Divine --> Human

Nothing is impossible with God, so what will be possible for God through us?

There have been moments in my life that remain beyond my comprehension. Some of them I remember and others have been told to me over the years. All of them mystify me.

When I was four years-old I had a conversation with Jesus in the backseat of my family’s van. I cannot believe that happened. When I was twenty-three years-old and in Quito, Ecuador a charismatic preacher gave me a blessing that knocked me over. I did not think something like that was possible. When I was twenty-four years-old I and in the middle of the Easter Vigil I experienced a visceral call to serve in God’s Church. I still am trying to grasp that instant.

Each of these experiences of the Divine do not make rational sense to me. While they were all very human in nature, it is hard for this human to comprehend that these things actually happened. In much the same way I wonder about Mary’s visit from the angel Gabriel.

Today we celebrate the Feast of the Annunciation. The Church usually observes this festive moment on March Twenty-Fifth—nine months before Christmas Day. However, this year that date fell in the middle of Holy Week and so it has been transferred to the first available day when we have regular worship here at St. John’s. This is the day when we recall the preposterous story of God choosing Mary to bear God’s Son into the world—a little splash of the Nativity right here in the midst of Easter!

While the Annunciation may stand out to some as an unusual story, God does enter into the lives of humans. I do not think I am unique in my experiences of the Divine. Truthfully, I believe God knocks on the door of all of our hearts on a daily basis. Do we pay attention to how God enters into our lives?

Mary was paying attention. When Gabriel came to her saying, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” She was perplexed and pondered what was happening, but she at least saw God’s messenger in her midst. How often do I miss God’s messengers now?

As the conversation continued, we as listeners get an inner glimpse into the heart of Mary. While she was favored, her heart was afraid. God’s messenger tried to calm Mary. Gabriel told her who this child would be—the Son of the Most High God whose kingdom will have no end. Mary’s response reveals her lovely human concern.

Mary did not get glimpses of grandeur as Gabriel spoke. Instead she had a practical concern. She wondered, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” Mary here modeled for us being open to God, but also remaining who we are. She did not think too highly of herself. Instead she aimed to humbly serve God, even if things did not make sense.

Gabriel responded by expressing how God would make unbelievable thing a reality. The messenger told how the Holy Spirit would be with her, how her barren cousin Elizabeth was with child, and how nothing is impossible with God. God provided a means, proof of God’s power, and why that was the case through Gabriel’s words. Even then though, I imagine that Mary had a million questions. Instead of getting stuck on them though, she responded by saying, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”

Mary’s example for us stands out as magnificent. She showed us that when God breaks into our lives we may not fully comprehend it. However, we can say yes to it. Still, Mary’s model gives us something more.

Sometimes I find a certain aspect about the life of Christ Jesus difficult to comprehend. The Church teaches that Christ Jesus was completely divine and completely human. Like other mysteries of our Faith this makes my head hurt. Mary’s life though helps me to form a sort of bridge that begins to give me deeper understanding.

Mary was a mere mortal. She was fully human, we might say. And yet, she had encounters with angels. She bore the completely human, completely divine Christ Jesus within her. She was the God-bearer, or as the Orthodox say, “the Theotokos.” Even though she was a lowly human, the God of the whole universe came to dwell within her. If this is possible—for nothing is impossible with God—then of course a fully human, fully divine Christ Jesus seems possible.

While this still may be hard for us to get our minds around, Mary helps us to know that God yearns to be in our lives. The fully human, fully divine Jesus was born through the fully human Mary. What might God bear through us regular, old humans? Nothing is impossible with God, so what will be possible for God through us?

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.”

Pondering Things

The words of Luke 2:1-20 sound so familiar to me that I have a hard time not glossing over the text as I read it. Regardless of the year in our cycle of Scriptural readings we hear Luke’s Nativity narrative at the primary celebration of Christmas—maybe Christmas Eve, maybe Christmas Day, or maybe both. Not only this, but chances are if you go to a Christmas pageant, then Luke’s words will make it into the production. The repetition of the story can have a profoundly negative effect, as we miss the beauty and absurdity of the story of Jesus’ birth.

When I force myself to slow down enough to take in the details of the Third Gospel’s Christmas message I find myself hearing the words in my head in a British accent. No, I don’t think I’m crazy, this anglophile-hearing of the tale is a force of habit. Every year my family maintains a tradition of listening to the Festival of Lessons and Carolsbroadcast around the world from King’s College, Cambridge. This year—like most years—Luke 2 makes it into the service—twice! The sixth and seventh lessons tell of Mary’s and Joseph’s journey to Bethlehem and the angels’ visitation of the shepherds respectively. Sadly though, the Festival’s seventh lesson stops after the 16^th verse leaving out a phrase that calls us to a bold task in this season when we call to mind the Advent of Christ past, present, and yet to come!

