Lent Day 1: Unfair Annunciations in Luke 1

As a Lenten discipline, I am reading one chapter of the Bible a day, and then writing a brief daily reflection which I will be posting here. Conveniently, the Gospel of Luke and Corinthians 1 add up to precisely 40 chapters, so I shall plan on reflecting first on the Gospel of Luke and then on 1 Corinthians. (It actually works out the same if after Luke, I go to the Gospel of Mark or to Romans. There is much to be said with any of these three paths, and while I currently plan on sticking to 1 Corinthians, I’ll simply go as the Spirit wills me after completing Luke.) I make the caveat these are just the product of single day reflections, and I am still in school, so please forgive content that might not be as well thought out or even possibly erroneous.

Luke 1 tells the story of the Annunciation. Everyone knows the story, in which the Archangel Gabriel gives us the opening lines to the Hail Mary with his greeting in 1:28. A much less talked about part of the story is Gabriel’s appearance to Zachariah in the Temple sanctuary to announce the conception of John the Baptist in his elderly wife—who so happens to be Mary’s sister. In response to Gabriel’s statement that to Zechariah “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, you prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall name him john. And you will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth. . . .” (1:13-14).

Imagine yourself in Zechariah’s shoes, being told that your elderly wife . Not only is it physically impossible—it’s dangerous. Pregnancy was dangerous enough at the time without being old while doing it. Much like we would if told we had just won the lottery simply by wishing for it (after all, if something seems too good to be true, it probably is), Zechariah’s first reaction was doubt. “How shall I know this? For I am an old man, and my wife is advanced in years.” (1:18). However much we might have done the same thing, Gabriel wasn’t impressed. In return for looking a gift horse in the mouth, he is struck mute until the birth of his son, because he “did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled at their proper time.” (1:19). Even his wife wasn’t impressed. When Mary visits her, Elizabeth greets her with the words, “Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled”—in case her husbands sixth month of muteness had made him forget his initial doubt. (1:45)

First off, this seems unfair. Sure, Mary famously says, “I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.” (1:38). However, her first reaction was remarkably similar to Zechariah’s: “How can this be, since I have no relations with a man?”(1:34). She expresses the same doubt, and instead of being punished with muteness, Gabriel replies not only that “the power of the Most High will overshadow you,” but gives further proof—her sister Elizabeth has conceived a son. If it’s possible for her, certainly it’s possible for Mary! Only then, after this assurance, does Mary acquiesce to be the Lord’s handmaid.

So how can we reconcile this discrepancy, where doubt in one case is punished, and in the next is understood? Same input: different outputs. On one level, we have to face the reality is that God is not fair, in our human understanding of it. God is just, and does not show “partiality” (Acts 10:34-35), but He’s not fair, in the sense of modern day American sensibilities. He does not always match up the same output for a given input.

He’s not fair, but he does consider context. Consider the result of punishing Zechariah with muteness. “When he came out, he was unable to speak to them, and they realized that he had seen a vision in the sanctuary.” (1:22). Alternatively, what would have happened if Mary were struck mute? Not only is it unlikely Jesus would have been born (unlike Zechariah, whose previous prayer was being granted, it does not appear that Mary had never prayed to be mother of the Messiah), but imagine a pregnant fiancée trying to convince her future husband that the reason she was pregnant was not that she cheated on him, but that she will be “overcome with the power of the Most High.” Now imagine her trying to communicate to him why she was pregnant, mute. If your fiancée came home mute and pregnant, your first reaction wouldn’t be that you were witnessing a miracle—it’d probably be that your fiancée had been raped. By the time she could correct him effectively, it would have been 9 months. What if he told other people of that suspicion? What if he couldn’t shake off something so traumatic that he had believed for 9 months. What if he was convinced he knew who had “done it,” and tried to pin rape on an innocent? This is not cloud of doubt God would want surrounding the birth of His son.

So God is not fair, but He does have a plan. It would not have been in that plan to have His son’s birth surrounded with sorrow rather than joy. Zechariah, on the other hand. So when we see something that doesn’t seem fair, think to yourself, what is the context? What is God’s plan? It just might be the case that God cares about more than just matching up output to input.

The Last, the Littlest, the Least

One of my favorite parts about law school is the quality of speakers that come here every day.  Mere intelligence or understanding of the law is not sufficient to be an effective lawyer; you have to be able to communicate that understanding to others in a convincing manner.  Most of the lawyers who get invited to speak at Harvard Law School are rather good at that.  A few weeks ago, I heard one of the most inspiring talks I’ve ever heard by Bryan Stevenson (To give you an idea, it’s the only time I’ve seen Harvard Law School students give a standing ovation.  For a similar talk, go here). One of the points he mentioned was that as a society, we have to not only focus on the “bright and dazzly things” but also the dark and difficult things it’s just easier not to worry about.

This brings me it to the second principle I identified in my post two weeks ago: fighting injustice.  Central to the Catholic understanding of justice is the relation of privilege and powerlessness.  Cardinal Mahoney of Los Angeles once quoted a common saying attributed most often to Ghandi: "Any society, any nation, is judged on the basis of how it treats its weakest members; the last, the least, the littlest.” The social justice tradition of the Catholic Church has long admitted the necessity of a “preferential option for the poor” (as many of the Catholic and Jesuit scholars at Georgetown Law reminded Paul Ryan in a letter that can only be described as snarky on occasion of his visit to their campus). 

The nature of our Common Law system encourages social realities to become legal ones.  For instance, it’s normally very hard to get an injunction—a Court order to prohibit or force someone to do something under pain of fine or imprisonment.  Courts much prefer to award money damages.  However, there is an exception to this when the Courts look at anything to do with land. Land (technically any real property) has held a special place in jurisprudence.  Whether you want to attribute it to some subjective factor that makes land irreplaceable, the historic tie-up of wealth in land, or the first lawyers in England being landowners, the law has disregarded economists’ insistence that land is able to be objectively valued, and will generally not award money damages in land related cases, but rather make people move on and off or even demolish their homes before considering any other remedy to disagreements. 

It’s factors like this that make what lawyers do in courtrooms and in legislative chambers so important.  Our legal system, without people like Bryan Stephenson who fight for the littlest among us, create institutions that favor people already privileged by the societies we live in.  We live in a world in which 50-60% of persons of color in urban communities are in jail, in prison, on probation, or parole.  In the states of the old South, a defendant is 22 times more likely to receive a guilty verdict if the defendant is black as opposed to white.  And habits such as these find their way into law.  Alabama’s Constitution still technically mandates segregated schools, and prohibits “idiots” and LGBT persons from voting.

As Catholics, we cannot close our eyes to the injustice that surrounds us daily.  Certainly, as a lawyer I hope to fight injustice is another that we can be a society of laws, but the relation between law and society is not one way.  Every Catholic has a duty to open his or her eyes to make sure every act keeps at its center what was the central part of Jesus’ ministry—the last, the littlest, and the least.