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4th Sunday of Advent B
December 18, 2005
Delivered by Dora J. Odarenko, Seminarian
Psalm 132
2 Samuel 7.4, 8-16
Romans 16.25-27
Luke 1.26-38
Please pray with me: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of each of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, Dearest God, at once Our Creator, the One who became Incarnate for us, and the Peace Maker in our midst.
From today's Gospel: "Mary said to the angel, 'How can this be, since I am a maid?'"
Who is this Mary whose story we have begun to hear this morning? She is so familiar to us through Christmas cards, Nativity Pageants, and crèches and through works of art. But I have seen so many different versions of her that it is hard to fix upon one and consider how she might fit into my own life of faith.
I had a friend years ago who confessed to me that even as a professional, a wife and mother, she was trying to shed the image of the beautiful and perfect blue-eyed blond who was always chosen in school to play the part of the blessed Virgin. As a child, she had loved being in the pageants, but now she didn't want to be overly idealized.
Her longing to move beyond a stereotype was particularly striking to me since I had just seen "The Gospel According to Matthew," a powerful black and white film with Bach's St. Matthew's Passion for its sound track. The director, Pasolini, chose characters who were ordinary Italian farmers rather than professional actors. He described them as "peasants to whom something strange and difficult had happened." His Mary was wonderful to me because she was different from any I had encountered. She was the absolute opposite of my friend: stocky, with dark hair, and absolutely nothing chiseled about her cheek bones. No one you would notice in a crowd. I understood my friend's rebellion, and I accepted Pasolini's more historically correct Mary, but I wasn't sure how I would cast Mary or what I would ask her to be and do.
Bitter struggles in the early Church show that people were asking the same questions then. When people wanted to stress that Jesus Christ was truly human, they said that he had been born of a human woman. But to prove his divinity, they coined the exalted term "Theotokos" for Mary: The word means "birth-giver of God," she who literally carried God in her womb. Love and loyalty for Mary were so passionate that in the 5th century the common people rioted in Constantinople and Alexandria when theologians suggested that Jesus might simply have been an inspired man. The theologians were arguing about the nature of Christ, but the people wanted nothing to affect Mary. She was set apart, their Mary from above.
I can understand. Look what she had done: Hers was the first "yes," the really critical "yes" of the Incarnation. With that "yes," "the first moment of Christ's earthly existence"[1] begins and, with it, a new light begins to shine in our hearts.
Renaissance artists celebrated this moment. In the narthex, I've pinned up reproductions that show Mary as set apart, holy, accepting-the handmaiden of God. I've grown up with these pictures and I love them. I am also fascinated by the story that Luke-and only Luke--gives us. His story raises all sorts of different questions.
We know from marriage customs that Mary had to be about fourteen. Fourteen! I think of who I was at that age. She was also probably a poor girl from a back-water town. Later, when she and Joseph present the baby for purification in the temple, they offer the poor person's sacrifice of turtledoves or pigeons, not an expensive sheep. So although European paintings show Mary as elegantly dressed, with a book in her hand, it might be helpful to think of her in other ways.
From my art history, I remember that the book Mary usually holds represents Scripture, which she is fulfilling; the book also signifies her piety and the Logos who will become incarnate within her. The book may suggest as well that she was praying when the angel arrived since angels do sometimes appear when we pray. But in images from the Eastern Church, she often holds a drop spindle and is busy making yarn or thread. Why shouldn't she be working? A poor woman would have to spin all the time. And angels also come to us when we're doing the work we're supposed to do.[2]
Did Mary even know that her sudden visitor was an angel? The name Gabriel means "power" and he might have arrived with a terrifying burst of wings. But the story tells us that it is his words that strike her. We remember, "Hail Mary, full of grace" or "Hail, favored one"-- beautiful words because so familiar, but formal. Words for a queen. Luther, in a Christmas sermon, suggests instead the simple translation "dear," spoken gently and straight from the heart.[3] It is a greeting of love and reassurance to a child: "Dear Mary, I have come because the Lord is with you. Do not be afraid. You will bear a son ...and his kingdom will have no end."
Both parts of his announcement are extraordinary. Would it be surprising if Mary felt both shock and fear? There is a famous painting by Simone Martini that captures this moment. (You can see it in Florence or in the narthex.) Martini shows Mary recoiling from Gabriel, the wind still in his garments. With her mouth drawn down and her blue cloak clutched protectively about her, Mary's reluctance is clear
What follows in Luke is a conversation, a conversation that is possible because Mary has the presence and the common sense to question her visitor: "How can this be, since I am a virgin?" This word is elsewhere translated simply as "young woman." Both meanings are useful here for the point is that Mary "knows how babies are made" and has not been engaged in making one.[4] The further point is her amazement that she, an ordinary young woman, is to give birth to "the Son of the Most High," the son of God Himself. How can such a birth occur at all? How can God be contained in her?
With Gabriel's answer, the conversation becomes a duet, a song both profound and simple that the angel begins and Mary concludes. He says: This will be the work and the mystery of God, and you will be changed, overshadowed by that mystery that makes all things possible.
We don't know how long it takes Mary to respond. We are not told whether she thinks of Joseph. She certainly understands that she could be stoned to death if her pregnancy is not accepted by her fiancé. But Gabriel waits. There is no pressure. When Mary turns her faith, her future, and herself over to God, it is clear that she has put common sense and prudence behind her and has accepted three things: that which is physically impossible, that which is socially dangerous, and that which is unfathomable. The real miracle is the third. It is not only that she will conceive but whom she will conceive and by whom. Her experience was extraordinary and unique.
Her response gives comfort and courage to me-and I hope to you. I often have questions about my faith, my life, my church. Mary's story tells me that there is nothing wrong in having them. Faced with mystery, Mary too had to struggle. Asked to accept the greatest wonder of all, the willingness of our great God to enter a human body, to enter into flesh, and live with us here, Mary questioned and was not "disqualified"[5] for that. And think what she had to absorb: God did not send his son as a prophet, striding into our world with strength and eloquence. He came as a baby, a poor baby, a baby born in a shed. He came as Mary's baby, the baby of a young, first-time mother. He came requesting a relationship with her. Because of her "yes," there is a new relationship with each of us.
Mary's story draws us deeply into the meaning of Advent, a time of "mystery, illumination, and incarnation."[6] All our questions or doubts may not be answered during this time, but we have not disqualified if our rationality fails. The angel tells us not to be afraid.
Advent allows us/ invites us/ pushes us to move beyond common sense and trained brains. In a special way on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and every time we come to the altar, we are given the gift of God's choice to be with us, to be one of us, and to live in our flesh in the way God wants us to live. As we approach the celebration of Christ's birth, we can look for the ever-new ways in which he comes among us. We can greet them as we do a tiny new-born, with joy and awe. AMEN.
1 Judith Dupre, Churches (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 7.
2 Roland H. Bainton, ed., Martin Luther's Christmas Book (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1948), 13. Luther's composite sermon, "Annunciation" (11-16 in Bainton's edition), suggested a number of ideas for this sermon.
3 Martin Luther's Christmas Book, 13-14.
4 Mary Lou Redding, While We Wait: Living the Questions of Advent (Nashville: Upper Room Books, 2002), 74. Redding's Chapter Four (73-91) has helped me think about the Annunciation in a number of new ways.
5 Mary Lou Redding, 74.
6 Redding, 74.
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