Advent 4

What is the best news you’ve ever received in your life?

Do you remember how you received it? We all know about some of the ‘classic’ where-were-you-then stories that deal with bad news (the attack on Pearl Harbour, or the fall of Hong Kong for us Canadians, 9.11…) but what about the good news?

For those who’ve had the experience, how did you feel the first time you found you were pregnant? How about guys, the first time you were told you were going to be a father?

Today is a ‘good news’ kind of day for our lectionary lessons…we hear of a promise that God makes to David, some helpful words of promise from Paul’s letter to the Romans, but our psalmody and gospel lesson centre on the good news that was delivered to a young girl named Mary, and how she received it.

Mary is a bit of a…well, really a…controversial person for Protestant Christians. And Mary is at the centre of other controversies, as well: even though we confess in both the Nicene and Apostles’ creeds that Jesus was born of the virgin Mary, in my experience that one line is usually the one that people choke on.

Seriously, she was a virgin? What’s so important about that?

It is truly hard for many people to understand why there is an emphasis placed on that, or even why we mention Mary at all. Especially in the 19th - and 20th centuries the distinction came to be that Roman Catholics “worship” Mary, while Protestant Christians, especially Lutherans, claimed that we focussed solely on Jesus Christ. Still, in the 21st century, I find people – protestants across all spectrums and even some atheists – who vilify the Roman Catholic tradition for their veneration of Mary.

In our current context it’s a bit easier, I suppose, to reject what has become the ‘traditional’ understanding of Mary: the one who was dutiful, obedient, and passive, when all these things happened. And I can’t really blame those who do; for years, women who got ‘uppity’ were told to follow the example of Mary, to sit passively, have babies, and be quiet the rest of the time. And I get that: I sometimes wonder what would have happened if Mary had drawn herself up to her full height and barked right back at Gabriel: “blech. No way!”

Yet looking at the story that we have, you realize that Mary - who would have been around 14 or so – dealt with the visitation from Gabriel, the Holy Spirit, her family’s reaction to her pregnancy, her future husband’s reaction, all of the people of her village, and, as well, her local religious authority. In fact, Mary is quite possibly the least dutiful example of a woman in a religion: she didn’t obey her father, nor her husband, nor the expectations of her religious system.

She did what God called her to do. “The Lord is with you!” the angel announced to her. That’s not a command, beloved – that’s a promise.

A teenager, pregnant, with nothing but a fantastic story to tell that nobody is going to believe. Have you ever felt that kind of panic? That kind of despair, the knowledge that a whole host of relationships are going to be broken because of something you felt you had to do? If you have, then maybe you’re beginning to understand why Mary is so important to us.

If the word advent means ‘coming’, then maybe this season should be about us coming to greater awareness of what God With Us really means – that without Mary, without a mother, God would not be with us. Mary was not just a vehicle; an anonymous third-party that God used and then discarded.

It is Mary’s humanity, even Mary’s virginity, that means God could take on frail human flesh, could be carried and borne and nursed, and cuddled, and loved. Mary is venerated, not just because she was the one chosen by God, but because she was the one who could say to God “this is my body, given for you.”

The ancient church gave Mary the title of theotokos, a Greek word that means literally “God-bearer” – a reminder that God took upon frail human flesh for us.

Advent means seeing a new day – life in the midst of death, hope in despair, wholeness in brokenness: seeing the promise of God not in the health or wealth that surrounds us, but in the waters that are poured over our heads at baptism and in the bread and wine that are signs of God’s kingdom, given for you.

That God was born of frail humanity, that God was born of Mary doesn’t mean that you need to emulate any culturally-contrived images of duty or obedience, but that you can recognize in the children that surround you, the children that maybe you carried, and nurture, and support, that in caring for them in a real way you care for God; for they are made in God’s image. We carry the weight and burden of years, they reflect back the best in all of us.

We read of the baby – of the Annunciation – so that we and all people can understand that God truly is with us. The ancient world is full of stories of gods who became men, or who had sexual relations with women who then went on to birth demigods. But unless the women are some evil foil in the story, they are helpless, hapless, women who are long forgotten by history. But we read of Mary, who was perplexed by these things that happened (those things of which she was at the centre) – and who in the midst of that confusion sang a song of love to the God who grew inside of her.

Is it any wonder that we call Mary “the God-bearer”?

In her great life, Mary raised her infant son, lost him in the Temple when the family went to Jerusalem, bullied him into his first miracle at Cana of Galilee, then fed his and his hippy friends when they invaded her house to talk of strange things long into the night. She watched with horror as her boy was falsely accused, beaten, tortured, and finally condemned to die as a criminal.

“Greetings favoured one, for the Lord is with you,” were the first words she heard one clear morning. That promise was lived out through her life, as she alone is the only witness from the first stirring of our Saviour’s life in the womb to his final moments on the cross. What began one bright morning ended in darkness on Friday afternoon, when the fruit of her womb and the light of the world claimed ‘it is finished’ and breathed his last.

And it was finished; the reign of sin and its penalty of death in the world was finished, as the new creation of God With Us that began in Mary’s womb called the world again into being early in the morning, while it was still dark, when Mary heard the news that the tomb was empty and her son appeared to those who came to care for his body and told them the same message told to Mary more than three decades before: fear not – for then, the Lord was with them.

The promise of Advent is that promise; the promise that the Lord is with us, has taken upon God’s own self our humanity. We see the fulfillment of that promise in the same way that Mary did: not as an insulated cover that shelters us from the world and numbs our engagement with it, but as a call to be part of something larger than ourselves, part of a body that is out and active in the world, knowing that suffering and dying is part of our world…but not the dominant part.

“The Lord is with you,” means that the word of God is a word of life, and that word is spoken boldly into a sin-darkened world. That word is spoken into our hearts at baptism, so that what begins in life does not end in death.

“The Lord is with you” is the promise that you will see the dark Friday, but that Sunday’s coming.

“The Lord is with you” is the promise that you, too, will make the long journey, in fear and trembling, to Bethlehem, but there you will see the birth of the Saviour…there you will find the new morning that is heralded by the baby’s cries, by a mother’s tears of joy.

“The Lord is with you”…and the day is just beginning.

Let the people of God say amen.