The Message to Mary
Luke 1: 26-38
December 2, 2000
“Seasons Greetings.” I’ll bet you receive many cards with those words. That kind of greeting is what we expect at this time of the year. When we receive such a card, there is no question as to its meaning.
But imagine for a moment that it’s not December. Pretend it’s July. You pick up your mail, and there among all the catalogues and bills is a card that says, “Seasons Greetings.” You’re puzzled. Is it something that got lost in the mail six months ago? is it some kind of advertising gimmick dreamed up by Madison Avenue to catch our eye? What does it mean to receive this message in July?
That must have run through Mary’s mind, even more so because the greeting came from an angel and not the local mail carrier. What sort of a message from God could this be? Gabriel, the angel, greets her by saying, “Greetings, favored one. The Lord is with you.”
Shock, confusion, bewilderment – whatever Mary’s feelings were, Luke understates them by simply saying, “She was troubled.”
And well she might be. I suspect that Mary knew her own Jewish history well enough to realize that to be favored by God was at best a dubious honor. If Mary had even the slightest knowledge of Scripture, there would be no question of being troubled. To announce to someone that they were “favored of God” might be seen as a promise, but more likely would have been viewed as a threat.
At the center of the drama lies not only the message from an angel, but also Mary’s response. It is this response that forever sets Mary aside as one of the great women of history. In the face of a troubling message, she was able to say, “Let it be with me, according to your word.”
J.B. Philips paraphrases these words in this way: “Let it happen to me, as you wish.” One commentary had this interpretation: “What Mary said was, in effect, seconding the motion of God.” Using the language of parliamentary procedure, the commentator tells us, “It was as if God had made a proposal and Mary, as a loyal supporter, brought it to the floor. She in effect said, ‘I support the proposal, let it happen, let it happen to me.’”
To be told that the favor of God rested upon you was not good news. Instead of bringing order out of chaos, a thing we might hope would happen, the favor of God brought chaos into the order of Mary’s life. Here was a simple, peasant girl, engaged to a solid, dependable man. And surprise, an angel appears, and her world is never the same. The rest of Mary’s life has to be lived under the shadow of being favored by God.
Let me be specific, since most preachers seem to gloss over the facts. Mary was unmarried, and the people of Nazareth may not have been very sophisticated, but they surely could count to nine. Respectable Christians rarely mention this, but Jesus must have been seen as the one who came early to an engaged couple.
We also tend to romanticize the Bethlehem experience. My guess is that it happened a lot earlier than just before the birth. No one, in their right mind, would attempt that difficult journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem with a wife who was about to give birth. I think Mary and Joseph came much earlier to Bethlehem, to get away from the wagging tongues of the people of Nazareth. The old tried and true way to handle things like this was to leave town for a spell, and not to come back until everything was taken care of. So, like others who were favored of God, Mary left the comfortable, known, secure existence of Nazareth for a life living as one of the homeless people.
Perhaps only a woman can fully comprehend the astounding implications of Gabriel’s request. To be asked to become the container for God is an awesome task. And basically, there were 100 reasons that could be given to say no, and only one way to say “Yes.” it would have been so easy to say, “Thanks, but no thanks.” But Mary chose to respond with a resounding “Yes. Let it be with me, according to your word.” Isn’t this true for all of us? Whenever we perceive that God has a message, a task to be done, a job to be shouldered, a ministry to be followed, we are given a choice. We can ignore the message, or we can go with it and say “Yes? Sometimes we wish that someone else were given the task. Sometimes we put off what we know is God’s word to us. But deep down inside, we can’t escape that God sends messages to all of us and we’re faced with choices.
A hungry mother, in our city, played earnestly one Christmas for some food and toys for her little child, but nothing happened. She related her prayer to a cynical friend, who said with a sneer, “What happened to this God of yours? Why didn’t he hear? Why didn’t he answer?” To which the mother answered, “Oh, I’m sure he did hear me and told someone to bring us food and something for my child. But, I guess they forgot, or were too busy.” There is more here than a naive mother’s faith. More often, this is where the breakdown occurs – not with God, who makes the motion, but with us, who walk past a table like the Children’s Christmas project and ignore the message. Mary said, “Yes. Yes, I second the motion. Let it be to me, as you have spoken.” Our failure to do likewise is probably the main reason so little gets done in the world.
If there is to be any word from God this Advent season, it will come from Mary’s story of the Annunciation. If there is one thing I want everyone to hear as we prepare for Christmas, it is the Holy announcement. When the angel of God comes to us, and says, “You, you are the person God has chosen: You are favored of God,” we will know that to be favored means God has chosen to dwell in you, to accomplish his will. In a sense, we might say that greeting suggests that each of us is pregnant. We are being asked to give birth to all sorts of things that God would have us do. St. Augustine said it so well when he wrote, “God has a work to do with us – that will not be done without us.
Advent as a season reminds us that we are close to birthing. You are to be a container for God, and you have been given a timetable. The delivery room awaits. It’s less than four weeks away. Can we respond by saying, “Let it be, Lord. Let it be to me, to us, – according to your word?”
Amen