Special Delivery

The United States Postal Service (USPS) will have delivered approximately 16 billion cards, letters, and packages between Thanksgiving Day and New Year’s Day this year! That is 16 billion with a “b” or maybe even a capital “B!”. According to their website the USPS indicates these numbers represent an increase of about 12 per cent over last year. This does not even include all the packages shipped by FedEx, UPS, DHL, and others! 

 

Perhaps like me you have noticed more delivery trucks driving around town. The other day I observed at about 7 AM a UPS truck pulling up to a house. Before the driver had even stopped another UPS worker jumped out of the truck with a package. Within 15 seconds the driver had his foot back on the accelerator as the second worker hopped back in and off they went—efficiency at work!

On top of the beauty of these workers doing their jobs effectively, something more stands out about all these deliveries. They are bringing presents, gifts, messages of hope, and other good news! At last count Kim and I have received 37 Christmas cards. (I honestly believe more will come in even after December 25^th because clergy families wait until their cards actually arrive in the season of Christmas instead of Advent—yes, we know we are a little rigid about liturgical seasons!)

The cards we have received have pictures of happy couples, children, grandchildren, and even pets smiling back up at us! Often I forget that our mail and packages do not just magically appear at our doorstep, but reading these USPS statistics, seeing the UPS workers hustle, and looking at all these marvelous Christmas cards has helped me to see that postal workers are angels or at least God’s messengers of good news. (Now, theologically speaking this is not what I believe, as angels are actually a different order of being than humans, but just play along as it’s ALMOST Christmas.) When I had this thought I quickly began thinking of how Gabriel might visit Mary if the story of Christ’s coming were to happen today.

Would Gabriel just text Mary out of the blue? Certainly not! Would Gabriel drop off a package of instructions, like a postal worker? Despite what I have already said, probably not! Gabriel met Mary face-to-face and as much as I love Christmas cards and birth announcements, the way that God had to intervene into human history was way too intimate for even the best designed stationary in the world.

We hear the story so often that it might lose its shocking nature, but what Gabriel came to tell Mary ought to shake us to our cores! “Greetings favored one! The Lord is with you” probably did little to comfort a startled Mary, especially considering that Gabriel followed this welcome up with a shocking announcement. As Frederick Buechner put it in his book Telling the Truth, “The gospel is bad news before it is good news” (New York: Harper One, 1977, 7). Initially what Gabriel spoke terrified Mary: “You are going to get pregnant out of wedlock and all those plans you had about marrying Joseph and living happily ever after… Well, they may not come to fruition, as you planned. Instead you are going to give birth to God’s Son!” Even as Gabriel said that the child would be great, the Son of the Most High and would reign forever, Mary stuck with his initial announcement that she would bear a son! “How can this be since I know not a man?” Out of wedlock pregnancy meant not just disruption of plans, but also potentially shame, disgrace, and even sometimes death! This was bad news at first! The mailman was not delivering a Christmas card, but a death notice!

I wonder how long Mary sat there perplexed before Gabriel dared to say something more. Maybe it was instantaneous, but if in her shoes I believe I would have been stupefied for quite a while. Slowly though, Gabriel explained that God’s Spirit would bring this child to Mary and to assuage her doubts the angel even told of Mary’s cousin Elizabeth’s miraculous pregnancy. Yet, even this thing could have been received as bad or at least scary news: a high risk pregnancy! And yet, the final words of this divine mail man resonate so profoundly that they transform all this shockingly upsetting news into something more hopeful for Mary: “For nothing will be impossible with God.” After these words Mary’s posture shifts.

The mother of God uttered boldly a statement that made the bad news into Gospel: “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Wow. Call it righteousness. Call it faithfulness. Call it unconditional love. Mary showed us all the epitome of trusting God. She consented to God’s will and became the servant of God, not completely abandoning her questions, but something else. Instead she let her wonderings gestate until she could see her cousin Elizabeth, until she could bear this son, and until the shepherds could come announce their vision of angelic hosts! Mary allowed God to dwell within and even though she had questions she said yes to God!

Sometimes in our lives a messenger will deliver bad news, or what at first appears to be bad news. What Mary exemplifies for us is how to respond in these difficult moments. May we consent to God, may we become servants of the Lord, and may we allow God’s word to be born in us as it was in Mary. May we say now and always, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”