Tag: Gabriel

Gabriel, Mary, and Zechariah

In the last post, I mentioned that the prophetic songs of Mary and Zechariah are well worth pondering. With that in mind, here are the full texts of the Magnificat and the Benedictus. I’ve also included Gabriel’s Annunciation – his announcement to Mary of the Incarnation, a pivotal moment in salvation history. These passages have become regular Advent texts for me this year. Enjoy!

Gabriel to Zecharaiah…

“Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to call him John. He will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord… he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even before he is born. He will bring back many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God.  And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous – to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” (Luke 1:13-17, NIV)

Annunciation, Jan van Eyck, circa 1435

Gabriel to Mary…

“Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you… Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. 31 You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. 32 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, 33 and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.” (Luke 1:28-33, NIV)

Mary’s Song (The Magnificat)…

46My soul glorifies the Lord
47     and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
48 for he has been mindful
    of the humble state of his servant.
From now on all generations will call me blessed,
49     for the Mighty One has done great things for me—
    holy is his name.
50 His mercy extends to those who fear him,
    from generation to generation.
51 He has performed mighty deeds with his arm;
    he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.
52 He has brought down rulers from their thrones
    but has lifted up the humble.
53 He has filled the hungry with good things
    but has sent the rich away empty.
54 He has helped his servant Israel,
    remembering to be merciful
55 to Abraham and his descendants forever,
    just as he promised our ancestors. (Luke 1, NIV)

Zechariah’s Benedictus…

68Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel,
    because he has come to his people and redeemed them.
69 He has raised up a horn of salvation for us
    in the house of his servant David
70 (as he said through his holy prophets of long ago),
71 salvation from our enemies
    and from the hand of all who hate us—
72 to show mercy to our ancestors
    and to remember his holy covenant,
73     the oath he swore to our father Abraham:
74 to rescue us from the hand of our enemies,
    and to enable us to serve him without fear
75     in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.

76 And you, my child, will be called a prophet of the Most High;
    for you will go on before the Lord to prepare the way for him,
77 to give his people the knowledge of salvation
    through the forgiveness of their sins,
78 because of the tender mercy of our God,
    by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven
79 to shine on those living in darkness
    and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the path of peace. (Luke 1, NIV)

Addendum 12/22/2025. While reading the account of Jesus’ presentation at the temple (Luke 2:22-40), it occurred to me to include the man Simeon’s declaration…

29 “Sovereign Lord, as you have promised,
    you may now dismiss your servant in peace.
30 For my eyes have seen your salvation,
31     which you have prepared in the sight of all nations:
32 a light for revelation to the Gentiles,
    and the glory of your people, Israel.” (NIV, my emphasis)

The First Advent Songs: The Magnificat and the Benedictus

The Advent season is upon us, and as is my habit, I’ve returned to the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke. Every time I read Luke’s account, I’m struck by both the parallels and the contrasts of the angel Gabriel’s visits – first to Zechariah, John the Baptist’s father, and then to Mary.

When we enter the stories of John’s and Jesus’ births, we sometimes move too quickly, missing the richness woven into the details. Luke is doing more than giving us two birth stories – he’s showing us how God breaks into human history, not once, but twice, through two very different people. Gabriel’s visit to Zechariah and his visit to Mary sit side by side, and I think for a reason. Together, they paint a picture of God’s faithfulness in surprising ways.

Zechariah’s story begins in the center of Israel’s religious life. He is an elderly priest, serving in the Temple, standing at the altar of incense. Everything about the scene is steeped in holiness, memory, and sacred tradition. This is the place where you would expect God to act. And God does. Gabriel appears with astonishing news: Zechariah and Elizabeth – long past the age when children were possible – will have a son. He will be named John, a child filled with the Spirit from his mother’s womb, a child destined to prepare the people for the Lord’s coming.