As the shepherds arrived at the manger they told Mary of their angelic visitors. Shepherds finding a baby wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger seems difficult enough in the town of Bethlehem, but that these instructions came from an angel makes it all the more outlandish. Now imagine being Mary who after just giving birth in a barn now finds herself being visited by a pack of smelly shepherds! If some farmers or factory workers burst into a maternity ward demanding to see a patient today security would be called. And yet, as strange as this seems the shepherds’ message and Mary’s response—that bit that is helpful to us—might be even weirder.

The sheep-herders tell Mary that her child will be the Messiah and that this message came from angles nonetheless. We might expect that Mary would kick these messengers out of the stable for being lunatics who claim to have been visited by God, but something else happens. Mary who had also been visited by the angel Gabrielle had the ability to accept these words instead of reject them because she had such faith in God that even the unbelievable to her was believable. Unlike others who were amazed and perhaps too perplexed by the shepherds’ words to receive them, Mary pondered all these things in her heart. She let the words pass her defenses and into her soul!

We, like Mary, are called to allow the crazy message of Jesus’ birth to hit us square in the heart. Even though our instinct might be to just gloss over what we are hearing because these words come around to us this time each year, we are called to model our faithfulness after bold Mary who in turn shaped her life of trust after God’s own! The God of all—the infinite, the omnipresent, the omniscient, Almighty One—became the vulnerable baby lying in a manger. That little child, who could not speak a word, cure others, or even take care of himself came to be the Messiah, the Savior of us all. The wild juxtaposition of the God of all coming to dwell in an infant child who had to rely on others strikes me as a crazy act of faithfulness on God’s part. God trusted in human beings to take care of the baby Jesus. This is wild and it is something that I must ponder, not just with my head, but also in my heart. 

May we spend time this season hearing Luke’s message of Jesus’ birth and like Mary ponder all these things in our hearts!  

The Annunciation of Our Lord Jesus Christ to the Blessed Virgin Mary (or simply TAoOLJCttBVM)

Have you started your Christmas shopping yet? We are only nine short months away from the big day! Before you know it retailers will be exchanging their Cadbury eggs for candy canes, the holiday songs will start filling stores with cheer, and we will wait expectantly for Jolly Ol’ Saint Nick to come down the chimney. We can laugh at this, but my grandmother, Nangy, often would tell me excitedly on our way to the beach in the summer that she had finished all her Christmas shopping. I would snicker, but pretty soon I realized that she was being serious.

The commercial and secular versions of Christmas tend to infuriate me; however, I appreciated that my Nangy would spend months thinking about how she would celebrate the birth of God into this world with her family. My grandmother’s desire to get ready for Christmas year round encourages me to ponder more deeply this moment when Mary begins preparing to bear God Incarnate into this world. What was it like for Mary to encounter Gabriel?

There is a piece of altar artwork that hangs in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy. The golden backdrop that Simone Martini employed presents an immaculate setting for the very first moment of Gabriel’s conversation with Mary. Carefully examining the artwork shows that the angelic messenger’s words are visually depicted on the wooden piece; the original Greek words fly from Gabriel’s mouth towards Mary. Less careful examination is required to see that Mary does not want anything to do with the messenger of God.

In this Gothic era painting, Gabriel kneels at Mary’s feet. Mary bends away from the angel’s words. Gabriel looks longingly at this highly favored lady. Mary pulls a veil to cover her ears from the greeting, and she looks away from the winged creature. Highly praised as Martini’s masterpiece, this artistic vision perfectly captures the skepticism that envelopes the start of Mary’s journey. When Gabriel speaks, “Greetings favored one! The Lord is with you!” I cannot help but hear his message in the tone of a telemarketer calling at the most inopportune moment, “Grrrreeetings favored one! YOU are theeaaa BIIIIIGGG WINNER! The Lord is with you!”

Mary’s journey begins with apprehension, as she is perplexed by Gabriel’s words. She ponders all these things in her heart and wonders what sort of greeting this might be. The angel not wanting to be denied continues his persuasion, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God,” then he promises her son, Jesus, will be great, the Son of the Most High. Mary knows there has to be a catch, "How can this be, since I am a virgin?" The protestation of Mary seems a completely human response. How often do we turn God away with our excuses? I do not have the time, the money, or the strength to do this God. Yet, Gabriel continues, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with God."

It is in this moment that everything changes. It is in this moment that something clicks within Mary.
A fresco of the Annunciation completed by Fra Angelico depicts this moment. Gabriel announcing something deeply personal to Mary, that her barren cousin will bear a child, shifts the trajectory of our relationship with God. Mary instead of leaning away, angels towards the angel. She mimics Gabriel’s posture. It is in this moment that Mary says yes. She takes the impossible with God. “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”

For nine months she would possess within her the Incarnate God. What a mysterious time for Mary! And, what a mysterious time for us! God desires for us to bear Jesus into the world. God speaks to us urging us to bring Christ into this aching existence. Christmas is not just a season that we celebrate in December, the Incarnate God comes to us every day! Let us be ready for Christ’s coming, not just with candy and music, but with open hearts, expectant souls, listening ears, and excited spirits. Amen.