Sermon for the Feast of the Annunciation
March 25, 2006
Today we have—not “Christmas in July”, as Walmart and K-mart and whatnot might have it—but Christmas in March, Christmas in Lent, or more accurately, Advent in Lent. I looked it up in the lectionary and found that we also hear today’s Gospel reading on the fourth Sunday in Advent of every third year—“B” years, for those of you who keep up with all that. Of course if we count on our fingers we discover that December 25 is exactly nine months from today, and obviously the folks who put the lectionary series together counted it out as well, and I suppose that is why we are led to read about Mary and the angel today, when we are at an altogether different place in our remembering the story of our redemption--or so it would seem.
I invite you, then, to stay with the Lenten feelings of purple and soup suppers and the cold and lengthening days of early spring, with palm branches and crosses dead ahead, and beyond, the sure knowledge of lilies and rocky gardens with empty tombs. Stay with all of that, but eavesdrop with me now again on a conversation between a young womanand an angel with a message for her, and for us.
We will need to use our imaginations with this story, because our evangelist Luke leaves it up to us to fill in many of the gaps. He tells us that the angel Gabriel was sent by God to Nazareth, and town in Galilee, to a virgin named Mary, who was espoused to Joseph, a descendant of David.
Where did Gabriel and Mary meet? In a house? Outdoors? Was it morning? Afternoon? The middle of the night? Was it raining? Sunny? Partly cloudy? How do angels get about, anyway? Did Gabriel walk? Fly? Materialize in front of her? We don’t know. We are only told that he came to her.
What Scripture tells us next is that the angel said to her: “Greetings, favored one. The Lord is with you.”
And then—we hear something about Mary that is worth lingering over. She was “perplexed” and she tried to figure out what it all meant, she “pondered”---she took the words into her and mulled them over. For how long? A moment?
We don’t know.
At any rate, at some point in her perplexity and pondering, Mary apparently got scared, because the next thing the angel says is “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.”
Do we think that helped? Did she get over it in time to hear what came next? “For you have found favor with God.” OK so far. But what about this: “You will conceive and bear a son.”
What would it have meant for a woman in Mary’s position to have born a child in that place and at that time? Scripture says that Mary was espoused to Joseph. Espousal in that culture was a legally binding agreement that committed the parties to marriage, but was not marriage. In other words, any child that Mary conceived would have been considered born out of wedlock. Add that shame to the fact that Mary was already on the lower rungs of this patriarchal culture—young, poor, female, and we might wonder how welcome this “favor” of God was to this young girl.
No wonder Mary began to question the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” Mary must have been a little out of it with perplexity, wonderment and fear at this point, because surely she knew of other children in Israel’s past conceived by the power of God in a very direct way. Didn’t she remember Samson, whose barren mother prayed for a child? Or the angel who informed her that her prayer was answered, she was to conceive a child? Didn’t she remember Samuel, whose mother Hannah, also barren, prayed for a child, and God granted her prayer? Did Mary remember Sarah, Abraham’s wife?
You will recall the story. God had promised Abraham that he would be the father of a great nation, but after years of waiting, Sarah his wife had no children, and no hope of children—she was too old. You will remember that she laughed when she was told she would bear a child, and then Lord said to Abraham and to her, “Is there anything too wonderful for the Lord?”
Is there anything too wonderful for the Lord? Gabriel replied to Mary’s perplexity, fear, and questioning in much the same way that the Lord had spoken to Sarah. Gabriel said to Mary: “For nothing will be impossible with God.”
Did those words ring a bell for Mary? Did she say to herself—Oh, I have heard of something like this before? Did seeing the similarity of the situations diminish her perplexity at all?
Perhaps.
The next thing we hear is Mary saying, ‘Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”
What else happened inside Mary between the time that Gabriel declared that “nothing will be impossible with God” and when she said “Here am I;… Let it be…?”
We do not hear. Was her fear gone? Were her ponderings and perplexity ended? Were her questions answered?
