Sunday,
December 8, 2019
Luke 1:26-38
1.
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| Subway Annunciation, 2006 |
If
you flip ahead in your bulletin, you’ll see (on the inside of the back page) a
snapshot of a painting by Caroline Jennings.
And I encourage you to find it online this afternoon, in full color:
it’s really quite lovely. She calls it
“Subway Annunciation.” “Subway
Annunciation.” Mary visited by Gabriel;
and a wild dove signifying the Holy Spirit hovering near. And it could be anywhere, right, any city:
the Red Line in Boston, the Number 2 express in Manhattan, maybe the Metro in
Paris. Gabriel’s leaning in, with an
invitation to faith, with a promise of partnership. And Mary’s thinking it all over, pondering
these things, what Gabriel’s saying, and she’s perplexed. And all around them, the world carries on:
riders reading the morning paper, commuters on the platform, waiting to catch
the next train, rush hour in the city.
Caroline
Jennings wants to remind us—or so it seems to me—that this encounter takes
place in ordinary time. This appearance
of an angel in the life of a woman. This
conversation around grace and peace and hope and even revolution. It all goes down in ordinary time: in
ordinary places, between ordinary folk, doing ordinary things. And it’s interesting to me that the book sits
there, right there on the seat beside Mary.
You see the book? It’s as if to
say: our faith stories unfold in the open, our gospel texts come to life on the
way to work or class. Ordinary
time. The bible’s not a decaying ancient
scroll; and it’s not a quick salvation fix either. It’s a way of seeing, a way of imagining, a
way of awakening to the mysteries in our lives.
To angels on the subway. And
angels in our living rooms. And angels among
our neighbors. And angels at the
border.
And
Mary says: “I see it. I see you. I see God moving in my life. Let it be with me according to your word.” Now the virgin thing’s something like a
diversion. And historically the church
has taken the bait. But don’t miss the
gospel, the good news, the surrender and partnership here. Because that’s the beauty of this story, that’s
where its power lies. Mary chooses to
partner with God. Right there on the
subway. Rush hour on a Monday morning. She receives Gabriel’s strange proposal. And she ponders and muses and wonders about
it. And then she says: “I see it. I see you.
I see God moving in my life. Let
it be with me according to your word.”
And I love the way there’s that fellow to the side there, just the back
of his head, just behind Gabriel, just carrying on, just reading his morning
paper, waiting for the next stop. Mary’s
not on a mountain top. Mary’s not on
retreat in the woods. She sits with
Gabriel on a subway, between stops, a Monday morning like all the other Monday
mornings. And the Holy Spirit hovers
round.
2.
Now
just a minute on the whole virgin thing.
The virgin thing’s important, I think, but not in the way that we get
all hung up about. The virgin thing’s
important because it identifies the patriarchy by which everything in Mary’s
world is ordered and controlled. Make
sense? Girls engaged—like Mary—would be
sequestered by their families, protected by their parents, quarantined so as to
keep them holy and chaste (in the eyes of the patriarchy, of course) until such
time as their marriages were consummated.
Their value, their identity is all wrapped up in this particular kind of
chastity, this patriarchal version of purity.
That Mary’s a virgin is to say that she’s treated this way, valued in
this way, considered something like property by her family and her family-to-be
and all the other systems and institutions of her day. That’s just how it is a rigidly patriarchal
culture. And to be honest, it’s not just
an ancient thing. There’s plenty of
patriarchy left in the world.
So
when this angel shows up in Mary’s daily round, she’s flummoxed, shocked and
totally taken by surprise. “Greetings,
favored one,” says Gabriel. “Who me?”
says Mary. “The Lord is with you,” says
Gabriel. “What in the world?” says
Mary. And so it would have been for
every Jewish or Gentile reader in the earliest days of the Gospel. Especially those who knew their Bible well:
because every other time an angel appears—in the Bible—to tell somebody about a
special birth, about a hugely significant pregnancy, that angel appears to the
father involved, always and only the father.
Not the mother. Not the
woman. And certainly not any virgin. When Gabriel shows up—as tradition has it—at
the well Mary’s gone to, to fill up her family’s water jugs for the day, when
Gabriel shows up at the well, Gabriel’s breaking all the rules.
And
the point is: that God chooses to partner with Mary, God chooses to bring peace
and grace and revolution and redemption through Mary—because God can choose to
partner with whomever God well pleases.
Patriarchy doesn’t get to decide that.
Empires don’t get to decide.
Rabbis and priests and pastors and professors don’t get to decide. God can choose to partner with whomever God
well pleases.
So
here’s the question then. Can you
believe, are you willing to believe that it’s the same with you? That somewhere in your daily round, that somewhere
in the ordinary push and pull of your life, Gabriel is searching you out. The messenger of God—in the guise of a
neighbor, or a student, or a beggar on the street—the messenger of God is
coming your way with a divine proposal, an invitation, a new initiative. Think about it for a moment. What keeps you up at night? What makes your heart stir, your mind flash,
your spirit quicken? Because that’s the
whole point here. That God is stirring
in the ordinary places of our lives, that God is beckoning you and inviting you
to partnership and praise, to ministry and movement. And if your heart’s stirring, if your mind is
flashing, if your spirit is singing…we’ll that’s a pretty good indication. That God is moving in. That God has a proposal in mind. Maybe Gabriel’s on his way.
I
want to offer to you this old Jesuit practice, the Daily Examen, as a tool you
might use to sharpen your spiritual senses.
As St. Ignatius designed it, the Examen wasn’t intended to be a grind or
a burden in the life of a believer. It
was—simply and poignantly—to be a stimulus: a way of focusing the spirit on
God’s desire for partnership. A way of
sharpening your spiritual senses and tuning in to all the ways God’s dancing in
your life and speaking to your life and seeking a deeper connection with you.
Now
I realize that asking anybody to do anything extra this time of year borders on
the ridiculous. But I commend this
practice, this Daily Examen, to you.
It’s been a rich and encouraging practice in my life for five or six
years now. And I have a hunch that your
sitting with this practice—during these holy, sacred, sweet days of
December—might well open your heart to God’s strange and wonderful initiative.
It’s
easy—I know it’s easy—to sprint through these days and just survive them. But the message in the story, which is also
the sweet grace of Caroline Jennings’ painting, is that life is so much more
than survival. God is passionate about
your life. God is passionate about
partnering with you to make all life more holy and joyous and whole. You are not simply a cog in a machine. You are not a worker bee in a hive of
economic productivity and expansion. You
are a Child of God, beloved and favored and cherished by God. And there may well be angels nearby—on your
morning commute, in the frozen food section at Hannaford, on the sideline at
your ten-year-old’s soccer game—there may well be angels nearby reminding you,
nudging you, inviting you to divine partnership. It doesn’t matter if you’re overwhelmed by
depression and sad most of the time. It
doesn’t matter if you’re retired and feeling spent. It doesn’t matter if you’re pregnant and
unmarried and 16. God is passionate about your life. God is passionate about partnering with you
to make all life more holy and joyous and whole.
If
you can imagine that, if you can take my word for it, if you can risk living
that way, Christmas isn’t just a day or a festival or a dizzyingly busy season
either. Christmas is God’s promise of
grace, God’s commitment to partnership, God’s relentless and wildly
unpredictable love. And it’s yours not
just at Christmas, but every day, with every sunrise, and in every breath you
take.
Amen.
