{"id":4724,"date":"2015-12-24T10:59:52","date_gmt":"2015-12-24T14:59:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rayvanneste.com\/?p=4724"},"modified":"2015-12-24T10:59:52","modified_gmt":"2015-12-24T14:59:52","slug":"mary-didnt-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rayvanneste.com\/?p=4724","title":{"rendered":"Mary Didn\u2019t Know"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Stained<\/a>There have been a flood of memes and other comments this year mocking the popular song, \u201cMary Did You Know?\u201d \u201cYes, Mary knew!\u201d, they proclaim, typically pointing to Luke 1 where Gabriel tells her that the child born to her \u201cwill be called holy- the Son of God.\u201d I don\u2019t feel the need to defend every pop Christmas song, but I think, in this case, the song deserves more careful consideration.<\/p>\n

Yes, Mary was told that her son would be the Son of God. She undoubtedly understood the angel\u2019s point that her son would be the Messiah. But, how did she understand these words \u201cSon of God\u201d and \u201cMessiah\u201d? If she was like the best of her contemporaries, she did not grasp the fullness of these truths prior to the resurrection. Peter and John believed Jesus was the Messiah, but they did not grasp all this meant. The Messiah was not expected to be divine, and \u201cSon of God\u201d could be understood in the first century in terms much lower than \u201cEternal Second Person of the Godhead.\u201d By all accounts Mary believed what she was told, but she would only come to understand the fullness of what she was told in time, especially after the Resurrection.<\/p>\n

We must bear in mind Mark 3 as well. Verse 21 tells us that after Jesus called his twelve apostles and launched his public ministry, \u201chis family \u2026 went out to seize him, for they were saying, \u2018He is out of his mind.\u2019\u201d\u00a0 His \u201cfamily\u201d here is then described as his mother and brothers in verse 31. Mary, apparently, did not understand all that Jesus was doing. This is not surprising. Jewish Messianic expectation was diverse and did not grasp all that Jesus eventually did. They saw in a glass darkly. Mary, even with what she was told, even as she stored up these things in her heart and pondered on them, was surprised- even as we all are! This is part of the wonder of Christmas, that God colored outside our lines, blew away even our wildest expectations and did something grander than our wildest imaginations. He did not merely send a new David- a mighty, yet fallen leader; instead He came himself to walk among us.<\/p>\n

So, no, Mary did not know that her baby boy would walk on water, give sight to a blind man, calm a storm with his hand. She knew he would save his people but it doesn\u2019t seem that she knew the full significance of this. She knew he was the \u201cSon of God,\u201d but without full awareness of what this meant, I don\u2019t think she knew that as she kissed him, she kissed the face of God. She didn\u2019t know the sleeping child she was holding was in fact the great I Am. She did not yet fully grasp his role as heaven\u2019s perfect Lamb.<\/p>\n

So, we do right to think carefully about the songs that come along, but we need not be unnecessarily critical. We ought to let this song remind us of the wonder of the Incarnation that surpassed all those before us could have asked or thought. Gobsmacked awe is the appropriate response to the Incarnation.<\/p>\n

Merry Christmas to you all as we worship in wonder and awe at the incarnate Deity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There have been a flood of memes and other comments this year mocking the popular song, \u201cMary Did You Know?\u201d \u201cYes, Mary knew!\u201d, they proclaim, typically pointing to Luke 1 where Gabriel tells her that the child born to her \u201cwill be called holy- the Son of God.\u201d I don\u2019t feel the need to defend …<\/p>\n

Continue reading ‘Mary Didn\u2019t Know’ »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[32,354,353],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rayvanneste.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4724"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rayvanneste.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rayvanneste.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rayvanneste.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rayvanneste.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4724"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/rayvanneste.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4724\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4726,"href":"http:\/\/rayvanneste.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4724\/revisions\/4726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rayvanneste.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rayvanneste.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rayvanneste.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}