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The
Fourth Sunday in Advent Our
thoughts over the first three Sundays of Advent have focused on our
preparation for the coming of the Messiah.
But we did not get answer about how God was to come.
Luke provides us with the answer in today’s gospel.
Or at least he provides us with the mystery! He tells us that God
came in the coming of his son. The
life and ministry of Jesus was the promised coming of God.
And that coming came about through the offering of a young Jewish
woman. On this last Sunday
in Advent the readings focus on God’s call to her and on her
remarkable willingness to serve as the child bearer. What
are we meant to take with us from Luke’s account of the Annunciation?
I have tried to imagine the scene.
Imagine being confronted by an angel.
Did the angel knock on the door?
Did he know where Mary lived or did he have to ask around
Nazareth to find out? Didn’t the sudden and unexpected appearance of an angel
almost frighten her to death? Yet
this young woman seems to have taken it in her stride.
She is confused, bewildered, uncomprehending at first, but
unafraid. She doesn’t ask
the kind of questions that might have occurred to her.
Why has God chosen me? What
about Joseph? What will my
family think of me? Who is
going to be there for me as I go through all of this? As
incredible as it seems, God sent the angel Gabriel to a young Jewish
girl, very poor, who held no position or prominence among her peers with
the earthshaking announcement that she was chosen by God to be the
mother of the Messiah. Her
only question, how can this be?
The simple response, with God nothing is impossible.
It is God’s act through Mary, God’s coming to us through the
birth of Jesus, that makes her, that young Jewish woman, and every one
of us, significant as God’s children. “Here
am I,” she said. “I am
the Lord’s servant. As
you have spoken, so it shall be.”
Her response is untouchable! Incomprehensible! It is a response
full of confidence in God’s promise to accomplish God’s purpose. Incomprehensible,
and yet within our human experience! For in an amazing way God is born
in us and through the Spirit reaches out through us to accomplish
God’s purpose in the world around us. The Annunciation is a story that has caused great controversy amongst theologians from the Council of Nicea right up to Bishop Spong at the present time. It causes us to ask the question, what does it mean to call Jesus the Son of God? It causes us to examine our faith in Christ. If ours remains a Christmas faith, a faith in a baby in a manger, a faith that wants all the warm cuddly feelings that are at the heart of the Christmas story, then it will shake us to our roots. But if ours is truly a faith in the resurrected Christ, then Christ is born in us this Advent Season, and indeed every day of our lives. |