Mary’s story could not feel more different. Far from the Temple courts and priestly garments, we find a young, betrothed girl in the quiet obscurity of Nazareth. No incense. No crowds. No liturgy. Just the daily simplicity of a Galilean village. And yet, here too, Gabriel appears. God steps not only into the sacred space of the Temple, but also into the ordinary space of a teenage girl’s life. The message is even more astonishing: Mary will conceive a child by the Holy Spirit, and this child will be Jesus – the Son of the Most High, the One whose kingdom will never end.

We must note that God moves in both the center and the margins. He speaks in Jerusalem’s Temple and in Nazareth’s simplicity. The priest in sacred robes and the young girl with no social status both find themselves swept up in God’s redemptive work. We learn that God is not contained by our expectations. He is as present in the quiet places as He is in the holy places.

We should also note that Zechariah and Mary respond differently, and Luke invites us to reflect on that, too. Zechariah asks, “How shall I know this?” His question, borne out of years of disappointment, carries the weight of doubt. Mary also questions, but her “How will this be?” is a question of wonder, not unbelief. She wants to understand, not to resist. And while Zechariah is rendered silent for a season, Mary is invited to step deeper into God’s mystery. Her final posture – “I am the Lord’s servant” – remains one of the most beautiful responses in Scripture.

But Luke doesn’t leave us with the announcements alone. He gives us the songs – the Spirit-inspired utterances that reveal what these events mean for the world.

Mary’s Magnificat  is the first to rise – a song that proclaims the upside-down nature of God’s kingdom:

He has brought down rulers…
but has lifted up the humble.
He has filled the hungry with good things…
but has sent the rich away empty.

This is the kingdom we’ve been tracing in recent posts – the kingdom that arrives not with power but with humility, not in the halls of Caesar but in the heart of a young Jewish girl. Mary’s song proclaims a God who sees the lowly, remembers His covenant, and upends the world’s value systems. She interprets her own story through the larger story of Israel: this is Abraham’s God, keeping His promise to bless the nations.

Later, when John is born and Zechariah’s tongue is finally loosed, the Benedictus flows out of him – a priestly blessing shaped by Scripture and steeped in hope:

Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel,
for He has visited and redeemed His people.

Zechariah sees clearly now: John will be the forerunner, the one who prepares the way for God’s inbreaking of the kingdom. The whole song is saturated with kingdom imagery – redemption, forgiveness, covenant mercy, and the breaking of darkness by light. He speaks of God’s mercy and love (hesed), the sunrise from on high, the guidance into peace. This is kingdom language. This is God restoring what has been fractured since Eden.

New Creation!!

Taken together, Mary’s Magnificat and Zechariah’s Benedictus give us two lenses on the same kingdom: one from the margins, one from the priesthood; one celebrating the Great Reversal, the other celebrating the Great Rescue. Both declare that God is acting decisively, faithfully, graciously – just as He promised.

And perhaps that is the heartbeat of Luke. God is not merely delivering babies; He is delivering His people. He is inaugurating His kingdom, one that lifts the lowly, fulfills ancient promises, confronts darkness with light, and invites ordinary people into extraordinary grace.

So, ponder the messages of Mary and Zechariah. They are certainly “ponder-worthy” during Advent!

Mary Did You Know? (Part 2)

I have spent the last two weeks hovered over the first chapter of Luke’s gospel. I wouldn’t venture to guess as to how many times I’ve read the accounts of the announcements of John the Baptists’ miraculous conception and Jesus’ immaculate conception. This time I find I’m seeing and hearing some things differently than in past readings. Luke tells a much larger story than just the announcement of the two births.

In the previous post, Mary Did You Know? (Part 1), we discussed the angel Gabriel’s surprising appearance and greeting of Mary, the insignificant teenage girl from the insignificant little town of Nazareth, far from the religious epicenter, Jerusalem. Let’s continue to look into the Annunciation of Jesus’ birth, starting again with Gabriel’s visit announcing the birth of John the Baptist…

The Annunciation, Leonardo da Vinci

It was in the Temple in Jerusalem that Gabriel visited John the Baptist’s to-be father, Zechariah, as he was performing his temple duties. Zechariah was a priest. One of approximately 20,000 priests, he was required to be in Jerusalem, serving at the Temple, during each of the four major festivals – Passover, Pentecost, Day of Atonement, and the Feast of Booths. Additionally, he was scheduled to serve two, one-week stints throughout the year.

