The Fourth Sunday of Advent
Scripture
Gospel
– Luke 1: 26-55[1]
26In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent
by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, 27to a virgin engaged
to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. 28And he came to her and said,
“Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” 29But she was much
perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. 30The
angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with
God. 31And now, you will
conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. 32He will be great, and will be
called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne
of his ancestor David. 33He
will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no
end.” 34Mary said to the
angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?”
35The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you,
and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be
born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. 36And now, your relative
39In those days Mary set out and went with
haste to a Judean town in the hill country, 40where she entered the
house of Zechariah and greeted
46And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord, 47and
my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, 48for he has looked with favor
on the lowliness of his servant. Surely,
from now on all generations will call me blessed; 49for the Mighty
One has done great things for me, and holy is his name. 50His mercy is for those who fear
him from generation to generation. 51He
has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of
their hearts. 52He has
brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; 53he
has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. 54He has helped his servant
“The Child To Be Born in Us Is Holy."
In a Bible study one time about these particular passages
of scripture, somebody asked if we could be sure that Mary really was the first
woman to have been asked by an angel to bear this child? With a decent respect toward those who
thought that just to ask this question was outrageous, the group began to
explore the alternatives. As the
meditation in our bulletin suggests: Couldn't
such an invitation have been sent by God to any number of other young Jewish
women, but they'd turned it down? What,
do you suppose, their excuses might have been?
How do we find the courage to say "Yes!" when an
angelic moment asks us to choose life in the face of death, to choose blessing
instead of blasphemy?[2] I'm reminded of the words of Nelson Mandela
when, in his 1994 Inaugural Speech, he said this:
Our
deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our
deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most
frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I
to be brilliant, gorgeous,
talented and fabulous?
Actually,
who are you not to be?[3]
"Blessed are they who expect nothing, for they shall
never be disappointed." Few modern
proverbs express as well the dilemma of our age, I think, as that one does –
caught as we are between defensive cynicism and painful despair. All of the swirling themes of Advent come
into sharp focus today as they turn that proverb inside out. All of the prophets' poetry and proclamations
about salvation coming to God's people through a servant king come together in
this young mother and her child. It
suddenly dawns on us again that we've been waiting for both something and
someone.
We've been taught to think that the opposite of faith is
disbelief. But it isn't. The opposite of faith is despair – we're
convinced that nothing like this could ever happen. The truth is far deeper: if we cannot imagine it, it never will happen. Despair is the conviction that our current
pain, confusion, and sense of loss is all the reality that there ever will
be. Despair is a desolate hopelessness
like the kind of star that astronomers call a "black hole" – its
gravity is so dense that even light itself can't escape but is swallowed up in
darkness. In such despair whole
communities of people collapse in on themselves.
The death of faith, the all pervasive feeling of despair,
permeates our world today and threatens to unhinge our time. We cope with it by any number of psychic
numbings and robotic routines, often accompanied by delusional and often
obsessive desires and schemes, complete with phobias and compulsions, with
self-destructive behaviors, the slow suicide of addictions, or with violent
outbursts of rage against our neighbors.
All of these symptoms, you have to admit, are present in abundance in
our day and time, both in individuals and in societies everywhere.
Would it surprise you to know that these same symptoms of
overwhelming despair were also present in abundance when a young Jewish girl
was saying her prayers and pondering the nature of God so long, long ago? But then a message comes to her (Who knows
what the "messenger"[4]
was really like?) that in and through her all of the promises of God will come
true. Her first response isn't unlike
what ours might be: "No way! I cannot imagine it!" But the messenger says, "Ah, yes, but
with God all things are possible," and Mary gives in to the fact that it
just might be possible. At a desperate time
of searching for something to believe in, during a prayerful moment when
despair is most often a profound temptation, this girl chooses to exchange her
limited imagination for the promises of God.
She chooses to believe that God can do more for her and her time than
she could ever imagine.
