The Rev. Paddy Cavanaugh, Advent IV, Year B, 12/24/23

Readings: 2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16 (God dwelling in a Tent), Romans 16:25-27 (God strengthens us), Canticle 15 (The Magnificat), Luke 1:26-38 (The Annunciation)

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, amen.

We have been thrown a delightful curveball this liturgical year in that Advent IV and Christmas Eve are coinciding, and so to do justice to these two theologically distinct observances, I invite you to suspend your ordinary sense of time with me during this service. Let’s try as best as we can to set down our thoughts about all of the wrapping that has yet to be done, the meals that need to be prepared, and the cookies that will get set out for Santa this evening. For now, let’s simply take this hour or so of calm before the storm to dwell in peace, in God’s time, which we share this morning with a most special guest. A guest whose humility, courage, and incredible faith are why we are able to celebrate the birth of our Lord Jesus at all. Today we have the great honor of spending time with God in the presence of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

The Gospel lesson takes us back nine months to remember the miraculous event known as the Annunciation. In it, the Archangel Gabriel announces to Mary God’s invitation to bear the child who is to be God’s only son, the Messiah and Redeemer of the world. The astounding and poetic exchange between Mary and Gabriel has long fascinated us and is the subject of countless artistic images, poems, and songs. We even have our own stained glass Annunciation window over here in our nave. Art has a way of communicating profound realities to us in new ways when language falls short, and this past week in preparation for this day I sat down to reflect before several different visual interpretations of the Annunciation. In most of them, we find Mary in the middle of the most crucial moment of the passage.

After the Archangel greets her with the iconic words, “Hail Mary, full of grace,” and proclaims the news that she is to bear the Son of God, Mary responds with her own words of great humility, and I daresay even fear: “How can this be,” she says. “for I am a virgin.” (Lk 1:34). I want us to imagine for a moment, in your mind’s eye, the scene narrated before us.

Imagine you are in the home of a peasant family in first century Palestine. Probably a modest home with mud brick walls. There sits a young teenage girl, betrothed but not yet married to her worker husband, Joseph. Then suddenly, out of nowhere appears an angel. The Gospel does not go into details about the physical appearance of the Archangel Gabriel, but we have some clues about the likeness of angels elsewhere in scripture. The prophet Isaiah describes angels, known as Seraphim, as six-winged creatures covering their feet and eyes from the Glory of God (Is. 6:2). Ezekiel depicts other angels as four-faced beings with eyes looking in all directions (Ez.1:15-17). However the Archangel Gabriel may have appeared to Mary, there’s no indication that he came as the white robed, blonde haired celestial being in human form that we are accustomed to seeing this time of year. Rather, angels, whose name means ‘messenger from God’ were awesome and fearful creatures whose presence spoke of God’s own mighty presence. A presence so powerful that to even look upon the face of God was forbidden in Jewish tradition.

And then, as Mary beheld the sight of a divine creature, that was a stand in for God himself, the angel spoke the impossible news that Mary was to miraculously bear the Son of the Most High, who will take up the throne of David and establish a new kingdom on earth.

This crucial moment between the angel’s shocking invitation and her own acceptance of the special calling is where we often find Mary in artistic renderings of the Annunciation. The outward posture of her body reveals the storm of emotions rising up in her soul. Often she is portrayed as making herself small and bowing forward, with her arms crossed on her breast in a sign of humility before God’s emissary. Sometimes her face appears calm and sometimes it honestly shows her perplexity and distress with a knit brow or troubled eyes.

She knows the stakes are high. If she is found with child out of wedlock, at best, she is risks experiencing the social death of being abandoned by Joseph, and at worst, she risks being put to death physically, as was permitted under religious law at the time.

However, something deep within her persists. Something in Mary’s soul told her that if she were to decline the God’s favor upon her, then something even greater than her own life might be put at risk. Something about how God wished to disclose the savior would not be right. Surely the almighty God of her forbears could accomplish the mighty task of bringing the Messiah into the world through any number of ways. The Son of God could have been born to a great earthly king, to a powerful priestly family, or even to a Roman emperor, whose realm stretched vastly across the world.

But no, God sent his messenger to lowly Mary, an unwed peasant girl sitting in her house with mud-brick walls. There is something unspeakably profound in God’s poetry here. The Lord of Lords and King of Kings, the Son of the Most High and long-awaited Holy One, who was to come and establish his eternal kingdom, so that all of creation which, through sin and death had fallen away, might be reconciled into the marvelous love of God the Father…

Was to be born to a poor and lowly peasant girl, with absolutely no worldly power or estate to speak of.

You see I think somewhere in this exchange with the angel Mary must have realized some of God’s intention in choosing her. Perhaps in a long pregnant pause it dawned on her, in her soul, what God was seeking to accomplish, and how. Lowly Mary, meek and mild, must have recognized, as she later proclaimed in the words of the Magnificat that God had finally come to cast down the mighty from their thrones and to lift up the lowly. God had come to fill the hungry with good things. God had come to the help of his servant Israel for he had remembered his promise of mercy.

And as this dawned upon her, her spirit rejoiced in God her savior and Mary said “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” And the angel departed from her (Lk 1:46-55).

From the moment that Mary said yes to becoming the Mother of God, the course of history changed forever. The Son of God comes to us through Mary, not for us to have more of the life we already know, but to give us new life. Life in which the spiritual and material deficits of worldly life might be filled by the wholeness and love of life in heaven. So here we are, two thousand years later. Basking in the grace of her Son who died, was risen, and will come again to fulfill this ongoing promise of redemption for the world.

Emmanuel, who is God-with-us, took on human flesh because of Mary’s faithful courage to put her life on the line so that all of our lives might be brought into fullness. Mary’s faith, her humility, and her prophetic bravery to accept God’s call on her life to be the God-bearer are why we gather this day, on the eve of our commemoration of Christ’s birth, and on every day henceforth.

So as we go out after this service back to the bustle of our Christmas preparations, let us give thanks for the prophetic witness of this hero of our faith, Blessed Mary, the favored peasant girl, by saying:

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord now comes to us. Amen.