December 21, 2008
Grace Church
Rev. Robert E. Hensley

2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16; Canticle 15; Romans 16:25-27; Luke 1:26-38

      Let us pray.  “Mary, we’ve landed on your feast!  Help us, we beseech thee, find common voice with you and with one another.  Mary, theotokos, God-bearer, help us travel with our humor and our pain as we seek to be God-bearers in our own day!  Mary, Sweet Mother, have we traveled this far only to be put in places where we are “acceptable,” places where we “fit” as long as we “are seen but not heard”?  Ah Mary, surely you know that reality all too well, the one about learning “in silence with full submission” (1 Timothy 2:11)!

“Blessed Mary, if we can hear your voice anew, perhaps we can learn to challenge those in our own day who fear and distrust women.  Mary, Mother of Mercy, help us shed our placid timidity!  Mary, Co-Redeemer, you give birth to a new humanity and a new community born of suffering and of undefeated hope.  Help us embrace new life.  Mary, Mother of Compassion, have we forgotten you said “Yes!”  to the liberation of oppressed peoples?

“Mary, Mother Bird with a mature womb and hope-filled wings, push us out of the warm nest; help us fly onward and outward!  Mary, Sister and Mother, teach us to proclaim hope amid the reality of aching pain.  Holy Mary, are not we ourselves the God-bearers of this age:  women [and men] stepping forward together and saying “Yes!” Let it be with us according to your word (Luke 1:38).”Amen.  (Fredericka Harris Thompsett, Ph.D., “Women’s Uncommon Prayers). 
 

      The Christmas season is a wonderful time of year.  There are many good things that happen:  family gatherings, all of the baking and rich foods. The music that lifts our hearts.  It truly is a wonderful time, a time of promise.

      But there is more than this to Christmas.  There is a serious side:  the side that makes it all meaningful, the side that was promised thousands of years ago to Adam and Eve, to King David and the prophets. 
 

      God’s promise for this season came long before Jesus was born…a promise that evil would be defeated; a promise of a lasting peace; a promise of lasting hope, of lasting joy and of lasting love.  It was a promise that a king would be born... an everlasting king, who would rule his people with justice and truth, a kinglike David, but greater than David.  A king whose reign would never end, a king who would look after the poor and give justice to the widow and orphan. 
 

      And all of this goodness, all of this hope, came to rest one day, upon a young girl, barely a woman, who was engaged to a simple carpenter in the Land of Israel. 
 

      Imagine her with me…imagine yourself in her place.  Mary visited by an angel.  Perhaps in a dream in a hot summer night...perhaps while carrying water from the village well.  And she is told by this angel that she is loved by God, that she is favored by God.  And when she reacts with fear…and who among us would not fear such a divine messenger…she is told to not be afraid, but to listen.  Listen and understand that God was going to do something special to her, and through her.  That God was going to cause her to become pregnant and to give birth to a son – a son who would become the long awaited and foretold promised king, the Messiah. 
 

      Mary's response was very predictable, much like I suspect ours might have been:  “How can this be?” she said, “Since I am a virgin?”  
 

      How indeed?  How is it that God can work through us?  We are nothing…we are inadequate.  God is spirit, but we are flesh.  We are not important people, God would not use us…God could not use us, except perhaps in very small things, like loving our neighbors, or helping the poor and the lonely during a difficult time.  And these of course really are our actions.  God does not actually direct them or cause them…or perhaps, just perhaps…. 
 

      How can this be?  How can I give birth to the Messiah?  I am still a virgin!   
 

      But the angel persisted saying that the power of God would come over her – that she would conceive a son and that she should call him Jesus – which means "The Lord Saves." 
 

      And Mary replied, “I am the Lord’s servant…may it be to me as you have said.”   Could you have said that?  Would you have said that? 
 

      Mary agreed to do what God asked of her.  Mary obeyed the Lord and a wonderful thing happened…she became pregnant! 
 

      But consider this once more:  Once Mary obeyed the Lord, once she accepted God’s word, while there were imaginable difficulties.  After all, she was a single woman…who was pregnant.  She had a fiancé who was troubled and did not know what to do for the longest time.  While there were difficulties, once she accepted God's message, once she really believed it, incredible joy and peace filled her spirit.  And in the words of today’s canticle, Mary's soul magnified the Lord.  She realized in way that she never could have before that God was in fact real.  That God’s promises to Israel, to Abraham and Abraham’s children would come true, that the world was saved, because the savior was coming. 
 

      Mary's soul magnified the Lord – it exalted the Lord – and God filled her and gave her the joy and the peace and the hope and the love that all of our toys, our gifts, our carols, and our gatherings can only begin to hint at. 
 

      Our souls too, we when we accept God's word and when we obey God’s commandments, will realize great joy.  God will expand in us, and use us, and give us the joy, the peace, the hope and the love we need for ourselves and that which we need to be a light to the world around us. 
 

      The hope of Israel and the hope of the world rested on Mary, and she obeyed and Jesus was born. 
 

      The hope of our world with all of its problems and crises and turmoil rests today upon us.  Will we be like her?  Will we give birth to God in our actions and thoughts; will we obey the Lord, and walk in God’s ways? 
 

      John's call to the people of Israel was Prepare Ye the Way of The Lord. 
 

      Mary’s self-offering in response to God’s call has been compared to that of Abraham, the father of believers.  Just as Abraham was called to be the father of the chosen people, and accepted his call, so, too, was Mary called to be the mother of the faithful, the new Israel.  She is God’s human agent in the mystery of the Incarnation.  Her response to the angel, “Let it be to me according to your word,” is identical with the faith expressed in the prayer that Jesus taught, “Your will be done on earth as in heaven.”  
 

      Gerard Manly Hopkins, comparing Mary to the air we breathe, writes: 
 

      Wild air, world-mothering air…

      Of her flesh he took flesh:

      He does take fresh and fresh,

      Though much the mystery how,

      Not flesh but spirit now,

      And makes, O marvelous!

      New Nazareths in us,

      Where she shall yet conceive

      Him, morning, noon, and eve,

      New Bethlems, and he born

      There, evening, noon, and morn –  
 

      Advent and Christmas are a time of goodness.  A time of goodness that can last and spread throughout the world if we do indeed prepare ourselves, if we hope and obey like Mary.  Gabriel said it best:  “With God nothing is impossible.” 
 

      When we accept God's message to us through the angels, through the prophets, and through Jesus himself, not only our souls will magnify the Lord, but the souls of every man, woman and child that come into contact with us, because they will see the promise of God coming true in our lives.  
 

      Thanks be to God for the gift of the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 
 
 

Sources:

Lesser Feasts and Fasts, The Annunciation of Our Lord, 2003.

Fredericka Harris Thompsett, Ph.D., “Women’s Uncommon Prayers.”