There are such holy moments when in the crushing darkness
of despair, nonetheless the choice of faith still exists, that in the
possibilities of surrender, humility, and hope, new life can be given
birth. In fact it's within pregnant
moments such as these that stir the beginnings of our salvation.
But to be very blunt about it: I think that our stories told at this time of
year are asking us whether or not we want God to get all that close to us in
the first place, whether or not we are willing to reconsider our need to be "inner
directed," autonomous beings, people for whom God has been so…well, domesticated
– so humbled, given birth in, and dependent upon the likes of one of us. I thought that all of that stuff about
repentance was behind me, but now I find myself facing the single most
overwhelming question of my life: Will I
let Jesus live in me – body and soul? Now,
before you begin to shake your heads at me, I am aware of how much like a
religious fanatic that question sounds, but I've also come to know that the
word "enthusiasm," at its root, means to have God living, moving and
expressing being within us.[5] So I find myself standing before the images
of Christmas in stunned disbelief, and yet longing to embrace the profound
truth that it teaches.
I want and yet I do not want what Mary represents. It's a risk then, finally, that Advent offers
each of us, a risk that takes us way beyond just remembering quaint stories and
the longing of the people of
"Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me
according to your word." Or, as
Eugene H. Peterson has Mary say it in his translation, The Message:
Yes, I see it all now:
I’m the Lord’s maid,
ready to serve.
Let it be with me
just as you say.[6]
Here the only thing "sacrificed" is the human
will. The only real question left for us,
then, as we look ahead to Christmas is this:
Will we join her?
It is
as simple, and as profound, as that.
* * *
[1] The first half of our scripture lesson for this morning (vv. 26-38) has been called "the annunciation," but it isn't unique to the Jesus narrative. Its form is consistent with such annunciations throughout the Hebrew Scriptures – especially those announcing the births of Ishmael and Isaac (cf. Genesis 16: 7-13; 17: 1-21; 18: 1-15) and Sampson (cf. Judges 13: 3-23). So the pattern is familiar. Jesus' cousin John has just had his own birth announced to Zechariah using a parallel formula (see Luke 1: 5-25); elements of this same formula will recur in the angel's annunciation to the shepherds (see Luke 2: 10-12). We should understand that such annunciation stories in the Bible are meant by their authors to be seen as signs of God's response to people in crisis. In the cases of Sarah, Hannah and Elizabeth their predicament is barrenness; with Mary it's simply her "lowly estate" – i.e., in the eyes of the culture of that time she was a "nobody," so she then could be seen to represent just about everybody! Luke wants us to understand that in God's choice of Mary she represents both the scandal and the hope of how people came to understand how God worked: in and through us.
What this says
to me is that Mary is everywhere that there's a sign of pregnancy, everywhere
that there's a hope for new possibilities, everywhere that we are offered the
promise of a new beginning. It says to
me that anybody who would dare to live this kind of integrity toward God can
and will become like Mary: God-bearers
to all of creation. In that sense Mary
is a sign of the church, the Body of Christ, the place where God
"dwells." That's why she's a
sign for every human being – male or female – pointing to that place where God
lives, moves and takes on being.
[2] I'm thinking of Deuteronomy 30: 11-20 here (especially v. 19), as well as Joshua 24: 14-15. So the way that I understand "blasphemy" is to choose the ways of death, evil, violence and destruction, when we could have chosen the ways of life, goodness, peace and creation.
[3] This is
as the text appears in Imagining the Word,
vol. 3 (Cleveland: United Church Press, 1996), p. 72.
[4] In Greek
the word "angel" – angelos – literally means
"messenger."
[5] I'm
thinking of Acts 17: 28 here, and that in Greek, enthousiasmos means
"to be inspired, even possessed, by God." So, we should no longer ask in disbelief,
"Who, me?" but "Why not me?"
[6] Eugene
H. Peterson, The Message: the New Testament
in Contemporary English (NavPress Publishing Group, Colorado Springs,
Colorado, 1993), p. 116.