DECEMBER 21ST

                               -Henry Ossawa Tanner, 'The Annunciation' (1898)

29 Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. 30 But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. 31 You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, 33 and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”  34 “How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?” 35 The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. 36 Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. 37 For no word from God will ever fail.” 38 “I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled.” Then the angel left her.  Luke 1:29-38

In this well-known passage from Luke, Mary hears the astonishing proclamation that she will give birth to a child who will “be called the Son of the Most High” who “will reign over the house of Jacob forever,” and of whose “kingdom there will be no end.” Mary is understandably perplexed at the arrival of the angel and his words. Despite the strangeness of this news, and despite the lengths to which this will change Mary’s life completely, she assents to this news, saying, Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” 

Having recently given birth to our first child in October, this assent strikes me as all the more remarkable this year. Pregnancy takes over not just your life, but your whole body, each week bringing new symptoms along with a growing awareness of the life-changing reality that is, in truth, already with you. Now that our son is here he has, of course, entirely re-created our day-to-day lives: time is no longer linear but exists in three-hour cycles; things that took so little thought previously, like eating, sleeping, and dare I say it, showering, become secondary; and the love you feel expands exponentially, creating and filling new spaces in your heart that you didn’t know were possible.

That God comes to us first not as the grown man who says “follow me” to his disciples, but as a baby, as a life that grows within and from Mary’s very body tells us, I think, of the closeness of the relationship that God desires to have with us and the immediacy with which God intends to meet us and inhabit our lives. Indeed, as Brother Jason told us at the end of a recent sermon, we are reminded in Advent that God is with us even while we wait. And in this waiting, God is not far off from us, waiting to come closer. God is already with us, a mustard seed growing in ways that are already changing us, even as we anticipate the fullness of his love and his presence to arrive in the perplexing vulnerability and tenderness of a newborn baby.

One of my favourite Christian thinkers is a woman from the 14th century called Julian of Norwich. She wrote about God during a time of great anxiety and grief that has parallels to our own – a time that saw both sociopolitical upheaval as well as several waves of a medieval pandemic, the Black Death. Even – and perhaps especially – in a time when people must have asked where God was in all of their loss and suffering, Julian insists that God is closer to us than we can imagine. She writes, “He is our clothing, who wraps and enfolds us for love, embraces us and shelters us, surrounds us for his love, which is so tender that he may never desert us” (Revelations of Divine Love, Chapter 5).

And let us not be fooled by the vulnerability of God’s coming; this is a tenderness that will move mountains. As Mary will tell us just a little later in Luke, this is a vulnerable love that will bring down the mighty from their thrones and lift up the humble. This is a tender love that will fill the hungry with good things and send the rich away empty. This is a God that loves us so closely and so immediately that we are already being changed, even in the waiting.

God, we know you are with us even while we wait. With Mary, help us to say yes to your coming, even when we are perplexed and uncertain about what you might bring. With Mary, help us to say yes your presence within us in even the small changes that you are already making in our lives. With Mary, help us to say yes to you as the one who “wraps and enfolds us for love,” who “embraces us and shelters us,” and “surrounds us for his love, which is so tender that he may never desert us.” Amen.

- Gillian Breckenridge