Here, below, is the message for December 21, 2014, the Fourth Sunday of Advent, that I was unable to deliver due to being home with the flu:
Luke 1: 26 In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, 27 to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary. 28 And he came to her and said, “Hail, O favored one, the Lord is with you!” 29 But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and considered in her mind what sort of greeting this might be. 30 And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. 31 And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.
32 He 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 father David,
33 and he will reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there will be no end.”
34 And Mary said to the angel, “How shall this be, since I have no husband?”35 And the 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[d] will be called holy, the Son of God.
36 And behold, your kinswoman Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren. 37 For with God nothing will be impossible.” 38 And Mary said, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” And the angel departed from her.
- How many Mary’s are there?
- What unites them into one Mary?
- What did Mary need courage for?
- What might we need Mary’s prayer for, and when?
Will the real Mary of Nazareth please stand up? Only last week, in Mary’s song that we call “The Magnificat,” we heard from a feisty, fighting Mary, who celebrated and anticipated the day when God would “scatter the proud in their vain imaginations…bring down the mighty from their thrones….feed the hungry with good things…and send the rich away empty.”
Like, by next Tuesday.
But in today’s Gospel passage it almost seems like we are hearing from a second Mary, one more like the Mary of medieval frescoes and of statues in cathedrals, the Mary of countless birdbaths and dashboards, the patron saint of passivity, the demure, inward-looking, totally receptive and accepting mother of mercy, always put upon and who puts up with everything, so that the Minnesota humorist, Garrison Keillor named an imaginary church after her, “Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility.”
In answer to the first question in my outline, How many Mary’s are there in the Advent/Christmas story of Luke 1? it almost seems like there are two, the Mary who was so scary that her song was banned from public reading, singing and prayer in places like Argentina and Guatemala by ruling military juntas, as I mentioned last week, and then the non-threatening, comforting figure about whom the Beatles sang in their song from the late 1960’s, “Let it Be.” Sorrow, loneliness, division and injustice in the world? Just “Let it be,” this comforting maternal figure says, for at least there is that inner, individual, ‘light that shines on me.’”
Somebody among the Fab Four obviously knew enough of the Bible to know that those three words, “Let it be,” are the words of Mary’s response to the angel Gabriel begins, after he tells her that God has chosen her to be the mother of the Messiah. And she will do so before she is married, by miraculous agency of the Holy Spirit.
This is not because God is against the sexual union that brings us into the world, nor are human love and pregnancy the channel that transmits sin into the world, as some Christian traditions assert. I like Frederick Buechner’s explanation of the virgin birth best: “…the birth of righteousness and love in this stern world is always a virgin birth. It is never men nor the nations of men nor the power and wisdom of men that bring it forth but always God, and that is why the angel says, “The child to be born will be called ‘the Son of God.’” The Messiah born of Mary’s virgin womb would not then be beholden to the world’s systems of power, inheritance and family name and honor that were male-dominated and male-oriented at the time.
Some relatives of mine a few years back went on a tour of Eastern Europe. It turned out to be mostly a tour of battlefields and war monuments, where through the centuries men had fought and died by the scores of thousands at a time. After a while, all those monuments and war stories got to be rather depressing and heavy. From all those events and monuments you get the impression that men make all the major movements of history, especially men with weapons. But today’s Gospel passage tells about a young, unarmed girl of about fifteen, I suspect, who actually stood at the real fulcrum of human history and who really changed history the most, simply by saying “Yes” or “Let it be” to God. She did so not by fighting, but by surrendering.
Luke does not tell us how much time lapsed between the angel’s announcement and Mary’s willing response. Maybe just a second, maybe a whole minute of silence, but probably enough time for Mary to realize that saying Yes to God would require much courage from her, at least as much courage as what all the men who were memorialized on those European battlefields showed.
We don’t usually associate courage with surrender. That wasn’t the message about courage on all those East European monuments. But courage is what unites the two Mary’s into one and the same person, my second question. The defiant, feisty, fighting Mary of the Magnificat, who anticipates and celebrates the overturn of the world’s business-as-usual, showed courage with that song. But so did the receptive, submissive Mary, who calls herself, “God’s handmaid,” for it takes courage to say Yes to God when there’s no knowing what all that Yes will mean tomorrow, next month or next year.
Toward God, Mary is trusting, willing, submissive and receptive; that takes courage, for then the fighting moves inward, against our own fear, doubt and illusions of self-sufficiency. Toward the world Mary is questioning, active and assertive, and that takes courage, too. But how often we get those two stances mixed up: being defiant and willful against God, and receptive, submissive and willing toward the world.
