Based on the Gospel - Luke 1:26-38
It is a bright sunny day in Nazareth. Mary is
just returning from the well, her water skin bursting with
beautiful clear water. There is always lots of water in
their town, a real gift in this arid land. She looks out
over the valley far below. Then she climbs the last few
steps and enters the courtyard to the small home she shares with
her family. Setting the water down for a moment, she begins
to reflect on her life. A smile crosses her face as she
thinks of Joseph, her husband to be. A kind person with a
fine reputation in the community! Yes! Hers is an uncomplicated
life. She has a calm and predictable future.
Then a great surprise! Even in the brilliant
sunlight she sees a radiance which fills the courtyard. A
messenger from God! She can scarcely take it all in. Indeed,
she can scarcely even look at this stranger. Such an
awesome sight he is. For she recognizes in this messenger,
one who stands in the very presence of God. What is it he
is saying to her? “Greetings, favoured one! The
Lord is with you.”
“Who am I,” she reflects, “that God
should favour me? How can I be chosen by God? Why is
God choosing me, a poor, insignificant young woman? What is
God choosing me to do?”
The angel reassures her. “Do not be
afraid for you have found favour with God.” She looks
at him tentatively at first, then more boldly. “You
will conceive in your womb,” the angel continues. “And
bear a son, and you will name him Jesus.”
She can’t quite take it in. Her child,
the baby she bears, will be the son of the most high. Then
she gets a dose of reality. “How can this be?”
she asks, blushing a little at her bluntness with a stranger.
“How can this happen when I have never known a man?”
“With God all things are possible.” The
angel speaks of this uncommon thing in common language to a woman
whose concerns are totally realistic.
And in obedience to God, through God’s grace,
she answers, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be
with me according to your word.” Then as quickly as it
began, the encounter is over. Mary is left with her
pondering, but at the same time with a sense of incredible joy
and peace, for she has been chosen by God to be the God Bearer.
“Well!” you may be thinking. “That’s
very nice for Mary. God sent her a very clear and distinct
message. If only God spoke that clearly to me! God, I
wish I could see your messengers, those who stand in your very
presence. But nothing in my life is like that. Not
anything.”
As incredible as it seems, God sent a messenger 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. 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 be it.” Her
response is untouchable, incomprehensible. For it is a
response full of confidence in God’s promise to accomplish
God’s purpose.
God continues to communicate with ordinary, everyday
people. God communicates with those who listen and respond.
If we do not hear, then perhaps we are not tuned in. Or
perhaps we are looking for the wrong thing.
As incredible as it seems, God still sends
messengers. Are there not moments in our lives when God is
communicating with us? Have we not all experienced moments
of closeness to God, times of insight, of enlightenment. It
happens in any number of ways, through prayer, through worship,
through the grace of other people. We ourselves are often
messengers of God’s grace. In an amazing way, God is
born in us and through the Spirit reaches out through us to
accomplish God’s purpose in our world. In the words of
Meister Eckhart, the great mystic, “What would the birth of
Jesus mean to me, if I wouldn’t myself give birth to him.”
May he be born in us this day. Amen.