Well.
The last thing we hear is that the angel departed from her. We do not hear Gabriel offering congratulations—or condolences, for that matter--to Mary. No “atta girls”, no advice, no instructions, no farewells, no “good lucks”. “Then the angel departed from her.” Poof. End of story.
This is, at least, the end of the story in the way our cut-and-paste lectionary would have us hear it. But the truth of the matter is that this is not the end of the story; it is not even the beginning of the story. We have come into the story somewhere in the middle.
There have been and will be other goings-on in this little corner of the world that are worth pondering as we are waiting for what comes next, whether it is the “next” of Lent or the “next” of Advent or our even own “next”, whatever that might be. So I’ll ask you to put your finger into this page, so to speak, of Mary and Gabriel, and flip back in Luke to chapter one, to hear what was going on from the beginning.
We see here that Gabriel has been on the move lo these six months past. We hear that the angel brought news of another unexpected and consecrated child. You remember the story. The priest Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth were old and childless. The angel appears to Zechariah as he is serving God at the altar and announces that Elizabeth will bear a son. Zechariah can’t believe it, and is struck dumb for his disbelief. The people understand that he has seen a vision. And, wonderful to tell, Elizabeth becomes pregnant.
Now comes we are back at the place in the story where we started, with Mary and Gabriel. But wait! There’s more!
Much more, because something’s coming, something brand new, as we know, as we shall see. It started privately, quietly, unobserved; it will become public, openly proclaimed, impossible to ignore.
Mary travels to see Elizabeth. Mary, it would seem, is no longer quite so perplexed, perhaps having pondered what was happening, and what will happen to her and her world, and has come up with a few insights. God her Savior has done great things, and holy is his name. He has brought down the proud, and filled the hungry with good things. He has helped his servant Israel, and is about to fulfill his promises to Israel, to send a savior.
Events move along in their course. John is born. Jesus is born. The Lord’s shining glory. Angels. Shepherds. Peace and good will to earth. And poor Mary, who maybe thought she had all her perplexities and her fears laid to rest with all her ponderings and pronouncements, has more to process: what the shepherds said: “This day, in the city of David, a Savior, Christ the Lord.”
Mary, Scripture says, treasured all these words, and pondered them in her heart. She treasured these words, treasured these words. She pondered them---in her heart. A Savior. Christ, the Lord.
More messages, more things to ponder, in Jerusalem at the Temple. The old prophet Simeon sees Jesus and calls him “God’s salvation”, and Mary was “amazed”.
But he has another message for Mary: “This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of may will be revealed—and a sword will pierce your own soul, too.”
A sword will pierce your soul. We are not told that Mary treasured these words in her heart. Who would want to remember them, let alone treasure them? We are not told at all how she thought or felt about those words.
They took their child and went home.
And lastly, Jesus at twelve in the temple with the teachers, saying the well-known words, “I must be about my father’s business.”
And, we are told—Mary--treasured these words in her heart.
I asked you,when we started, to bring Lent along into the hearing of this old, old story, in a way we are perhaps not accustomed to doing, in the way an old Christmas song, not heard very often, does:
“I wonder as I wonder out under the sky,
That Jesus the Savior did come for to die.”
Not the end of the story, of course, for this child, or for us.
But in the midst of this season, in the midst of all the seasons when a sword does pierce our hearts, we understand that it’s beginning all over again, as it always begins over and over and over again. Something’s coming. Something’s coming to stay, to remain, to continue with us and in us---simply, forever.
Listen for it. Sorrow with it, rejoice with it,as we wait for it to approach, ever anew. Among us and in us, in these darkest days, something is stirring, something fluttering, something quickening, someoneis coming to bring in the world to come. Understand that in the midst of life we are in death; and in the midst of death we are in life.
In perplexity and fear, remember. Listen. Look and watch and wait. Hope. Pay attention. Listen. Someone’s coming. Ponder. Wonder. Above all, treasure God’s word in your heart.
Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.
Amen.