Let us pray:
Almighty God, you invite us deeper and deeper into the mystery of Advent. Give us, we pray, your love shown through your servant, Mary, who said “yes” and made the whole creation new through your Son Jesus Christ. Amen.
The last Sunday in Advent is given over to the stories of Mary the mother of Jesus. Mary is mentioned, in one form or fashion, in all for Gospels. Yet, Luke is the most sympathetic of the Evangelists to who she is and what she represents to Christians. It is in Luke’s Gospel that we have a detailed account of the Annunciation, which we just heard proclaimed, as well as, of her song – the well known and lovely, Magnificat.
The text I invite us to consider this morning is the first line from the Magnificat, “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord.” I think these words say a lot to us this Christmas as we contemplate the gifts we will share with one another and what gifts can we give to God this season. I think the older translation of the Magnificat offers you and me a clue: “My soul doth magnify the Lord.” The key word is “magnify” because it alludes to the idea of glass.
I like to think that Mary is “the glass of God” because by her life she magnifies the greatness of God; but she is also like glass because she serves as a prism with many facets in which to turn and see her in a different light. As a prism she reflects the rays of the divine. Turn one way and we see Mary in one light. Turn another way and we see Mary in another light.
One facet of Mary is the Mary of Faith. Down through the centuries, much of the Christian Church has referred to Mary as the Theotokos or God-Bearer. As the Mother of Jesus or Son of God, she has a special place in the piety of the Church. She is also considered the source of healing in particular shrines and grottos such as Lourdes and Fatima. Roman Catholic dogma teaches that she is one who was immaculately conceived by her mother, Anne, and that she was assumed into heaven in the same vein as Elijah and Moses. In the Koran, Mary is mentioned more times than in the Bible. She is venerated in the Islamic faith as the mother of a great prophet and therefore is due the respect accorded to all mothers of religious prophets.
Another facet of Mary is the Mary of History. What we know of the historical Mary is included in the Gospels. Paul, the earliest of the Christian writers, does not mention Mary by name but alludes to Christ being born of a woman, when he writes, “(Jesus) who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh” (Rom. 1:3) and “Coming in human likeness and found human in appearance” (Phil. 2:7). It is left to Luke to fill in the gaps about Mary and we see that most clearly in the Gospel reading for this morning.
Imagine if you will a young girl of thirteen who is betrothed to an older man. She is like other girls in the village of Nazareth who are of age to marry being so guided by their mothers. Walking down the street, Mary wouldn’t appear out of the ordinary from other young raven haired, dark-eyed, girls you might see today in Hebron, Jerusalem, or Tel Aviv. Recalling Luke’s story, this young girl, Mary, is alone either in her house or out in a field somewhere. She is not expecting anything out of the ordinary and certainly not an archangel!
But a messenger comes; and he greets her with the words, “Favored one;” and that makes all the difference. God chooses whom God chooses. According Luke, Gabriel delivers God’s message and like any smart young woman who finds an archangel in her midst she is perplexed even frightened. Assuring Mary, the angel tells her that she has found favor in God’s eyes and that she will bear the Son of God.
I would like to think that Mary got caught up in the whole “How is this going to happen” thing. You get the sense that she gets stuck on the conception idea and kind of stops there to figure out how this is all going to work. How many times have we heard God’s call for something big in our lives, in our churches, only to get mired down in the details like, “Do I have time?” or “How’s this going to turn out?” If you catch my drift then it becomes easier to understand Mary’s perplexity. You can imagine her hands drift slowly down to her belly as if to try and feel a bit of the truth being offered to her.
What Luke is recounting is not only the favor and the promise given to Mary but, most importantly, the choice that is hers to make. Something is not going to be done to her; rather, something is going to be done with her. And in that turning of the glass, in that revolving of the prism, seeing it’s Mary’s choice makes all the difference in the world. It is Mary’s decision not God’s. There is a wonderful little story by Christian writer, Frederick Buechner, who imagines the encounter between Mary and Gabriel:
"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. As her 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.”
And so divinity is given by the consent of a girl who comes to understand that nothing is impossible with God. Nothing, my friends, is impossible with God. This is the good news for today. Trusting in God, can you and I respond with receptivity to God’s call to us? Are we open, like Mary, to the promise and possibility that God gives us through Jesus Christ?
The answer of a girl who said, Here am I… let it be…” is the invitation to us to be open to God’s call. “Yes” is the gift we can give to God. It is the gift Mary gave to God and it is the gift we, too, can give when invited by God to do great things. So this Christmas be open and “Let it be…” Amen.
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