Home for Christmas
By all reports the housing market is very lively right now. I know many friends who bought or sold recently, including many who have moved into a new house. New homes are lovely. I just had a chance to experience one when my husband and I did some teaching at Wheaton’s extension campus, Honeyrock. We were housed in the new cabin. Absolutely lovely and spacious, but as wonderful as it was, I have to admit it lacked a certain time-tested lived-in charm. That might take a few years. As the saying goes, you know, a house doesn’t make a home.
In the readings for this Sunday, especially 2 Sam 7 and Luke 1, the theme of houses and homes makes a very prominent occurrence, except we might be surprised who’s doing the moving.
In the reading from 2 Samuel 7, house plays an important role in the story, as it takes on multiple meanings. At this point in the narrative of David’s life, much has happened. He’s been chosen, proven, tested; he’s sinned, and been forgiven. Here he is living in his house and the Lord had given him rest on every side from all his enemies. If you’ve read the narrative lately, you know that this has been a hard-won peace. In this state, his heart, as it often does, turns toward the Lord. He wants to build a permanent house for the ark of the covenant which has been traveling around from place to place, now housed in a tent. David feels the disjunct. He is at peace and the meeting point of God’s presence is not. Something is wrong with that picture. His prophet-advisor Nathan supports his plans to build. “God is with you,” he says.
But that night God expands Nathan’s vision in a dream. God says, “David will not build me a house. Instead, I will build him a house, not a building but a person, a son, a seed, a legacy. And this house shall endure forever.”
When Nathan shares this news with David, he erupts in praise, “Who am I, O Lord God, and what is my house, that you have brought me thus far?” And he prays this prayer:
And now, O Lord God, you are God, and your words are true, and you have promised this good thing to your servant; now therefore may it please you to bless the house of your servant, so that it may continue forever before you. (2 Sam 7:28–29)
This house is on full display in our Gospel passage from Luke, the Annunciation, Gabriel’s pronouncement of Jesus’ birth to Mary.
It begins with the introduction, which includes God’s instructions to Gabriel so that the angel can bring the news to the woman God has chosen. From heaven to Israel to the region of Galilee to the village of Nazareth to a family, from the house of David. The potential for God’s promise to David has endured, for this lineage, this house, has not ceased to exist. Joseph and Mary are members of it.
That isn’t all, there are echoes of this house even in what Gabriel first says to Mary: “the Lord is with you!” It is a wonderful reminder of God’s presence with her, for sure, but fascinatingly, it is also the very same thing Nathan says to David when David expresses his concern over the lack of a permanent house for the ark for God’s presence. Nathan says as well, The Lord is with you. Kurios meta sou.
But at this wonderful and weighty greeting, Mary is disturbed. Angels are disturbing, generally, especially if one walks into your room, but Luke says explicitly that the words disturb her. Could she have guessed that she would be asked to play an important role in the legacy of David? A blessing to be sure, but not without cost. If she was being asked to be connected to the revived kingdom of Israel, Rome would have something to say about that.
Paying heed to her disturbance, Gabriel seeks to comfort her by reiterating that what he is saying to Mary is a sign of God’s favor. Now the invitation becomes more clear. “You will conceive in your womb and bear a son (It is very important that both are mentioned. Jesus doesn’t zoom down like an alien and inhabit her womb. He is in her. He is her flesh and bone).
The pronouncement continues: “You will call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give to him the throne of David his father.”
This is the invitation. This is the blessing. She will be the mother of the king.
Keep in mind that Israel had not had a king for a while. After David then his son Solomon the kingdom split under his grandsons, and ultimately both parts of the kingdom were exiled and brought under the heel of foreign empires.
A priestly family rebelled in the 2nd century BCE, the Maccabees, and they reigned for a while, better than their foreign oppressors for sure, but they were of the tribe of Levi, not David. And After just a few generations, they were overcome by the Romans, and now at the time of Mary, Israel was ruled by Rome through the maniacal puppet king Herod. And he certainly wasn’t of the line of David, he was Idumean, a people group forcibly converted to become Israelites during the time of the Maccabees. And as I said, he was crazy, in a paranoid bloodthirsty kind of way.
Hence, the potential for the promise of David’s house remained, but it had not been realized for a very long time.
