FILO: Advent for the Church Technical ArtistНамуна

Today, we are looking at a passage from Luke, chapter 1, verses 26-38.

In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.”

Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But the angel said to her, “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. 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, and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”

“How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”

The angel answered, “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[a] the Son of God. Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. For no word from God will ever fail.”

“I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled.” Then the angel left her.

There’s a classic philosophical concept that comes up in movies like “The Dark Knight”, or in songs like “Something’s Gotta Give” and even the great American cultural phenomenon of 1987: WrestleMania 3.

It’s called the Irresistible Force Paradox. “What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?” So what is the actual answer? Are there any real-life examples that put this paradox to the test?

If there’s one thing that you and I, artists in our church, are confident will happen every year without fail, whether in-person or by some beautifully done online service, it’s Christmas. That’s an unchangeable date, an incredibly tall task, an immovable object if there ever was one.

The coming of Christ was an immovable reality. The world at large needed a savior and the people of Israel had been promised a Messiah through the line of David. The stage was set, and the people were waiting. But how would the Messiah come?

In Luke chapter 1, the Angel of the Lord comes and meets with a teenage virgin named Mary. The conversation unfolds in a way that appears as though Gabriel drew the short straw in a “crucial conversation“ contest. In our vernacular, it would’ve gone like so…

“Hey, Mary! Don’t worry. God thinks you’re awesome, and He digs you. Mmkay? Now… You’re gonna have a kid… and he will be THE king. Like the one you’ve been waiting for. How are you feeling about that?”

You could cut the tension in this text with a butter knife.

Then Mary asks this simple question, a question that everyone who’d heard about the coming Messiah throughout the generations was asking: “How will this happen?”

Now the angel’s reply at this moment marks the entrance of the second player in our paradox: the unstoppable Force. “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.”

The same Holy Spirit that was present at the beginning of time, hovering over the waters, would come over Mary and prove His power - the exact thing needed to bring about the coming of the Messiah.

An unstoppable force meets an immovable object.

The rigors of preparing for our immovable event will bring us long hours, short tempers, and tired souls. But the text beckons us to embrace this reminder: the only way we are effective is if the unstoppable force of the Holy Spirit breathes upon our work and the Most High overshadows us.

May the Holy Spirit of God bless you, keep you, and make His face shine upon you. May He be gracious to you as He turns His gaze toward you and gives you His peace.

- Delwin Eiland