NOTES for Luk 1:1-25
The Gospel according to Luke does not begin as the other Gospels do. Usually the Gospel narrative opens with events connected in one way or another with Jesus Himself; Luke, however, prefaces his account with the story of the miraculous conception of John the Baptist. Of course, John the Baptist will play his own, extremely important and entirely unique, role in the Gospel events. And yet none of the evangelists gives him as much attention as Luke. Usually the Gospels describe John already as a preacher, appearing as if from nowhere, as if he had been born in the very wilderness where his preaching sounded. Luke, as we can see, wants to set this mysterious figure within the real history of which John's activity was a part. But he by no means denies the miracle in what is happening: John's conception and birth were undoubtedly connected with God's direct intervention in the events taking place in Jerusalem, in the family of the priest named Zechariah (vv. 5-20).
Here before us is a situation described more than once in the Old Testament: a child is born to a childless married couple when, in the natural way, it is completely clear that he can no longer come into the world. It is no surprise that the birth of such a child was perceived as a miracle, as the direct action of God, who in this case makes real an event that is, if not directly impossible, then at least nearly incredible. And of course, like every miracle of God, the miracle of John's birth remains for us in many ways a mystery - the same as, for example, the mystery of Isaac's birth. But this mystery has nothing in common with the aura of obscurity with which popular rumor surrounded the figure of John when he went out 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 appeared both about John and, perhaps, even about Jesus Himself (vv. 1-4). Later these legends, born of a stormy Eastern imagination, became the basis of apocryphal literature, where the image of Christ often acquired completely fantastic features and miracles took on chimerical forms. Luke lets us feel the breath of a true miracle, for which there is always room in the world - a miracle that is near and at the same time does not cease to be mystery. Like the Kingdom itself.