Jeremy L. Berg

The Second Sunday of Advent

This is my imaginative first person account of Mary’s story found in the Luke 1 shared at our Advent Service this Sunday. I drew heavily from this piece by Steve Ray.

“The obviously well kept secret of the “ordinary” is that it is made to be a receptacle of the divine, a place where the life of God flows.” -DALLAS WILLARD, Divine Conspiracy

I grew up poor in riches but rich in imagination—baptized in Holy Scripture. We may not have known if the coming harvest would keep our bellies full, but our hearts and minds were ever filled with the ancient stories of Abraham and Sarah, Ruth and Boaz, David and Goliath.

Oh, how I loved our weekly synagogue services! Every time the reader unrolled the scroll, a tingle of excitement would run up and down my spine. I didn’t want to just listen to the scriptures; I wanted to dive into them and make my home there. These weren’t just stories for me; they were scripts I wanted to shape my own life. But who was I kidding? I was just a poor peasant girl living in Nowheresville, Judea. 

One plot line in the Scriptures that had always captured my heart were the stories about the mysterious Ark of the Covenant. For some inexplicable reason, the Eternal God whom all the heavens cannot contain, decided to come and reside in a fancy box overlaid with gold. Just think of it! Look around the room you are currently in and pick out an ordinary container—a box, cupboard, drawer, or backpack. Now imagine the Creator of the Universe deciding to fill that ordinary container with the dynamite power that brought the universe into existence with a few words! 

As a little girl, I remember sitting in awe hearing about what happened when he ark was completed. The rabbi’s voice dropped to a low, rumbling dramatic tone as he spoke of “The glooooooo-ry of the LORD—the Shekinah glory—overshadowed the tent of the meeting, and the glooooooo-ry of the LORD filled the tabernacle” (Exodus 40:34-35; Num. 9:18, 22). I wanted to go and sit inside that cloud of glory, and behold the presence of God penetrating that golden box with heaven’s light! 

Little boys and girls should be careful what they wish for. 

. . . . . . . . .

Generations after Moses, that special container was still being lugged around by the Israelites—through the wilderness and in and out of battle. The ark carried the most precious of sacred artifacts: the jar with manna from heaven, Aaron’s wooden rod that budded, and the stone tablets of the Law from Sinai. Each of these represented the faithful acts of God in history—a history full of grit and glory, saints and sinners, desert valleys and mountain peaks. This was our story. These were my people.

And while I couldn’t touch or taste the manna hidden in that ark, as I read about it I hungered for God to once again visit His people with Heavenly provision. As I pictured Aaron’s budded rod all dried and frail in that old box, I wondered when God would at last send the True Priest to restore the worship of His people. And thinking about God’s word etched on those cold stone tablets, my heart grew strangely warm as I thought about the words of the prophet Jeremiah:

“The days are coming,” declares the Lord,
    “when I will make a new covenant
with the people of Israel…

I will put my law in their minds
    and write my law on their hearts.” (Jer. 31:33)

Could you even imagine? God’s Word somehow residing within us? God’s Word warm and intimate like a lover’s whisper? How different would that Word be from the commandments shouted from on high and carved into rigid rock! The Apostle would years later write about God’s word coming to dwell richly inside his people (Col. 3:16), but as a little girl I could never have imagined what this would mean for me personally—just a peasant girl from Nowheresville, Judea. But I’m getting ahead of myself. 

. . . . . . . . .

My vivid imagination and love of Scripture came from my Abba. He was a true storyteller with a flair for the dramatic. He would gather us around the kitchen hearth and launch into a story—acting out the parts, giving the characters voices, and transforming our kitchen into a Greek theater. My fascination with the Ark of the Covenant goes back to a childhood memory of Abba reading about the exciting, bewildering, and terrifying tales about the travels of the Ark  of the Covenant in the days of Samuel and David. 

Israel’s enemy, the Philistines, had captured the ark only to find themselves experiencing great problems. The ark was brought into the temple of their god, Dagon, only to find the statue of Dagon lying prostrate before the ark in the morning! Dagon was put back in his place, but the next day Dagon was again on the floor—only this time his head and hands were cut off and lying next to the remaining stump of Dagon. At this point in Abba’ dramatic reading, he was lying on the floor with both hands tucked behind his back, wiggling around like the helpless, armless stump of Dagon. When the Philistines were next struck down with a plague, they had had enough and sent the ark back to Israel (1 Sam 5:1-6:12).

