NOTES for Luk 1:1-25
Luke’s Gospel begins differently from the other Gospels. A Gospel narrative usually begins with a description of events connected in one way or another with Jesus Himself; Luke begins his account with the miraculous conception of John the Baptist. John the Baptist will, of course, play his own extraordinarily important and entirely unique role in the Gospel events. Yet none of the evangelists gives him as much attention as Luke does. The Gospels usually describe John already as a preacher who appears as if from nowhere, as though he had been born in the very wilderness where his preaching was heard.
Luke evidently wants to place this mysterious figure within the real history of which John’s ministry formed a part. Yet he by no means denies the miraculous character of what happened: John’s conception and birth were undoubtedly connected with God’s direct intervention in events taking place in Jerusalem, in the family of a priest named Zechariah (vv. 5–20). Before us is a situation described more than once in the Old Testament: a child is born to a childless married couple at a time when, by natural means, it is quite clearly no longer possible for a child to be born.
It is unsurprising that the birth of such a child was perceived as a miracle, as a direct act of God, who in this case makes real an event that, if not strictly impossible, is at least almost incredible. And, of course, like every miracle of God, the miracle of John’s birth remains in many respects a mystery to us, like the mystery of Isaac’s birth, for example. But this mystery has nothing in common with the air of mystery with which popular rumour surrounded John’s figure when he began to preach.
Perhaps Luke begins his Gospel with the account of John’s miraculous birth precisely because, by the time he wrote it, too many legends had already arisen about John and perhaps even about Jesus Himself (vv. 1–4). Later these legends, born of a lively eastern imagination, became the basis of apocryphal literature, in which the image of Christ often assumed completely fantastic features and miracles took on grotesque forms. Luke, however, lets us feel the breath of a genuine miracle, for which there is always room in the world—a miracle that is close and yet never ceases to be a mystery, just like the Kingdom itself.