Luke 1:26-38
How shall this be
The greeting troubles her before the message arrives. She asks the practical question, is told the Holy Ghost shall come upon her, and answers behold the handmaid of the Lord.
People of the Bible
Mary
Asked one practical question, got an answer that explained nothing, and agreed anyway.
Mary is a young woman in Nazareth engaged to a carpenter when a messenger arrives with a greeting that troubles her before he has said anything else. She is told she will conceive, and her question is not doubt but logistics: how shall this be. The answer she is given is not a mechanism, it is a person and a promise, and she replies be it unto me according to your word. She travels to the hill country, sings a song about thrones cast down and the hungry filled, and then spends thirty years in a village.
Scroll down to the storyThe movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of Mary
- 01
- 02
Luke 1:39-56
My soul magnifies the Lord
She goes with haste to Elizabeth and the song that follows is about proud hearts scattered, the mighty put down from their seats, and the rich sent empty away.
- 03
Luke 2:33-35
A sword shall pierce your own soul
Simeon blesses them and then turns to her alone with a sentence nobody asked for, about a child set for the falling and rising again of many, and a sword.
- 04
John 2:1-11
Whatever he says to you, do it
At a wedding she states the problem in three words, they have no wine, is answered with what looks like a refusal, and instructs the servants anyway.
- 05
John 19:25-27
Woman, behold your son
She is standing by the cross. He arranges her care between two sentences of his own execution, and from that hour the disciple takes her to his own home.
Why it matters
Her song in Luke 1 is the longest speech by a woman in the New Testament and it is almost entirely made of the Old: Hannah, the psalms, the prophets. It is not a lullaby either. Twice Luke says she kept these things and pondered them in her heart, which is his way of telling you where he got the material. She is at the first sign at Cana, she is outside the door when he is teaching, and she is standing by the cross at the end.
17 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