Mary’s words, “Let it be to me according to your word,” constitute the prayer that ushered in the renewal of the world. But its not like Mary walked up to home plate holding a bat for the first time in her life and hit a home run. Growing up, she had rehearsed for that prayer of surrender in her daily prayers, such as the daily confession of trust and submission for all Jews in what is called “The Shema,” because it begins with “Shema, O Yisrael,” or “Hear O Israel, the Lord your God is One, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, your mind, your soul and your strength.” There were also weekly prayers of submission such as the one said at the lighting of the Sabbath candles every Friday, at sunset: “Blessed are you, Lord God, King of the Universe, who has sanctified us by his commandments….”
Still, it must have been very hard to utter this prayer, “Behold the Lord’s handmaid; let it be to me according to your word.” The only prayer that would ever have been harder was one uttered by her Son, our Lord, in the Garden of Gethsemane just minutes before his arrest, on the eve of his crucifixion, when he prayed, “Father, take this cup from me; but if not, then your will be done.” Likewise, a courageous and trusting prayer of surrender and submission.
Here are some answers to the third question in the outline: What did Mary need courage for? The word of God to us is always a word of blessing as well as of command, a word of promise, as well as a word full of demand. Either one carries great and unforeseeable risks and rewards.
As for the risks: Before the angel was done speaking, it could well have crossed Mary’s mind that even a miraculous virgin pregnancy will not stay secret for long, not in a community that will not take a pregnancy out of wedlock with any grace toward either mother or child. They may even take it into their heads to stone her to death. If she explains that this is a divinely-ordained virgin birth, that could be received as craziness or worse, blasphemy. Is she lying and taking the name of God in vain in order to cover her tracks and those of the father?
Later on, when Herod sent soldiers to kill the baby boys of Bethlehem and the family had to flee to Egypt, or even later, when her son was not turning out to be the kind of Messiah that she and most other Jews expected, I can understand if she ever wondered, “Why did I ever say Yes to that angel?” or “Had I said No, would not Gabriel have another mother more qualified than me for this calling?” Then there would come the agony of watching her beloved son of divine promise die on a cross.
But sometimes I think that its not only the costs nor the risks of obeying God that scare us. Sometimes I wonder if the rewards, the honor, the glory and the joy don’t scare us too. The angel’s greeting to Mary begins not with a command nor a demand, but a word of praise and blessing: “Hail, O favored one; the Lord is with you!” That sounds suspiciously like a greeting for royalty at the time; it borders on “Hail, Caesar!”
What’s the chance that we too are seen and treated in heaven like victors and royalty? Don’t write that off too fast; if a socially unremarkable girl of fifteen or so gets that kind of press from an angel before she makes such a courageous decision, what do you imagine the heavenly host are singing and saying about prisoners of conscience, sufferers of chronic diseases, and patient parents of prodigal sons and daughters who keep the faith, or of those prodigal children when they return home, repentant? If we have not yet heard the angel hailing and blessing us personally, for trusting God in a world like this, it is not because we are not the right person, but because it is not yet the right time. Or maybe heaven’s outrageous salutation has come to us, not with the stirring of amgels’ wings, but with the first stirring of our faith.
Mary is “greatly troubled,” by the angel’s heavenly compliment, we read, and maybe in part because it’s an angel greeting her. When we read of angels in the Bible, let’s not think of the cute, childish, chubby cherubs with no clothes on but wings as in our Hallmark Christmas greeting cards. Most of the people in the Bible who meet angels are terrified, some of them fall to their faces expecting to die. I suspect it’s because angels carry with them the fresh, unpolluted air of heaven, the scent of an atmosphere unfamiliar in its uncompromised holiness, love and mercy.
Furthermore, the appearance of angels always heralds the beginning of something new and the end of something familiar, the death of something we had settled into, gotten comfortable with, and had taken for granted, like an old pair of worn-out shoes. Suddenly, while we’re zoning out on the routines of conventional life, an angel appears in our living rooms, dressed like a track coach and blowing his whistle, to say that, in place of our old, worn-out Hushpuppies, here are some track shoes for the marathon that you are going to run. Tomorrow. And win! In the face of such otherworldly earnestness and intensity, it strikes you that the only thing scarier than saying Yes to heaven’s calling and compliment would be saying No. But that means turning off the soap opera, putting down the remote, closing up the Cheetos bag and the Slim Jims, getting up off the couch, cleaning up the Coke cans, and seeing if the old sweat pants still fit, or if you can even find them.
