The story is told that one day in heaven Jesus approached Peter who was sitting at the pearly gates in his usual role as admissions officer. Jesus complained about the quality of people Peter was admitting into heaven, noting how many of them were of significantly questionable reputation. Peter responded, "I know Lord. But what am I to do? They come to me here and I turn them away. So they go around to the backdoor, talk to your mother, and she lets them in."

 

Is it hard for you to imagine Mary as the adult mother of Jesus? As the mother of an adult Jesus who would countermand his orders?  Of course that story is just a joke, but we don’t have a lot of material to work with when it comes to Mary.  The Bible only gives us a few snapshots of her life – there’s this scene with the angel Gabriel, the time when the 12 year-old Jesus got separated from his parents in Jerusalem, the wedding in Cana when Mary used her status as his mother to get him to provide more wine, and the words he spoke from the cross, giving her into the care of his trusted friend.  There are a few more Biblical references to Mary and maybe if we studied them, we would see her as a three-dimensional person, but her real personality tends to be eclipsed by her status as the Blessed Virgin Mother.  Roman Catholics venerate her, while we Protestants either fight about the doctrine of virgin birth or simply take Mary’s role for granted.

 

It seems to me that in all of these approaches, that Mary as a person -- as the courageous disciple, as the woman who loved and nurtured Jesus into the adult he became -- that Mary gets lost in the shuffle.

 

In Mary’s time, a typical age for betrothal was twelve or thirteen years old.  So imagine a young girl, barely into adolescence with all the changes and challenges that brings.  She lives in the town of Nazareth which had probably 200-400 people.  She knows everyone and everyone knows her. 

 

Out of nowhere, on an otherwise ordinary day, an angel appears and tells her not to be afraid.  I told the children last week that angels almost always say that.  But when someone starts off a sentence that way, doesn’t it usually have the opposite effect? I expect that just the appearance of an angel is enough to get your heart racing.  Mary probably knew the folk tale about a jealous angel who appeared on a bride’s wedding night and killed the bridegroom each time the bride tried to marry.  She might have thought Gabriel was an evil spirit threatening her marriage.

 

And then the news that Gabriel brought – about having a baby -- that would have caused a different kind of concern.  She’s a teenager.  Her first thoughts might have been “I’m in so much trouble!  My parents are going to kill me.”  And everyone in her small town would know.  If Joseph wanted to, he could have her stoned for infidelity. And even if he didn’t, the baby might not live.  The infant mortality rate was 25-40%. What a decision for a twelve year old girl to make on her own.

 

In the blink of an eye, Gabriel has changed her world.  And he’s waiting for an answer, like now.   I would need weeks of careful deliberation to respond, but their entire conversation seems to be over in a matter of minutes.  

 

Writing about this, Frederick Buechner says: “She struck the angel Gabriel as hardly old enough to have a child at all, let alone this child, but he’d been entrusted with a message to give her and he gave it. He told her what the child was to be named, and who he was to be, and something about the mystery that was to come upon her. ‘You mustn’t be afraid, Mary,’ he said. And as he said it, he only hoped she wouldn’t notice that beneath the great, golden wings, he himself was trembling with fear to think that the whole future of creation hung now on the answer of a girl.”[1]

 

Mary asks only one question and then she gives the answer that Gabriel was waiting for – she says “Yes! ... Let it be... I am the servant of the Lord.” 

 

She says yes and joins the ranks of many other adventurous, courageous souls who have done so.  Her Yes becomes part of the story of our faith – showing that God can and does call young people to do incredible things, showing that God can and does call people who lack formal education, that God does call women as well as men, and that what God calls us to do isn’t always or even usually the socially respected, prim and proper thing.  Some of us have a mental image of Mary as meek and demure, passively obedient, but that can’t be right.  To say Yes in these circumstances took great courage, the courage Abram showed when God told him to move to a land he had never seen, the courage of Moses demanding that Pharaoh let his people go, the courage that Mary’s son Jesus would also demonstrate. 

