According to Luke S Gospel When the Angel Gabriel Appears to Mary, His First Words Are

Mary’s Example. Advent 4-B, Luke 1:26-38, 12/24/17

According to Luke’s gospel when the angel Gabriel appears to Mary, his first words are, “Greetings favored one. The Lord is with you.” And from its beginning the church has tried to understand exactly what that greeting means and, more specifically, what it says about Mary. Some, notably those in the Roman Catholic tradition, have believed there is something special about Mary which causes God to choose her for the unique task of bearing Jesus. She is the Waterford Crystal vase which holds the perfect rose, the human Stradivarius on which God can sound the song of salvation. According to this view Mary is uniquely fit to be the Mother of God because of who she is. Eugene Peterson suggests this understanding of Mary in his translation of the greeting: “…you are beautiful with God’s beauty. Beautiful inside and out.”

Protestants have tended to say that Mary is called favored, and therefore worthy of our notice, not because she is so special, but precisely because she is so ordinary. There is nothing to indicate that Mary was particularly unusual in virtue, wisdom, or even sexual history. As far as we can tell she was simply a young peasant woman living in a backwater town, waiting to complete her betrothal to Joseph. She is called favored, not because she deserves special honor, but because God has picked her to birth and nurture the hope of the world. According to this view, Mary is a living example of the gospel as a whole: she receives a gift out of pure grace, not because she is worthy of it, but because God is just that generous to all. She is called favored because God blesses her.

I suspect I do not have as exalted a view of Mary as my brother the Roman Catholic priest, but there is still much we can and should admire about her. Indeed, we might admire her because she is not so special—and she is still faithful. Go back and look at this morning’s lesson and notice how Mary responds to Gabriel’s earthshaking word. In the course of just a few verses Mary is described as favored, perplexed, thoughtful, and scared. In short, she is lot like us as we try to figure out what God is trying to do in our lives and how we should respond to the calls we feel.

We know we have been blessed by God’s love. We want to respond with thanksgiving. Yet there is a piece of us that is often not sure exactly what a faithful response looks like. On days that are usually jammed to the max with multiple demands we may be genuinely confused about what God needs from us. And even when the way is crystal clear it is often scary. Loving the neighbor, turning the other cheek, standing for the vulnerable—these take time, money, and energy. They may cost us friends and popularity. So, yes, we understand how Mary’s reaction to Gabriel is a bit hesitant.

And yet, despite it all, she says, “let it be.” Despite her confusion, fear, and insecurity she still says, “let it be—all this you have laid out, this wildly improbable scenario of God using me to bless the world—let it be.” She dares to believe God can do more than she can imagine. Mary is worthy of our admiration, not so much because of who she is, but because of what she does; not because she is so different from us, but because she is just like us—and finds a way to be obedient.

This time of year we talk a lot about the miracle of the Incarnation, the audacious claim that God became flesh in the person of Jesus. But the incarnation also happens in smaller ways. When we confess that we believe in incarnation we are saying that we believe God can use the physical stuff of this world—including us—to do amazing things. The incarnation of our Lord begins when Mary says, “Yes, in spite of my limitations, in spite of the fact that I feel so overwhelmed, I am willing to believe that God can do a great thing through me.”

This is why Mary is so relevant to us. Every single day we look out at a broken world where the challenges seem overwhelming. As poster I once saw put it, “Lord, the sea is so big and my boat is so small.” The temptation is the throw up our hands in despair, to think that nothing can be done. But we are invited to overcome our incredulous disbelief that God can use something as ordinary as we know ourselves to be. We are invited to say, “Let it be—use me however you can, Lord.” As we do that we hear the promise spoken to Mary by Gabriel, “Nothing is impossible with God.”

The great rabbi and biblical scholar Abraham Heschel suggested that we should never pray a prayer if we are unwilling to be part of God’s answer. At its most basic that is what this morning’s account of the Annunciation is all about. Mary, like the faithful before and after her, longed for the day when God’s will would be perfectly done. When God offered her a chance to be part of that prayer’s answer she struggled, but she finally said, “Let it be—use me.” May we have the courage to do the same.