(Fourth Sunday of Advent)
How?
By
The Very Rev. Terry White,
Dean
• 2 Samuel 7:4,8-16
• Psalm 132 or 132:8-15
• Romans 16:25-27
• Luke 1:26-38
(From The Lectionary Page)
The conversation could not have lasted long. After all, who can say much when an angel comes to call? (Check that – we all know that some people can say a lot in any situation. So let me rephrase: who can rightly say much when an angel comes to call?) In this Gospel event, in response to Gabriel’s Good News, Mary asks one question: How? A basic question.
I’m guessing that Gabriel has talked to mortals before, because he, too, keeps his words to a minimum. He knows we mortals can be star-struck when heaven comes to call, and be inclined to ramble on at length like a middle-aged, balding preacher. The angel speaks to Mary but a few words:
• Here is what you will do.
• Here is how it will happen.
• And implied is the big question: "Do you agree?"
Mary’s unique vocation to give flesh to God’s Son, to become the Theotokos, the God-Bearer, is not a vocation we can share. But in principle, we are asked the same question this morning: Will you make room for God? As Advent’s preparations bring us to the threshold of a twelve day celebration, Gabriel asks us, Will you agree to make room in your life for Jesus and his priorities?
We love the carol, Joy to the World — Isaac Watts’ version, not the work of Three Dog Night. One verse implores: "Let every heart prepare him room."
These last few weeks the prophet Isaiah has repeatedly called us to prepare the way of the Lord, so has John the Baptist. On the other hand, our culture, our families, and most of all, our own imaginations have compelled us to create the perfect and thus unattainable Christmas. And as we have been driven to spend money, lose sleep and lose our tempers far too often, we come to realize that perhaps we have not been motivated by the prophets much in this Advent season.
So today is a grace filled moment. Today, an archangel says that the day of decision has come not only to Mary, but to all humanity. Is there room in you and me for God’s Son? Can we as the Church make more room for the people we don’t see here – both the people who literally aren’t here as well as the people we truly don’t see when we encounter them here?
Finding additional room is a never-ending process in most of our homes or a growing business. We first try to make more room by cleaning up and clearing out that which is worthless and simply taking up space.
We should do the same with our hearts. As we grow in our love of God, there is always something in my heart, and in the heart of the Church, that can and must go. Can you and I change in order to provide enough room? Can the Church? More precisely, the question is of course not "can" we change, but "will" we?
Like Mary, we are all servants of the Lord. Using the grace of Baptism, the grace of this Eucharist, and the grace of being in friendship and fellowship with God and one another, we can and WILL make more room for Christ.
• When faced with the pain of the world will give up turning away and isolating ourselves, and instead share the burden of those devastated by violence, hunger, disease, and political indifference.
• We can and will lift up the lowly in our city and give our neighbors dignity. We shall fill the hungry, both bellies and souls.
• We shall make more room for humility and compassion, and cleanout pride and conceit which are nothing more than clutter.
• In short, we will look into our hearts and lives and clear out the trash.
Then being filled with the Power of the Most High, God will use our flesh to make himself present. Like blessed Mary may we ask simply: How? May we truly hear and believe Gabriel’s response: With God all things are possible. And with Mary the God-bearer may we respond: I am first and always God’s servant.
Let us make room for the coming of Christ.
The Power of Yes
by The Rev. Bryan England,
Deacon
The gospel lessons for the last two weeks have centered around one of the two classical Advent figures -- John the Baptizer. Clothed in camel’s hair and eating locusts and honey, he called the people of Israel to repent, and pointed to the coming of one greater than he.
But this afternoon I want to talk about a figure as different from John as day is from night; this afternoon I want to talk about a fifteen year old girl. One day this girl is approached by a stranger, who greets her and tells her she is the chosen one. One girl was picked from all the girls in the world to save her people from an overwhelming evil. Of course, I’m talking about Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
If you are unfamiliar with the Joss Whedon movie or the infinitely better television series, much of this sermon will be lost on you, and you will probably be better off for it. But to summarize, Buffy Summers is the typical American Valley Girl, living the classic life of mall shopping and high school cheerleading. But one day she is approached by a stranger who tells her that she is the chosen one – the one girl in the world chosen to do battle with the forces of evil. Over the course of a ninety-minute movie and seven television seasons, Buffy goes about slaying a wide variety of vampires and demons, picking up two vampire boyfriends in the process, and actually getting killed a couple of times. But she accomplishes her mission. After getting killed once, her friends write on her tombstone, “Buffy Summers, She saved the world a lot.”
