Scripture: Luke 1:26-38
Given on the First Sunday of Advent, 2018
The days, weeks, months went by as she waited to be married to her betrothed, he beloved. The time positively crept by as seconds felt like minutes and minutes like hours. There was so much planning that went into these occasions in those days. Hebrew celebrations around marriage were times of great joy and hope for the newly cemented couple. Vows would be made as the man would leave his father, his mother, and hold fast to his new wife, their flesh uniting to form a single, unbreakable bond. There would be a great feast, the first wine of the season would be shared, toasts would be made, everyone would be merry. But when you are the bride, all these things can become a bit overwhelming. These were, after all, still marriages in which emphasis was placed on things other than love. Things like wealth, prestige, power, and in this case, in all likelihood, care-taking. Her betrothed was an older man, established in the community, an artisan with great skill in working with wood and stone. A man with a great ability to bring beauty out of the mundane. He was also of a good lineage within her tradition. Of the house of the greatest royal line in the history of Israel, he could trace his family all the way back to the city of Bethlehem, the city from which emerged King David and the Davidic line of monarchy. So great and powerful was that kingly succession that some even believed that a great ruler of Israel and Judah would emerge from it to take control of the two kingdoms, though such talk had been quieted to a whisper in these times of occupation and empire that had arisen in the previous decades. Like a secret shared between close friends that neither ever had to give voice to again, they just knew. The people of the two kingdoms knew and believed and even, at times, hoped for, but this seemed to be lifetimes away as the Romans, with their lust for blood and control, displayed massive military might putting down revolution after revolution with the singular mission of maintaining the Pax Romana. All these things were a swirl within the heart and head of Mary as she pondered this next stage of her life with the older Joseph waiting to unite his life with hers.
Of course this is not all that was going on in the life of Mary. She was about to welcome another new member into the family. Not long ago, she had received the news from her cousin Elizabeth that she, too, was with child, a child that she and her husband Zachariah, having passed the age that most thought it possible for women to bear children in that day, never believed was even possible. And the story that they told of coming to the knowledge that they were about to be parents as such an advanced age stretched the limits of belief for those who heard it. Zachariah, working as a priest within the temple, having an angel appear to him telling him what is about to happen. The utter credulity with which Zachariah had received this message, the doubt that he had that the angel was speaking to truth had led the messenger of God to strike Zachariah mute. And as Elizabeth’s belly grew, to evidence the child being formed in her womb, she could not contain her excitement, nor could she prepare her house quick enough for the baby’s impending arrival. Mary, as the close cousin of the expectant mother, had already been hard at work making plans to travel to her cousin’s house and attend to her needs ahead of her period of labor. So it is that between her own wedding, her cousin's pregnancy, and the general feeling of chaotic uncertainty in the air of the moment, Mary’s head was swirling with excitement, nervousness, dis-ease, and uncertainty as she stole away from her planning to spend a few minutes in silence in the courtyard that sat just outside of her parents’ house.
And it would seem that she spent time each day in prayer. And you know how it can be, some days there was a lot to be said, others, like today, she just needed the whole world to stop for a few minutes while she listened to the messages carried across the breeze that moved through the trees that grew in her parent’s yard, to hear the rustling of leaves and the songs of birds lifted in praise to their creator. But more than all that, she really just craved silence. So it was that she closed her eyes and slowly breathed in and out, in and out, in and out. She sat like that for some time. In and out, in and out, in and out. Her eyes fluttered closed, not because she was tired, though she was, but because she wanted to be with her deepest, innermost thoughts. In and out, in and out, in and out. And when she began to depart from that place of solace, that place of peace and comfort, she truly had no idea how long she had been there. It was one of those times when all of time seems to come to a complete stop and it could have been 15 minutes or 15 hours, she honestly could not tell the different. Neither did she know nor what had moved her from contemplation back to reality. It wasn’t a start, it was more gentle than that. It was more like a calming ripple in the water in the midst of a spring shower. The ring moving from the epicenter and growing larger and larger until it touched the safety and security of the shoreline. but as she opened her eyes, standing in her midst, was the figure of another person. It’s a funny thing about angels, they really don’t look all that different from you or from I and this one was no exception. And as he stood there, with Mary really just trying to get her bearings having just been deep in prayer, he began to speak, and even his words didn’t make a lot of sense to her. “Rejoice, highly favored one! God is with you! Blessed are you among women!” Mary’s confusion only grew with this queer greeting from this odd person standing in her midst. What did it mean for a woman of her relatively lowly status within the Hebrew world to be proclaimed “highly favored” and “Blessed…among women?” But as she was struggling to wrap her mind around this salutation, the angel continues, “Don’t be afraid Mary (though you have to imagine that ship had already sailed). The angel continued, “You have found favor with God. You’ll conceive and bear a son, and give him the name Jesus-deliverance. His dignity will be great, and he will be called the only begotten of God. God will give Jesus the judgment seat of David, his ancestor, 33 to rule over the house of Jacob forever, and his reign will never end.”
