Advent 9: Nothing is Impossible

**Apologies, this was supposed to have been posted yesterday!**

When the angel visited Mary and told her the news of the baby Jesus on the way, Mary asked, "How could this be since I am a virgin?"  And the angel replied that the Holy Spirit would come upon her and overshadow her.  The angel said even her cousin Elizabeth, who was said to be barren, is now pregnant and in her sixth month, "for nothing with God shall be impossible." (KJV)
For nothing will be impossible with God.  (NRSV)
Nothing, you see, is impossible with God.  (The Message)

However you translate it, that beautiful phrase from Luke 1:37 gets a lot of air time.  It's one of those verses in the Bible that can hold you up through hard times.  It can give you the courage to take a leap of faith, or have hope when there feels like none.  There are countless pieces of apparel that you can wear with this verse emblazoned upon it.  Many people even have tattoos of it on their body!  It means a lot to a lot of people.

Recently, however, I followed a little footnote in my Bible next to that verse.  The footnote told me that some manuscripts of Luke actually don't say "for nothing with God shall be impossible."   Some manuscripts of Luke instead say something like, "for the Word of God will never fail."  Even the NIV translates the verse this way.

Wow.  "For nothing with God is impossible" and "For the Word of God will never fail" are NOT the same idea at all!  One seems to suggest that I can do anything at all in life as long as I have Jesus in my corner, and the other seems to say that God keeps God's promises.  I like the version better that seems to build me up, not the Word!  Ha!

Is that selfish reason why some manuscripts claim that nothing is impossible with God, and other manuscripts don't?  Or is there another story behind the discrepancy?  I imagine some drowsy monk sitting at his desk years and years ago, copying Luke late at night.  I wonder if in the dark flicker of candle light, he couldn't quite see what he was copying, and he wrote the "wrong" thing, and his sleepy slip-up perpetuated itself through subsequent copies?

...Or I wonder if that same monk came across the verse and his pen stopped cold.  I wonder if his eyes widened as he asked himself, "For nothing with God is impossible? How can that be true?  How can nothing be impossible with God?  Because I have seen monks of great faith not be able to pray themselves out of death... and I've seen others try again and again to spread the Kingdom and fail each and every time.  We can't give people false hope like that, telling them that nothing with God is impossible!  It will make them do brash and foolish things..."

But as for me, I still choose to believe that nothing with God is impossible... even after reading the footnote.  Maybe I'm just attached to what I've heard all these years.  Sure, it isn't always factually true, that nothing is impossible.  For example, it is impossible for me to keep my house clean!  (Just kidding... kind of.)  Life can give us examples of things that truly are impossible.  But on some level, even if the verse isn't scientifically true, I still believe it is Truth.  God's Word is Truth and Light -- a gift sent to hold us up through hard times, give us courage to take a leap of faith, give us hope when there feels like none, and motivate us to do brash and foolish things for Christ as neighbor.  The Word, while perhaps not factually true, is Truth, and so it never returns void...

And now that I think of it, I have just argued for both manuscripts' translations; I believe in that nothing is impossible with God because it resonates as the true Word of God for me, and the Word of God never fails.