I remember asking Abba, “What happened to the ark after that?” 

“The ark just disappears from the story for many chapters, and many years,” he said, “Only to reappear in dramatic fashion under the leadership of David the Shepherd King. Abba got serious, leaned in and in a hushed tone began my favorite story:

“Not more than a few miles from out our front door there, David and his men went to retrieve the ark from this very Judean hillside to bring it to Jerusalem. They set the ark of God on a new cart and brought it from the house of Abinadab. Uzzah and Ahio, sons of Abinadab, were guiding the new cart with the ark of God on it, and Ahio was walking in front of it.”

At this point in the story, Abba picked me up and set me down on his knees that represented the cart and let me be the holy ark of the LORD. I was about 6 years old.

“David and all Israel were celebrating with all their might before the Lord, with harps, lyres, timbrels and cymbals. All as the wobbly cart rumbled along down the bumpy path.” Abba bounced me up and down, and rocked me back and forth on his knees.

“When they came to the threshing floor of Nakon,  the oxen pulling the cart stumbled. Uzzah reached out and took hold of the ark of God to steady it.” 

My big brother, who had heard this story many times before, jumped in to play the tragic part of Uzzah. He reached up, grabbed my arm, and then fell down dead on the floor—twitching and making gurgling noises for added effect. 

“The Lord’s anger burned against Uzzah because of his irreverent act;” Abba recited the words from the scroll of Samuel from memory. “Therefore God struck him down, and he died there beside the ark of God.David was afraid of the Lord that day and said, “How can the ark of the Lord come to me?” He was afraid to take the ark of the Lord to be with him in Jerusalem after this, so he left the ark in the hill country of Judea for three months. 

When David eventually got up his courage and returned to bring the ark to Jerusalem, Abba dramatized how David “danced and leapt in the presence of the ark and everyone shouted for joy (2 Sm 6:9-14). But David’s wife Michal watched him leaping for joy before the ark and despised him in her heart. But why? My 6 year old mind didn’t understand that at all. I adored David with a kind of 6-year old crush, and if I were lucky enough to be David’s wife, I would have climbed down out of that window and joined him in dancing before the ark of the LORD.

Now, why do I share all these stories with you today? Well, God saw fit that this little peasant girl, captivated by holy writ with a desire to not just hear the stories, but to become a character within God’s drama, would soon find herself doing just that when the “fullness of time” (Gal. 4:4) had come. 

Little girls and boys should be careful what they wish for. 

. . . . . . . . .

“How can the ark of the Lord come to me?” David pondered in his heart. He knew he was no more worthy to carry the holy ark than Uzzah who had died trying. “How can the manifest presence of the Holy One come to me without undoing me? David’s question got lodged somewhere in the back recesses of my mind and surfaced again on that fateful day when my world was forever rocked by an angelic visitor! You know the story:

“Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you,” the angel Gabriel greeted me. “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. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and his kingdom will never end.”

“How will this be,” I asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?” What the angel said next thrust me back into the ancient stories, back to the moment when God’s presence came to dwell over the Ark in the tabernacle of old (Exod. 40:34-35). Luke carefully crafts my big moment using the same words from that scene: just as the cloud of God’s holy presence overshadowed the tabernacle where the Ark of the Covenant was kept, so Gabriel said “the power of the Most High will overshadow you, Mary” (Luke 1:35). 

Before I had time to ponder these words fully and do the divine calculus, I composed myself and said to Gabriel: “I am the Lord’s servant; may your word to me be fulfilled” (Luke 1:38). But after the angelic visitor left and I had time to reflect on his words, my knees buckled and I nearly fainted. The same cloud of glory that overshadowed the Ark was about to overshadow my teenage body. Just as the Ark of the Covenant carried the word of God written on stone tablets, I would soon be carrying the Word of God become flesh within my womb! As the first Ark carried Manna from Heaven, I would play host to the one who would call himself the Bread of Life! 

“How I treasured up all these things and pondered them in my heart” (Luke 2:19). What does it mean for an ordinary girl from Nowheresville to become the receptacle of the Divine? A walking, talking, giggling, griping, believing, doubting ark of the Living God? Could this really be happening? 

If I had any doubts about it, they were put to rest when I found myself pregnant having never been with a man. But this plot line of me being an Adolescent Ark of God on the move thickened even more when I made my trip to visit my cousin Elizabeth. She lives in the very same Judean countryside where David had gone to retrieve the Ark long ago. Luke captures the parallels hidden in plain sight that many readers have missed over the centuries. 

