Luke 1.26-38 30 November 2008
“BLESSED INTRUSIONS FROM ABOVE”
Did you ever hear about the man who had a perfectly awful day at work? It was interruption after intrusion. He could never get to the tasks sitting upon his desk. When he got home that evening, he sensed that his wife had also had a bad day.
So to turn things around or at least set the process straight, he told her, “I’ve had one horrible day today. It’s been bad news, lousy news, awful news. I don’t really know about your day yet. But if at all possible, can you share some good news with me?” The wife paused and caught her breath to consider his request before answering. “Of course, I can,” she said, being thoughtful and loving. “You know we have six beautiful children, right? Well, five of them didn’t break a leg today.”
Now if Luke were telling the story, he would have said, “The man was much per-plexed by her words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be.” For that is how Mary reacted after the angel Gabriel came to declare God’s good news.
Today we kick off Advent with the story of the Annunciation. Here Gabriel tells Mary that she is in a family way even though she is not yet married to Joseph. With this shocking news Luke transforms gynecology into theology and obstetrics into revelation. This isn’t a curse, but a blessing whose benefits will know no end. Mary wondered how such news could figure as good news in her life or anyone’s. She was perplexed in her heart and wondered what sort of greeting it might be.
For from the first words out of Gabriel’s mouth, we sense a future beyond any human planning or direction intruding at Christmas. Maybe it figures as good news in the grand heavenly scheme of things. But in the moment we might use less polite phrases than occurred to Mary for losing our grip on life. Things get-ting so utterly away from us. A future not our choosing imposing itself upon us.
God shapes our destiny as a baby in the womb of an invisible girl from a nobody family. So as we begin Advent, we consider life’s intrusions, its interruptions, its sudden fluctuations, and surprising disturbances. Intellectually, we know such unsettling moments are the openings where new and creative things can happen. But that doesn’t stop our heart from sinking in the moment. For transformation so big and sweeping as this is never easy. It brings pain and sacrifice with each new joyous foothold for good. For nothing great is ever possible without real sacrifice.
These are the days when we arrange our crèche scenes on side tables. The characters evoke the different parts of the story that our children will renarrate with their pageant here on December 14th. Herod and the Magi. Joseph and the innkeeper. The shepherds and the heavenly choir. Elisabeth and Zechariah. This layered and still unfinished story is set into motion as the angel addresses Mary.
Do you ever feel as though Christmas has a life of its own and drags us along with it, willing or not? It’s a month-long glacier sliding down from the north, grind-ing across the landscape before receding to leave things as they were before. Indeed Christmas in all of its manifestations has a life and momentum all its own. I am talking about the smiling lit reindeer waving on lawns, manipulative jewelry commercials and, Burl Ives chortling on the radio, “Have a Holly Jolly Christmas”. Ah, we say, it all begins again. Here we go. Hmm. But is it a good thing? Maybe our pulse warms with gladness as it starts. Or maybe we sigh with some unease. If we feel at all ambivalent, that can serve to give us a tiny taste of how Mary felt.
As the world perceived Mary, she deserved no special mention or attention. She was unremarkable and without especial merit. She has asked for no favors. She evinces no remarkable abilities or promise. Nowhere are we led to believe that Mary was anyone other than a simple Jewish girl going about what adolescent girls do—doing her chores, staying out of trouble, managing her worries, fretting about her eventual place in the world, dreaming, struggling, hoping and moping.
But as Gabriel brings tidings from heaven’s family planning department, he leads off saying, “Hail, O favored one, the Lord is with you!” Say what you want about Mary, world. Sophisticated and worldly-wise? No. But she did she know enough to be suspicious of this smooth-talking messenger with his flowery salutations.
After all, the biblical record is clear. Divine promises always cut simultaneously in all directions. Who knew what she was getting into? The unexpected and un-known have powerful propensity to upset our lives. Whether it was Mary’s era or ours, what mother-to-be has ever greeted pregnancy without some mixture of joy and fear at the thought of where it might all lead? Of course, that anxiety doesn’t end with delivery. Instead our fear of the unknown only morphs into new worries.
Actually, our maternal-paternal anxiety over the awesome gift of new life is life-long for parents. Or, as you tell me as my daughters get sick or travel afar, “You never stop being a parent, Dale.” Old Simeon told Mary eight days after Jesus’ birth, “a sword will pierce through your own soul.” I will spare us the show of hands by parents whose hearts have been pieced time and again by our child-ren. “Painless childbirth” or painless parenting is an illusion for Mary or any of us.
Mary responds to Gabriel’s high talk with a simple, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” I cannot think of any more remarkable words in the Bible. Unflappable composure? Unshakeable trust? Deep devotion to God’s inscrutable purposes? Think of it, she is of an age when most of us worry about acne and Sadie Hawkins. If all of us hate it as the future intrudes upon our lives in ways we cannot control, the people who hate this the most are adolescents. They hate it most because so much of their lives are out of their control, changes in their bodies, changing from being a child into an adult.
Of course, Gabriel doesn’t give Mary much choice in the matter. He just declares this is how things will unfold. Not much dialogue there. This is an Annunciation not a support group. “Great things are going to happen!” Gabriel tells Mary. “Yeah, great.” Mary doubtless wonders. ”But great for whom?” Nevertheless, her response is “let it be unto me according to your word.” This is not feminine docil-ity or passivity, as the church wrongly believed, miscasting women for centuries.
For in the next scene Mary sings to
Mary’s response to this news is full-throated joy. She is enthusiastically obedient.
Luke regards Mary as the as “the first and the ideal disciple.” (Raymond Brown) In her unfettered yes to what Gabriel announces as the action plan for the future, she shows all of us how to be a part of God’s work. Her exuberant and eager yes to do her part in God’s budding work to liberate the world languishing in bondage is even more amazing as it resonates within today’s mouthy and narcissistic age.
So what’s God up to in commandeering this innocent, unsuspecting young girl? Yes, we know she could have said no, because she could say yes. But it was no small amount or pressure and she didn’t have a lot of room to maneuver. Wasn’t this move over the top and unorthodox to the max? It certainly was. Here’s why.
Do you ever have moments—maybe in the strong stomping on the weak or the undercutting of truly good people as the evil preen their power—when you say to yourself, “Why doesn’t God do something? When will God take decisive action?”
As our family drove from
Guess what friends, as Gabriel addresses Mary, our prayers are answered. Not answered in the way we would have had God answer them. But answered out of God’s genius for bringing good out of evil, light out of darkness, hope out of despair, salvation in the moment when we were concluding that all is forever lost.
In this encounter as Mary says yes, we have the moment when God moves from playing defense to playing offense. No more agreements of ‘God will do this and that for us if we’ll be obedient at least in the most minimally basic ways’, like with Noah and Abraham and King David. After all, we kept blowing those deals and God had to keep starting over with new generations. With Gabriel’s proposal and Mary’s acquiescence, it’s almost like the troops have been landed successfully on
In this quiet imperceptible way, God enters our world with all its resources and anguish, all its gifts and groaning. God comes to us as one of us to claim what is after all finally God’s for its rescue. Jesus Christ is the supreme act of divine intrusion into a world that thought it had divided its spoils of looting for its itself. In Christ, God refuses to stay in his place. In Christ, what seemed ended and over has all begun anew, suffused with hope, soaked in grace, the hint our salvation. Amen.