Until now. Gabriel says that her son will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there shall be no end.
Mary’s next question is quite odd if we suspend our knowledge of the story for a bit. She is from the house of David. She is betrothed to a man of the house of David. Why would she not just assume that she will, once they are finally married, have the king many Jews have been waiting for?
But she doesn’t, she asks Gabriel, “How can this be since I am a virgin?” I know how children are conceived and that is not possible for me yet. Some have suggested that she assumes that Gabriel means this will happen right away, before she moves into Joseph’s home, but his words are in the future tense, and she will be married within a year’s time. It is not clear why she doesn’t just imagine he is talking about that season of her life in the near future.
It makes a great deal more sense to assume that she hears in Gabriel’s pronouncement the proclamation of not a normal king. Because whereas previous promises to the house of David speak of an eternal throne or an eternal reign, which could be fulfilled by a series of descendants of David, Gabriel has said that her son himself will reign, he is the subject of the verb, and he himself will reign forever.
With that wording, He reigns, not like previous kings, but like God.
The Lord will reign forever and forever and ever;
you shall perish, O nations, from his land. (Ps. 9:37)
The Lord will reign forever,
your God, O Sion, for generation and generation. (Ps. 145:10)
They will judge nations and rule over peoples,
and the Lord will reign over them forever. (Wis. 3:8)
And the Lord will reign over them in Mount Sion
from now and forever. (Mic. 4:7)
In Israel’s Scriptures, the only person who reigns forever is God.
A normal pregnancy can’t give you this kind of unusual child. How can she have any child, but especially an eternally reigning child, without knowing a man? Wink, wink.
In other words, I do not believe that Luke has presented her as obtuse, missing the obvious. Instead, Luke’s crafting of her seemingly knowing question allows Gabriel to highlight the precise issue: You do not know a man? Precisely. That does not disqualify you from bearing this child, it actually qualifies you. Because this child will not be the son of any man. He will reign eternally because he will be in truth the Son of God.
The promise to David of a throne, a house, will be fulfilled, but in a fantastically amazing way.
Notice the progression of this theme. It goes from David imagining that he will build a house, a structure for God, for the ark of the covenant, to God promising to build a house, a legacy for him, to God himself coming in and through his house, David’s line, through Mary.
God has honored David’s concern to find a place for the ark, to find a place for the location where God’s presence dwelt. For God himself has selected his own ark, his own place for his presence to dwell, and it is not in any house that David built, but in the house God built for him, his own family, his descendent, Mary. Much in the Christian tradition noticed the comparison between the description of the holy place in Exodus (Exod 40:35) and Gabriel’s language here. She is the ultimate ark, the resting place for the shekinah glory of God, which shone over her as it shone over the ark to construct her flesh into the body of God the Son.
Are you looking for a sense of home this season? Mabye a new house, but even deeper a sense of belonging. You don’t have to go out and buy it, you don’t have to work really hard to create it, with the perfect decorations, staged moments, you don’t have to build a house or create a home because God has already done so. The Word became flesh and tabernacled among us. Entered into the human condition by becoming human through Mary. God has kept his promise to create a forever home.
And we can follow Mary’s lead by letting him in.
Once Gabriel has presented the invitation, affirmed the divine nature of her child, given her the example of her friend and fellow Israelite Elizabeth, and affirmed that nothing is impossible with God, she agrees. Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Her yes changed the fabric of the universe, and our yes can change the fabric of our lives.
God is in the market for a new house. He stands at the door and knocks. The door of your life, the door of portions of your life you have been hesitant to let the Spirit in. He desires to be home for Christmas. May we like Mary say yes and let him in to dwell in us, so that ultimately he will welcome us into his Father’s house where he will reign on the throne forever.
This resource is part of the series God in Flesh – Reflections on Advent and Incarnation. Click Here to explore more resources from this series.
Amy Peeler is Associate Professor of New Testament at Wheaton College. She also serves as Associate Rector at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Geneva, IL. She earned her PhD in biblical studies from Princeton Theological Seminary. Her research interests have included Hebrews, Mark, Matthew, the Fatherhood of God, and Feminist Theology. She is a member of the St. Augustine fellowship of the CPT.