If Mary were here, I would ask her, Which was scarier, the change that the angel’s appearance heralded in your life, or the idea that you and your life were of much greater honor and significance to God and therefore, of much more reward and responsibility, than you would ever dare ascribe to yourself? I suspect that her answer would be, “Yes.”
Our prayers of Yes to God are not much easier, but not usually for fear like what Mary had to face. More often, I struggle in prayer because of a lack of focus or purpose, for coldness of heart and lack of care. For busy-ness, satiation and distraction. In such times we could do much worse than to carry with us in our hearts and minds and mouths the prayer of Mary: “Here am I, the Lord’s servant; let it be to me according to your word.” Then be prepared for anything, surprised at nothing.
Coming to my fourth question, What might we need Mary’s prayer for, and when? It’s a good prayer to pray daily. But never lightly. It’s a dangerous prayer, for the word of God that we are accepting is a word of both great blessing and strenuous command, of unbelievable honor and unachievable demand. Unachievable on our own, that is. Neither the risks nor the rewards, neither the blessings nor the commands of God are for the faint at heart. We must not pray Mary’s prayer if we are satisfied with comfortable, conventional lives filled with little things, frittered away with entertainment and distractions.
But life has a way of forcing us to face God’s compliments and commands, the risks and the rewards that come in the same word, the same challenges and choices. The choice to “let it be” or fight it was made for us when we were born. After that, we had to learn to make the choice for ourselves.
Like growing into adulthood. Will we grow to take up the mantle of responsibilities for ourselves and make commitments to God, self and others, whether in marriage or singleness, to community and career, as well as to the generations that nurtured us, and to those coming after us? Or will we fritter away our emerging adult powers in distractions, indecision and entertainment? Mary didn’t have much of a choice in that matter. In her day, adolescence lasted about two weeks. If you were going to have a midlife crisis, you’d better get it over by eighteen.
Some, today, are talking about a growing trend of longer and longer adolescence, from the teens well into the thirties. Some of that has to do with the changing economy. But still there come times when we have to make choices for adult responsibilities and say, “I am your servant, Lord; do with me according to your word,” even though we don’t know what comes with every decision we make.
The same with us parents, if God so calls and blesses us. Parenthood is a gift from God with every bit as much honor and demand, affirmation and responsibility, as though it were heralded and handed down by angels. To be a parent is to feel like there’s a part of yourself walking around in the world over which you have no real control. When your child hurts, so do you. When he or she is happy, so are you. But we are not our children, nor are they us. Just when we get the hang of our responsibility as parents in one stage of a child’s life, the next thing you know, its time to relinquish some of our power, and let our children experience their own bumps and bruises, as well as kudos and acclaim for their own choices. Mary’s courageous prayer of surrender and submission comes in handy at such times: “Behold, I am the Lord’s servant,” first, and my children’s servants second, third or fourth. May it be unto me according to God’s word, and to them, too.
All our difficult, courageous prayers of submission and surrender throughout the years are practice for another stage of life, one in which the time ahead is shorter than the time behind, one which will lead toward letting go of life itself, even, to that last prayer of surrender, with our last breath, like what Jesus prayed on the cross with his last breath: “Into your hands I surrender my spirit.” That prayer being from Psalm 22, Jesus had likely practiced it quite a few times in his prayers and reading as well.
Then we will have to say “Let it be to me…” to a word of command as well as of blessing, of demand as well as of affirmation. In our final days, God’s Word presses upon us a command to relinquish any remaining grudges and to leave no word of love nor forgiveness unsaid, so that we leave this life owing “no one anything but our love.” But we will also be saying Yes to a promise of glory, transformation and fulfillment, as those who will be greeted like royalty, to share the throne of the Lion of Judah, to “be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” (I Jn. 3:2)
As the next life begins with a courageous Mary-like prayer of surrender, so does our life of faith here and now. All of the Christian life can be summed up in Mary’s courageous choice: first, to be God’s servants, and not those of all the other lords and gods and masters claiming to rule and run the earth; and secondly, to be wanting and willing for God to accomplish his promises and purposes in us, for us and through us. If we have not ever consciously considered that step nor made such a decision for a life of faith in Christ, and don’t know where to begin, we could start with Mary’s prayer. Pray it, but not without courage. Then wait and listen for the stirring of angels’ wings in our hearts.