Priests were set apart to carry out duties associated with worship and sacrifice on behalf of the Jewish faith community. Their duties took place at the Temple where God was presumed to have resided. For the Israelites, the Temple was the intersection of heaven and earth. Priests, following Old Testament tradition, served God on behalf of the people and the people on behalf of God. On the day of Gabriel’s visit, Zechariah had been “chosen by lot, according to the custom of the priesthood, to go into the temple of the Lord and burn incense” (Luke 1:9).

The burning of incense was a twice-a-day ritual. As a crowd of worshipers assembled outside to pray, Zechariah entered the Temple’s Holy Place to burn the incense on an altar designed specifically for that purpose The altar of incense was just in front of the curtain separating the Holy of Holies and the Holy Place. This was indeed a holy experience for the officiating priest. After burning the incense, the priest came out of the Temple and pronounced the Aaronic blessing over the people, the same blessing we use today as a common benediction to our worship services.

The Temple, you see, is where the “with-you-God” resided with his people throughout the ages. The precursor of the Temple dated back to the time of the exodus from Egyptian captivity. God was content to live in a tent (tabernacle), but the people wanted otherwise. So God allowed them to build a temple. And the steps of the Temple were where people gathered to worship – this intersection of heaven and earth.

In the last post, we discussed the angel Gabriel’s greeting to Mary. Let’s look at the rest of his Annunciation. After reassuring Mary that she needn’t fear, and reminding her that she had found favor with God, he began to reveal to her the rest of the story, the reason for his visit. She would conceive and bear a son whom she would name Jesus. Jesus is a form of Joshua meaning “God is Salvation.” Gabriel, then, proclaimed five descriptors of God’s saving intervention that Jesus would embody (Luke 1:32-33):

  1. Jesus will be great. Gabriel did not say his greatness would be “in the sight of the Lord” as he did concerning John. Jesus’ greatness is unqualified. It stands alone.
  2. Jesus will be called Son of the Most High. Note that Luke capitalized Son of the Most High, grammerically reserved for royalty. Most High is derived from the Hebrew name for God, El Eylon, meaning the one true sovereign God.
  3. The Lord God will give Jesus the throne of his father David. Most Jewish people would have understood this to mean Messiah. I wonder what Mary was thinking at this point.
  4. Jesus will reign over Jacob’s descendents (Israel) forever. This was a somewhat contemptuous pronouncement considering King Herod’s attempts to establish his reign over the Jewsih people.
  5. Jesus’ kingdom will never end. Eternity is an attribute of God and in Hebrew understanding, only El Eylon’s kingdom is considered to be eternal.

Gabriel was clearly communicating to Mary that the Eternal, Most High, One true and sovereign God was going to take up residence in her womb. Mary understandably perplexed asked, “How can this be…?” Gabriel’s response:

“The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.” (Luke 1:35)

A noteworthy word in Gabriel’s response is “overshadow” (Greek, episkiazein). Recall the tent/tabernacle that God was satisfied to live in. After the tabernacle was completed, God overshadowed it and infused (i.e., impregnated) it with his presence and glory (Exodus 40:33-35). Right there in the middle of the camp, God was present with his people. When the Old Testament was translated from Hebrew to Greek (known as the Septuagint), the word used for overshadowed was episkiazein. Luke did not use an inconsequential word when describing the immaculate conception.

The divine cloud that established God’s presence with his people in time and place now does so in a person. The divine overshadowing of the earthly tabernacle was a foreshadowing of the living tabernacle, the incarnation (Edwards). Thus the Apostle John’s distinctive declaration that “the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (John 1:14). The Greek word for dwelling could be translated as tabernacle. Or as Eugene Peterson paraphrased John 1:14 in The Message, “The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.”

Bottom line: God left the building and took up residence right there in the middle of Nazareth!

Edwards, J. R. (2015). The gospel according to Luke. Eerdmans Publishing, Grand Rapid, MI