Canter Bridge

Gabriel, ‘man of God’, has a busy year in the infancy narratives that represent more than any other material the writer Luke’s determination to set in order the jumbled accounts of Jesus’ life. He is twice sent to announce the unusual conception of Jewish boys. The responsive nature of his embassy as much as his suggestive name indicates that a higher power stands behind the events that begin to unfold promisingly in these lines. Gabriel, clearly, is doing as he is told.

Zachariah is more than a bit player but less than a giant in this story of consecutive conceptions. Playing his rotating role in the priestly service of God, well along in years, Zachariah can hardly be expected to trust an angelic visitor’s odd promise without some recourse to the real-world logic that had got him to his advanced years in one piece and of right mind. So it seems, anyway, to a reader with some modicum of sympathy for old men and their bird-like appetite for surprise.

Yet Gabriel and his Sender appear to differ with the old man on this detail, for Zachariah’s modest plea for concrete confirmation of the promise that he and his aged wife Elizabeth would in fact bear a son is met with Gabriel’s stentorian self-identification and then the severe affliction of dumbness. Both are phrased as correct responses to the kind of reasonable doubt with which Zachariah greets his unanticipated protagonism in Larger Things.

Somewhat differently does Gabriel approach the girl Mariam. Presenting his credentials at the outset, he recognizes the outsized favor this young one has accrued and meets her own variant on Zachariah’s question with patience. ‘How shall this be, since I have not known a man?’ Gabriel’s answer is reproach-less and runs in the direction of both process and reassurance. Mariam responds with a magnificent ode to the Lord’s habitual preference for small people and old promises.

What are we to make of the distinct experiences of Zachariah and Mariam? Perhaps a story so redolent with veiled divine intentions does not bear up well under analysis that targets its smaller fragments. Yet there may be some meaningful distinction between a human being who asks for confirmation, on the one hand, and one who wonders aloud how the promised things shall be accomplished, on the other.

The first carries in its bosom a modicum of doubt regarding the reality of the angelic word. The second embraces the thrilling prospect, though with puzzlement about its process.

Zachariah, in the end, takes Gabriel seriously enough by confirming his wife’s indication that this child shall, anomalously and obediently, be named John, a name with no family pedigree. For this, his ability to speak is restored.

Notably, speech returned to his lips, he does not complain. Instead, he sings God’s praises. Perhaps, in his silence, he has come to agree with Gabriel’s logic.