Reader’s Guide: “The Word for Today” Thursday, December 27, 2012 Read - Luke 1:5-25 Beginnings and endings are important! All of the gospel writers made a choice about how they would begin their stories. Mark chose to begin with a very dramatic and powerful story of the baptism of Jesus when the heavens were ripped open, the Spirit of God descended upon Jesus, and God was “on the loose” in the world. Matthew chose to begin with the genealogy of Jesus to anchor Jesus into the Old Testament story. As I mention earlier, Luke decided to begin by telling the story of the birth of John the Baptist and the birth of Jesus following the template he found in the Old Testament in the story of the birth of Samuel. Luke places two pictures, one on either side of the picture of the birth of Samuel he found in the Old Testament. He did that so that we would compare and contrast these birth stories with one another. There is much they share in common. First of all there is something unusual about the mothers – Hannah and Elizabeth are barren, in contrast Mary has no husband – yet each will give birth to a special child. Hannah and Elizabeth share the fate of other important mothers in the story – Sarah, Rachel, the mother of Samson, all of whom were barren. God needs to overcome this barrenness and does! The men in the story are not viewed in the most positive light – at least not Elkanah and Zechariah (Joseph really has no role other than to be the one to whom Mary is engaged). The fathers of Samuel and John are priests who go to serve at the temple. In contrast Joseph is a carpenter, yet he will be diligent to bring the baby Jesus to the temple following his birth. All of the births are miraculous – Jesus’ birth is the most dramatic since Mary conceives without a man. Songs are sung to announce the births and the songs all sound the same – God is bringing down the mighty and lifting up the lowly! We have gotten ahead of ourselves by looking at the whole story but the point is that Luke chose to begin his gospel in this particular way to place the birth of Jesus in the midst these other two birth stories. He wants us to see them all together.