When the Ark was brought to David, remember, he was afraid of its holy power and said, “How can the ark of the Lord come to me?” As I approached Elizabeth’s house, she declared, “How is it that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” (Luke 1:43). And if that’s not enough, remember how David leapt in the presence of the Ark? Elizabeth told me that her baby leapt inside her when she came into my presence! Luke also notes that just as the Ark of the Covenant remained in the house of Obed-edom the Gittite for three months in David’s time, so I remained in the home of Elizabeth for three months— in the same Judean hill country. 

God smiled upon a peasant girl infatuated with the Scriptures and decided to pull her into the Drama of Redemption. The one who played the part of the Ark bouncing on her Abba’s knees as a little girl, became the Ark of the Savior in the fullness of time. “And I treasured up all these things and pondered them in my heart” (Luke 2:19).

. . . . . . . . .

What about you? Are you left outside of this exciting story, a casual observer just listening from a safe distance? Or do you yearn like I did to find your place within the unfolding Drama? Boys and girls—of all ages—should be careful what they wish for. God has a reputation for choosing the most unlikely nobodies to become big somebodies in His Story. Sure, I am unique and played a singular role in playing host to God in my womb and giving birth to the Savior. But…as I treasured these things and pondered them in my heart over the years, I came to a few truths I invite you to treasure up and ponder this Advent. 

First, God really wants to come make His home in each human heart. We are each called to carry the Messiah in our being. Before my Son returned to His Heavenly Father, he promised to send his Holy Spirit to dwell in each of us. We are all—individually and collectively—the new Temple where God’s Spirit dwells. Just as temples are the “hot spot”where Heaven touches earth, so God wants to invade our ordinary with extraordinary possibilities.

But as every pregnant mother learns quickly, that life we carry inside us wants to grow and expand and stretch us in ways that are uncomfortable, but yielding new and precious Life on the other sided of the holy labor. Are you willing to play host to the Spirit who intends on growing and expanding and stretching you? 

Second, I have pondered the three items carried in the original Ark, and what they symbolize for all of us who say ‘Yes’ to being receptacles of the divine. 

1) The Ark carried the stone tablets of God’s written Word; I carried the Word become Flesh; and you all are called to let the Word of God dwell in you richly to light your path. Let the words of my Son grow ever larger in your life, stretching you, expanding you, sometimes pushing you and kicking you, and keep you on the Narrow Way of righteousness. 

2) The original Ark carried Aaron’s budded rod, a symbol of God’s miraculous power available to God’s true priest. Each of you are part of the royal “priesthood of all believers” (2 Peter 2:9), who take up not Aaron’s rod but the wooden Cross of Christ as we serve as priests and mediators  offering God’s grace to a world in peril. You don’t offer animals on the altar like Aaron; instead, as the Apostle wrote, “Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering” (Rom 12:1). 

3) Just as the original Ark carried the Manna from Heaven, God’s nourishment for starving souls in the desert, so you are to ingest and share with others the Bread of Heaven broken again and again for the sin of the world each week in the Eucharist. When I said ‘Yes’ to being a holy receptacle for the Son of God, it came with a sober warning that “a sword would pierce [my] own soul too” (Luke 2:34-35). I thrilled at the joys and gifts the Christ child brought into my life, but I also accepted the pain and suffering that would come from playing host to and nurturing such Great Love in such a cruel and loveless world. 

Are you willing to be a carrier of Christ’s love if it means taking up the cross and letting yourself be broken open and poured out like a living eucharist for the sake of others? The great Apostle said, “I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church” (Col. 1:24).

As a poor peasant girl from Nowheresville, I can’t say I fully understand the Apostle’s meaning. But I know enough to say that all who choose to carry Christ and His peaceable ways into a hostile world will eventually share in my Son’s afflictions like Paul did. When that day comes, may we put one hand on our womb that holds God’s presence and power, and raise our other hand to the sky and rejoice with Paul that we have found favor with God and marvel again that we get to carry His love into the hate, his light into the darkness. 

Now these are some lofty thoughts from a peasant girl from Nowheresville to treasure up and ponder the rest of this Advent Season. Let me leave you with this benediction based on Gabriel’s words to me long ago: 

The Lord is with you. 

Do not be afraid. 

You have found favor with God. 

May the Holy Spirit come upon you.

May the power of the Most High overshadow you with his love and power today and always. 

Amen.