Sermon: The Annunciation

Luke 1:26-38; 2 Samuel 7:1-11,16

Did Gabriel come half-hurtling in -wings waving, stirring up the dust
of Galilean tracks you trod (until this day)with familiar oblivion?
glory trailing in his wake,did he shine that luminous, incandescent aura
we ascribe to holiness? 

Or did he approach with reticent reserve,gingerly; softening the shock
of the abrupt invasionof worldly space by heaven's word?
Did he knock, or just unfoldbefore your startled eyes? 

And was he loud, majestic?messenger of God
more used to fanfares in the heavenly courtthan twittering of bird song
in the Galilean hills?or your first ally in the fear that gripped your heart?
Calling you by name, serene with words of calmand favour found with God. 

Well might you wonder what kind of greeting this might be!Had anything prepared you for this day
when glimpses of God's way of seeingwere unlocked to you,
simple Galilean girland favoured one of God?
In Nazareth, whence nothing good can come,suddenly your home becomes the place where
heaven touches earth,and neither are the same
again. 

Was it request or statement that you heard?and was there fear or faith within your heart
when you said "let it be"?the rising tide of hope and co-creating energy,
welcomed and embraced, "yes, let it bewith me - with me - according to your word."
And did you laugh, or cry or praywhen you were left
to wonder at the wonderof God's grace?

Have you ever wondered just how Gabriel appeared to Mary? Luke leaves the question hanging, tantalisingly unanswered. And because it leaves so much to the imagination, artists have had a field day. I collect pictures of the annunciation and among my 300+ examples there is almost no artistic stone left unturned. Gabriel usually comes on Mary's right, our left, but there the similarity stops. He stands, he kneels; he commands, he beseeches, he cajoles; he leans towards Mary, he pulls back from her. He is in such a hurry to make his announcement that he is still half way down from the ceiling when speaking, he is composed and kneeling gracefully in front of her; he is tranquil, he is flustered; he whispers, he declaims, he shouts, he wags his finger at her. And Mary kneels calmly and serenely as though this happens every day or she pulls back in fright. Sometimes Gabriel looms over her and she is overwhelmed, in others she stands stolidly whilst Gabriel pleads. There's something of the ballerina about both of them in many pictures as they dance around each other. In one picture her cat has a fit, in another the cat looks on rather curiously. She is frightened, she scowls, she smiles knowingly, she is impassive. In one modern picture a tiny angel is trying to climb up Mary's tree trunk of a neck to whisper in her ear. One of the most poignant pictures comes from the unlikely source of Andy Warhol whose understated painting simply shows Gabriel's raised hand on the left of the picture and Mary's tense fingers pulling back on her prie-dieu on the right hand side. One of my favourites is Braccesco's painting in the Louvre where Gabriel zooms in from top right on what can only be described as a fifteenth century skateboard and Mary, quite reasonably, ducks as he heads straight for her head at full tilt.

The variety is glorious and I wouldn't have it any other way. But the artistic creativity of these pictures conceals the fact that in the bible most angels seem to have looked human when they appeared, and for all we know Gabriel looked like any other person in Nazareth until he opened his mouth and spoke God's message to Mary. Only then did the enormity of this day, this encounter, become clear. From this day on both heaven and earth were changed, because Mary said yes to God's astonishing proposition that God the Son should be born into this world, and that she should risk stoning to become his mother. Sometimes God's ways of doing things are way beyond anything that any sensible human could think up, and perhaps we need to keep that in mind when we wonder what on earth God is up to.

But it is Mary's response to the angel's message that has struck me afresh this year as I have pondered the familiar story over the last month. ‘Here am I, the servant of the Lord. Let it be with me according to your word.' The first part - here am I - should be familiar to us from Isaiah who responded similarly to God's call, although unlike Mary he did not know what he was letting himself in for. Mary had all the facts and her response is really quite staggering: we are not told that she asks for time to think it all over, or talk to her parents or fiancé about it, as would be the cultural norm; instead this 12 or 13 year old girl from a backwater village in a small part of the Roman empire quite simply says ‘yes' to God and risks all the consequences.

Some commentaries suggest that Luke is showing Mary as the first Christian disciple in this story. I want to be a bit more specific, given the history of the building in which we are gathered today. I can't claim Mary as the first Benedictine, because Benedict was not yet a glint in anyone's eye. But, whether he did it deliberately or not, I think that Benedict echoed Mary's response when he formulated his three Benedictine monastic vows of stability, obedience and conversion of life. For hundreds of years these vows shaped the lives of our predecessors in this cathedral and they are as relevant for us today, non-monastics that we are, as a framework for our lives.

Stability - the fidelity to stay put where God has called us, the refusal to run away when things get too hard - is there in Mary's statement ‘Here am I'. Given what the angel had just asked of her, it would have been so easy for Mary to run away either literally or emotionally, but instead she positions herself before God and declares herself open to God's unexpected intervention in her life. For us, stability means we don't try to escape from the place and commitments to which God has already called us, however green the grass might seem to be elsewhere.

Obedience is more than just doing what we are told, it is the recognition that we are not our own, we are not totally autonomous individuals and that ultimately we are God's. It is evidenced in Mary's description of herself as ‘the servant of the Lord'. Psalm 123 gives us a succinct description of the responsibility of a servant, ‘as the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress, so our eyes look to the Lord our God'. The image is of a dinner table where a servant's duty is to watch for the slightest lifting of the master's finger and to respond accordingly whether with more wine, to clear plates or to fulfil an errand. As servants of the Lord, our obedience is expressed in watching for and responding to God's call wherever we happen to be. It is a question of where our eyes are focused. But, as Jesus pointed out in one of his parables, obedience is not just saying we will do what is asked, but actually doing it. And in Mary's case she was called to a lifetime of obedience by this one response.

Conversion of life is expressed by Mary in her prayer ‘let it be with me according to your word'. It is openness to growth in holiness as God leads us. It is not change for change's sake, but focused commitment to live more godly lives as we follow God's lead, perhaps risking the new thing that God is doing in and through us. And it needs the balance of stability since without it, conversion of life leaves us open to unfocussed flittishness; but equally stability on its own can lead to stagnation and a refusal to grow. Here Mary's stability, ‘here am I', is coupled with the openness to go with change that God is bringing in ‘let it be with me according to your word'. How set in our ways are you and I? how open to ongoing conversion of our lives, not just our actions?

God's call to us usually comes in more subtle ways than an angel with enormous wings arriving on our doorstep, or dropping in through the ceiling, or however else we may imagine the annunciation actually happened. Thank God for the creativity of artists who have opened up so many possibilities, and probably we all recognise some as more true in our experience of God than others. But, this Advent when we pray for God to come among us and save us, perhaps the more demanding question is how we respond when God does come, as come God will. Some of you here today you may have a sense that God is coming to you at the moment with a new proposition that will perhaps turn your life upside down and ask of you openness to conversion of your whole life through this. For others, God comes to us through the familiar daily routine of our lives and commitments, asking us to see in them the raw materials for holiness and growth. Stability, obedience, conversion of life: these are tried and tested parameters for our lives as we follow Mary's example and respond with simplicity and openness to the God who is forever coming to us. ‘Here am I. the servant of the Lord. Let it be with me according to your word.'