 

Mary only has one question of Gabriel. “How can this be?” she asks.  And Gabriel’s answer sounds so poetic, “‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you ...” For a long time I thought that this poetic answer was a polite way of talking about sex.  And since in Mary’s culture, women had almost no rights, no ability to give or withhold consent, that was a scary thought.  But I have come to understand that Luke is not talking biology with that poetry; he’s talking theology. 

 

Luke writes more about the Holy Spirit than any other gospel writer, so it is not surprising that the Holy Spirit shows up in this conversation.  According to Luke, the Spirit is present at Jesus’ conception and at his baptism and throughout his ministry.  And then, the Holy Spirit appears again on the day of Pentecost.   Acts 2 speaks of tongues of fire that seem to rest on each of the apostles and it says that “all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit.”  The apostle Peter was so known to be filled with the Spirit that sick people were laid in the streets in the hopes that his shadow would fall on them as he passed and they would be healed.  Mary is the first to be filled with the Holy Spirit; she serves as the prototype for the way God will be manifest in all those who follow Jesus.  From this point on, Mary will live in the shadow of the Holy Spirit. 

 

Artists of all kinds have been captivated by this scene.  I appreciate the words of poet Denise Levertov in her poem The Annunciation.  In part, she says,

 

We know the scene: the room, variously furnished,
almost always a lectern, a book; always
the tall lily.
         Arrived on solemn grandeur of great wings,
the angelic ambassador, standing or hovering,
whom she acknowledges, a guest.

 

But we are told of meek obedience. No one mentions
courage.
         The engendering Spirit
did not enter her without consent.
          God waited.

She was free
to accept or to refuse, choice
integral to humanness.[2]

 

In the First Light study, some of us recently heard the expression, “We without God, cannot and God without us, will not.”  Augustine of Hippo first said something like that and others have adapted it.  “We without God, cannot and God without us, will not.”  It means that God has chosen to share power with human beings, to work with and through people who are willing to participate in God’s reign on earth.  For reasons known best to God, Jesus came into the world as a human baby. Galatians 4 refers to Jesus coming “in the fullness of time”.  I wonder if part of that fullness of time involved God waiting for a woman courageous enough to carry that baby in her womb for nine months.  And more than that – there was the fact that she was going to love this child, to raise him as best she could, and what would happen to him would break her heart.     

 

Baptist scholar, Alan Culpepper notes, "Mary had been chosen, 'favored', by God.  But what a strange blessing.  It brought with it none of the ideals or goals that so consume our daily striving.  Today many assume that those whom God favors will enjoy the things we equate with a good life:  social standing, wealth and health.  Yet Mary, God's favored one, was blessed with having a child out of wedlock who would later be executed as a criminal.  Acceptability, prosperity and comfort have never been the essence of God's blessing."[3] 

 

What is the essence of God’s blessing?  Perhaps it is knowing that we live in the shadow of the Spirit.  Perhaps it is being able to face difficulties with courage and integrity.  Perhaps it means being given something important to do, something that we are uniquely gifted for, even if it is something that no one else will ever see. Perhaps it means going toe-to-toe with the forces of evil and oppression which will batter and bruise us.   It might even mean failing or being seen as a loser.  This text reminds us that we follow

One who will disrupt and disorder our tidy, structured lives, if we let him. 

 

Levertov’s poem continues:

 

Aren’t there annunciations
of one sort or another
in most lives?
             Some unwillingly
undertake great destinies,
enact them in sullen pride,
uncomprehending.
             More often
those moments
     when roads of light and storm
     open from darkness in a man or woman,
are turned away from
in dread, in a wave of weakness, in despair
and with relief.
Ordinary lives continue.
            God does not smite them.
But the gates close, the pathway vanishes.

 

Sometimes we don’t want to be favored, don’t want to be chosen.  We cling to our well-ordered lives and carefully laid plans and say “No thank you” to the sort of blessing God offers.

 

But what if we did have the courage of a 12-year-old peasant girl?  What if we let ourselves be Spirit-shadowed?  Mary is the only mother of Jesus, but each of us can also be God-bearers, sharing the love of Christ with a lonely world.   What sorts of astounding opportunities might God be offering to us?  Perhaps, at this very moment, the angels are holding their breath, waiting to hear us say to God, “Yes . . . let it be . . . I am the servant of the Lord.”