You have to think that Mary’s head, which was so clear just a few moments ago from being in silent prayer, started to go in a thousand different directions at once. She was, we are told, a young teenager. The very thought of sharing a bed with another man was still foreign to her, even the thought of consummating her relationship with Joseph struck her heart with terror. There was no way that she could conceive a child. And more than that, she was a young girl, she couldn't even imagine raising a family, having the sole responsibility for a child. Her cousin Elizabeth may have been advanced for the age of having a baby but she was far too young to even consider this. Then of course, she was filled with the dread of having to explain how it is that she has gotten pregnant. No one but no one is going to believe that the holy spirit has blessed her with a baby. No one but no one is not going to think that she is one of those women, those women who engage in illicit behaviors with random men. All of her life will be defined by this singular reality. She will be relegated to that community of women who are utterly banished from the Hebrew society. And her child, the fruit of her womb that she never asked for nor did anything to bring about, to call him deliverance is laughable. He would be the target of derision and laughter. He will forever be the child conceived by his mother's irresponsible actions. He will forever be the child without a true father in this world. He will forever be the one who occupies one of the lowest rungs of his society. Mother and son, forever linked in the shame of his conception. Deliverance? That seems incredibly unlikely. The royal line? More so. Mary felt awashed in the fears that come when one's whole world feels like it is about to come completely undone. In her fear and her anguish she cries out to the angel in her midst, "How can this be since I have never been with a man??" Hoping against hope that the angel is mistaken, that he has come to the wrong courtyard on the wrong day, that he has delivered the news to the wrong young girl and that she will be taken off the hook. But, alas, it is not to be. "The holy spirit will come upon you, and the power of the most high will overshadow you—hence the offspring to be born will be called the holy one of God." It's not clear that this brings Mary any degree of relief. Because if no one but no one was going to believe her when she said that she hadn't been with another man, they really weren't going to believe that she had been filled with the ruach, the pneuma, the spirit. This kind of explanation simply defied even the most faithful's ability to believe. This is not something that happened within creation. And then something strange happens. The angel before Mary connects her world with the work of God within the larger world by reminding her that her cousin Elizabeth, the one she is about to visit, is already expecting a child that seemed to be impossible and that it was God's gift to that family that had brought it about. And it is this knowledge, this assurance that finally seems to calm Mary’s soul, to give her comfort after receiving news that should and did terrify her at the outset. To at least give her a moment’s pause to try and think through the ramifications of all the angel had said to her. And so it was here, in the midst of that place where she had been praying. Praying, as we all do, to know God's will for our lives, it is in this place that the angel appears and tells her of God's deepest desire, not just for her, but for all of the Hebrew people. Mary will soon be carrying one who is the hope of the world, the deliverance of a nation, the prince of peace, and nothing in her life or any of our lives will ever be the same and so she ends the roller coaster of emotions that she had just been through over the past few minutes with a declaration and commitment to God, “I am the servant of God. Let it be done to me as you say.”
It is interesting as we take these first few steps in the Advent journey together on this morning. This morning in which the Humphries have lit a single candle to represent the light shining in the darkness. The light for which all the people of the world earnestly yearn to think back to how our faith began. Mary, the bearer of the Christ child as little more than a scared girl who is faced with the prospects of losing her entire life before it really has a chance to get started by being the one who births the Christ into the world. A little girl who commands all the strength of 1,000 armies to declare herself the servant of God, willing to do whatever it is that God ultimately asks of her. And some two millennia later we know the whole of the story. We know that Jesus will eventually turn his back on his whole family, her included, in favor of the larger family of humanity. We know that she will be at the foot of the cross as she watches the child that she birthed breathe his last. We know that she is in the group of women who goes to the tomb in the earliest part of the morning and sees it empty and him gone. We know that she is the one who will treasure all these things and ponder them in her heart. That she will take the baby and wrap in in strips of cloth because they didn't even have a proper blanket to use in the stable. Our faith, the faith of our parents, and theirs before them, and theirs before them, all the way back to this singular appearance of the Angel Gabriel before Mary, is built on a young girl who was willing to travel a road upon which few among us would trod and place her whole faith in the God who created her knowing that even in her fear and even in her trembling that she would be God’s servant and know and believe that it God was ultimately in control. In a world that often feels like it is coming apart at its very foundation, it is crucial that we, as believers in God, as followers of Christ, take time each year to mark the birth of our faith, and rededicate ourselves to trust in God with everything we have but to then be, like Mary, willing to be God's servant and do whatever it is that is asked of us for the betterment of God’s holy creation. The spirit blows where she will but we never know from whence it has come or to where it is moving and yet, our path, our call, our faith is to move where it goes believing that all things eventually move back to God. In this time of Advent, let us come together and give thanks that at the foundations of our faith in Christ as the one who delivers Israel and all the world is one so young, so tiny, so undefiled by the brokenness of the world that she bore witness to that which true faith can accomplish if we will but move and abide in the spirit of God and may we walk with Mary each step of this Advent journey until we each reach the manger and the babe, the one that angels declared to terrified shepherds saying, "Glory be to God in the highest and on earth peace amongst all God's peoples.” Alleluia, amen.
Image: By Giovanni Battista Salvi da Sassoferrato, The Virgin at Prayer (1640-50) - Web Gallery of Art: Image Info about artwork, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1432637