings at all. Of course, there were some humble coverings in the coming of Jesus. Yet they had no ornamental purpose to make the baby appear grand or important.

The first step in presenting God’s gift is Mary. Unlike the Gospel of Matthew, the Gospel of Luke pays more attention to Mary than to Joseph, carefully describing her trembling heart as she receives the annunciation from the angel Gabriel.

Pause and reflect

• What do you know about Mary?

The only detailed accounts of Mary we have in the New Testament appear in Luke 1 and Matthew 1. There, we learn that Mary was a relative of Elizabeth, who was the wife of the priest Zechariah from the tribe of Levi. According to the marriage customs of first-century Hebrew culture, Mary was probably about 16 years old. We also encounter Mary at the wedding feast in Cana (see John 2:1–10) and at the foot of the cross on which her son, Jesus, suffered and died (see John 19:25–27).

We have no information about Mary’s parents. Could this be because of their moral outrage towards their daughter? She was found to be pregnant before marriage – a serious breach of the moral code at that time. Such a situation could have led to public shame and social rejection. In today’s terms, she might have been completely cancelled.

Mary and Joseph were people with no social or decorative value at all. They were young, vulnerable and fearful, facing an uncertain future. Yet God chose them to wrap his most precious gift.

Mary was terrified and struggled with the news that the angel announced. In the end, she accepted it, risking her life, her reputation and everything she had. Joseph was also shocked and had to process what the angel told him in a dream. Like Mary, he, too, accepted the angel’s message.

There was nothing shiny or decorative about Mary and Joseph – nothing outwardly special to those around them. Yet Mary is introduced to us as one who is ‘highly favoured’, with the angel saying: ‘The Lord is with you’ (v28).. What does this mean?

The Greek word for ‘favour’ is charis, which means not only favour, but also grace, kindness and, notably, a gift. Therefore, its meaning goes far beyond the English sense of favour. Mary was ‘highly favoured’ by God and was also within God’s freely given grace – grace that became fully embodied as the ultimate gift in the person of Jesus, born through her.

Here, we are led to ask: why did God choose her, with such great favour, to deliver the long-awaited Messiah? There must have been something within her – something deeper than her humble appearance or circumstances. CS Lewis gives us an important clue to this in his book Miracles: ‘The whole thing narrows and narrows, until at last it comes down to a little point, small as the point of a spear – a Jewish girl at her prayers.

Few people could see the troubled girl’s life purpose and meaning – probably not even her parents. Yet God knew her prayers and responded to them, wrapping within her the immense condensation of divine purpose – the incarnation of Jesus. Mary and Joseph could not have prepared wonderful wrappings in any material or social sense. Mary’s prayer, however, became the wrapping paper God chose to enfold his incarnational love.

When Mary received the news, she trembled. Indeed, by accepting the promise, Mary and Joseph would have to endure many trials, for they soon had to leave their hometown and country, suffering poverty and persecution because of the gift they carried.

Through it all, Mary must have recalled the angel’s words again and again: ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favour 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 for ever; his Kingdom will never end’ (vv30–33).

Mary’s prayer and her willingness to obey – embracing uncertainty for the sake of God’s plan – became the vessel that wrapped the gift of Jesus. Beyond that, no other decoration was needed – not position, wealth, security, comfort or power.

Christmas is a time to witness divine love wrapped in the coming of Jesus. It is a time to look beyond decoration and to see the raw reality of the divine love revealed in the Incarnation. As Philip Yancey writes in The Jesus I Never Knew, Christmas is a time ‘to face the starkness of the Gospel’, leaving behind the trimmings of the season to behold the true and wondrous gift: Jesus.