When I read today’s gospel lesson, I was struck with the similarities in the calling of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Mary the Blessed Virgin, other than all the slaying and the vampire boyfriends, of course.
In this week’s lesson from Luke, no less than the Angel Gabriel approaches a teenage girl in Galilee, and greets her as chosen one, “highly favored.” He tells her the Holy Spirit will come upon her, and she will conceive and bear a son, who will be holy, and called the Son of God. He will inherit the throne of David, and his kingdom will have no end.
The similarities between Mary and Buffy don’t end at their call, however. Their response to that call was crucial.
Mary was a teenager, and a virgin, but she wasn’t a fool. Presumably Gabriel was not wearing a nametag, but somehow she realized that this stranger standing before her was someone above the ordinary, and that the call was legitimate. If God was to become man, a mother had to be found, but it didn’t have to be Mary. She realized she still had the freedom to say, “No,” and that saying “Yes” would have a cost. But she acquiesced, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”
Saying “yes” had a cost for Buffy the Vampire slayer. I’ve already alluded to the fact she actually died a couple of times in the run of the series, but there were more subtle costs to her innocence, to her relationships, to giving up her life as an average teenager, even to her ability to go to her own senior prom in peace.
Saying “yes” had a cost for Mary. Potentially, it could have spelled disaster. Mary was engaged to a man named Joseph, who would know full well that he was not the father of any forthcoming child. The Law of Moses was very specific about what to do in such a circumstance. Deuteronomy 22:23-24 states: "If there is a young woman, a virgin already engaged to be married, and a man meets her in the town and lies with her, you shall bring both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death . . ."
An angel’s late night visit to Joseph’s dreams ensured Mary would survive to bear the holy child, but life in a small town with a growing womb must have been a tribulation for the girl. Probably the visit to her cousin Elizabeth was in part to provide a bit of surcease from the wagging fingers and the wagging tongues.
Of course, the full cost of Mary’s discipleship became apparent a number of years later, as she stood at the foot of the cross and watched her holy child die a criminal’s death.
But the word “yes” has a power of its own. About twenty years ago, I asked my wife Linda to marry me. She kept me on tender hooks for a while, but one Saturday, as I drove up to her apartment to pick her up for a date, I was greeted by Christmas lights in her window forming the word “yes.” I found out the power of the word “yes” to alter the rest of my life, pretty much for the better.
Buffy the Vampire slayer became a superhero through her acceptance of her mission to defend the city of Sunnydale, California, from the plague of vampires, demons, and demigods that assailed it. As it said on her temporary tombstone, “She saved the world a lot.”
And, of course, Mary’s fiat resulted in the redemption of humanity. Her refusal to acquiesce would have altered God’s plan for the reconciliation of creator and created. Presumably, had she said “no” to God’s call, the Angel Gabriel would have gone on to find a potential Blessed Virgin Rachel, or a Blessed Virgin Martha, but Mary said “yes,” and became Theotokos, literally, the God bearer.
The more evangelical Protestant churches are often uncomfortable with the phrase, even though it is literally true. You might as well call her Mary, the Mother of God, which, by the way, was the name she was given at the Council of Ephesus in 431 AD. But that is exactly what she is, what she became through the power of the word Yes, and why a teenage girl is our first and foremost example of discipleship.
For Mary is exactly what you and I are called to be – Theotokoi, bearers of God. At our baptisms the Holy Spirit of God comes and dwells within us, not for just our own redemption, but that the presence of Christ might be continually birthed into the world.
That call has a cost, as it cost Mary, John the Baptizer, even Jesus, himself. But with that call comes the empowerment of the Holy Spirit of God to bear the burdens of discipleship. Through our “yes” to God’s call to ministry, we are empowered to be the body of Christ to those around us, to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to heal the sick . . . to save the world, a lot.