Power And Word

“And the angel answered her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.’” – Luke 1:35

Luke, who wrote both the gospel of Luke and the book of Acts, begins both with an account of the power of the Holy Spirit: in Acts, with Pentecost, and in Luke, with conceptions. The Holy Spirit comes upon Elizabeth and Mary, two people who, as Eugene Peterson puts it, “stand at the extremes of impossibility regarding conception: Elizabeth a barren post-menopausal old woman and Mary a young virgin.” The Holy Spirit is mentioned seven times in the first two chapters of Luke (1:15, 35, 41, 67; 2:25-27), and each of those times are related to pregnancy and birth: an unconventional way to describe power. Pregnancy is slow, initially invisible. Birth is messy, wondrous. All of it is markedly intimate and utterly ordinary. This is a power that is the opposite of impersonal, flamboyant, or forceful. A power that works within the ordinary, everyday framework of our lives.

Laced with mentions of the Holy Spirit are five prayers within these first two chapters of Luke: the “Fiat Mihi” (1:38), the “Magnificat” (1:46-55), the “Benedictus” (1:68-79), the “Gloria in excelsis” (2:14), the “Nunc dimittis” (2:29-32). The first is Mary’s response to Gabriel: “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” The last is Simeon’s response to holding the forty day-old infant Jesus: “Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace, according to your word.” The Holy Spirit is mentioned within the context of both prayers. Mary and Simeon both call themselves servants of the Lord. They both say kata sou rhema: “according to your word.” We see that the power of the Holy Spirit acts through the prayers of a young girl who begins in submission to God’s word, and an old man ending in submission to God’s word. 

The power of the Holy Spirit is a power that is received, that is deeply personal, that works sometimes slowly and invisibly—with the kind of growth that one can only see in the rearview mirror—and sometimes immediately and powerfully, like the moment an infant comes into the world. It is a power we experience in submission to God’s word, which the Holy Spirit himself reveals to us. May we think on what it means to receive and experience Him, as much as we think on receiving the Christ-child this Christmas week.