St Luke’s,
Havelock North – Advent 4, 2008 – ‘Just Say Yes!’
“In
the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called
‘Ave Maria Gratia Plena’ – that’s how one of
our stained glass windows – up here in the sanctuary – translates Gabriel’s
greeting to Mary in our gospel reading this morning; Hail Mary, full of grace –
and all the closet Catholics in the room respond, ‘The Lord is with thee’.
And that’s part of the problem with Mary for those who want to stand
firmly on the Protestant side of the church divide – she really is just a bit
too Catholic. All those hail Mary’s and songs to the Blessed Virgin that people
like me love to sing and pray step just a bit too close to papal territory for
some and so they shy away from any real scrutiny of Mary herself, preferring
instead to focus perhaps on the quite radical socio-political statements of the
Magnificat or maybe just skipping the whole
pre-Christmas episode and jumping straight into the manger.
But not me – Ave Maria Gratia Plena. For me there’s something about the story
of Mary and her encounter with the angel Gabriel that demands a pause for
reflection and acknowledgement.
We call it the Annunciation – literally, the announcement – and it’s not
the first encounter with an angel in Luke chapter one. Zechariah, the future
father of John the Baptist, has already met with Gabriel and been told that his
wife will also bear a child. We read that when Zechariah saw Gabriel “he was
terrified; and fear overwhelmed him.” So frightening was this encounter that
Zechariah was left unable to speak afterwards and remained that way right up
until the birth of his son.
Mary, on the other hand, is “much perplexed” when the angel comes to
her. Can there be any phrase in the Bible that is more of an understatement
than this? Imagine your own reaction if an angel suddenly sprang up in front of
you and said ‘Greetings’. Would ‘much perplexed’ really cover it?
Of course the point of this story is God’s action not Mary’s reaction,
but still I find what Mary says and does both interesting and important – more
than that actually, crucial.
Frederick Buechner, in his
book Peculiar Treaures, described what he
believed the encounter between Mary and Gabriel might have been like from
Gabriel’s perspective:
“She struck the angel Gabriel as hardly old enough to
have a child at all, let alone this child, but he’d been entrusted with a
message to give her and he gave it. He told her what the child was to be named,
and who he was to be, and something about the mystery that was to come upon
her. ‘You mustn’t be afraid, Mary,’ he said. And as he said it, he only hoped
she wouldn’t notice that beneath the great, golden wings, he himself was
trembling with fear to think that the whole future of creation hung now on the
answer of a girl.”
‘The whole future of
creation’.
Think about that for a moment, not just the whole of the Christmas story, not
even just the Gospel story, but the whole future of creation hangs on this one
moment in time.
We’ve been there before of course, in scripture. Throughout time God has
called and the balance of the future has hung on how some simple, ordinary
person has responded. Some of them, we’ve seen, say why? Remember Noah, going
about his business, when God says, ‘build an ark’. Why? Some say no. Jonah, running as far as possible in the other direction.
Some say how? How can I do what you’re asking God when I’m so young, or old, or
sick or just uncertain? Some, like Sarah, just laugh at the absurdity of the
very suggestion. Mary simply says yes. “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let
it be with me according to your word.” Yes.
Surely she must have been an outstanding woman really? To be honoured in
this way, to say yes so readily? But that’s not the picture Luke paints for us.
If we were going to pick the mother of Christ would Mary be the chosen one?
Certainly
But Mary doesn’t get anywhere near as glowing a
reference. Luke just says she was a virgin, a young girl, engaged to a man
named Joseph. An ordinary girl leading an ordinary life in an ordinary town
with an ordinary fiancée, who proves that being ordinary
is no stumbling block for God. “Greetings favoured one! The Lord is with you …
you will bear a son and call him Jesus and he will be holy.”
I have to wonder about how easily Mary seems to accept all this. How
much of the way the story is told relies on reading back into the event with a
memory of how strong Mary was at the cross and how beloved she was by those who
had walked with her son? Or was it just that she felt she had no choice?
Certainly the angel doesn’t show up and ask her how she feels about all this,
would she mind getting pregnant and so on. In Mary’s case doesn’t appear to ask
so much as to tell her ‘this is what you will do’. But what if she had refused?
While stories like that of Jonah might suggest otherwise I’m quite
convinced that the call of God is always an invitation rather than an
inescapable command. Mary had a choice, just as we all do. Mary could have
ranted and raved and told Gabriel to take a hike and carried on with her
ordinary life in an ordinary place with an ordinary fiancée who would have
become her ordinary husband, she could have said no, just as we, when God comes
calling, can always say no. The problem is I’m equally convinced that what God
calls us to is the thing we were born to be, so to
refuse God’s call is to deny our true identity and say no to the life we were
born to live.
What would have happened, I wonder, if Mary had said no? Would another
Mary have been found? Would it have been as simple as
recasting her part in the Christmas Pageant? I don’t know, but I doubt
it? Like the Gabriel in Beuchner’s story, I suspect
the results of Mary saying no would have been dire indeed. The future of
creation was in her hands and she said yes. Yes to the angel who brought the
message to her, yes to the God who called, yes to the life she was born to
live, Mary said yes, and as a result her son was born.
That’s why I want to hail Mary. That’s why I
want to acknowledge her as God’s favoured one, full of grace. Because in Mary
we find an example of what it means to hear God’s call, because in Mary we see
ourselves if we can get past our fear and confusion, because in Mary we
discover what can be if we just say yes.
Ultimately what we also need to see in this reading is a reminder that
despite where it seems to be heading this is still Advent, not Christmas, and
in our Advent readings we are reminded that we too need to prepare for the
coming of the Christ. Throughout these four weeks we too have been called to
wait and repent and to make our paths straight for the coming of the Lord, and
today we too are called to join a long line of those who have seen and heard
and said yes.
Hail Mary, full
of grace, the Lord is with thee. May the same be said of us.
Amen.