Summary

Christ the Zygote Word on the Week 28th December 2024.
This was one word you did not hear this week amidst the plethora of descriptions our Lord and Saviour had applied to Him in a week of singing his praises and praising his Name. It was our annual Christmas extravaganza! It tries to compensate for the near silence of the rest of the year!
Perhaps we have been conditioned into thinking that the boy Jesus arrived ‘ready-made’. ‘He came down to earth from heaven’ we sing duly acknowledging His pre-existence. At the same time giving the impression of the arrival of a fully formed child.
Have we been blinkered with regard to the nine months of the gesticulation period? Two of the Gospel writers certainly were not.
Matthew wrote up his account leaning heavily on the prophecy of Isaiah (Chapter 7 verse 14) ‘The Lord himself will give you a sign. The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Emmanuel’. The writer records the Angels text for us; ‘you are to give him the name Jesus because he will save his people from their sins’.
He also made it plain that what is conceived in Mary was from the Holy Spirit. This news was communicated to Joseph in a dream. He then took Mary home as his wife but they did not come together till she had given birth.
Luke gives a fuller account of the pregnancy. Being by profession a doctor he records Mary’s visit to her relative Elizabeth when the latter was 6 months pregnant. There was an immediate recognition of the unborn children when Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting.
The cousins remained together until Elizabeth time had come. During her stay she composed a hymn to the Praise of God whom she calls her Saviour (Luke 1 verses 46 to 48). Like many of the Psalms it begins with thanks to God then goes on to give the reason for the thanksgiving.
All this time in Mary’s womb the infant Jesus had moved from being a zygote – a single cell – Mary’s egg fertilized by the Holy Spirit to become an embryo then a foetus then a child.
By coming into the world in the same way as his created beings he hallows the processes in the womb forever (Psalm 139 verses 13 to 16).