Let it be with me according to your Word.
Advent. A time of waiting. A time to prepare. We have identified at least two prayers this Advent to give some sort of shape to our waiting and our preparations: Come, Lord Jesus. And then this from Maggie Ross: Lord, give us mercy to bear your mercy. This Fourth Sunday in Advent suggests to us another prayer from that moment in time that makes Advent possible. This, of course, is the Annunciation-when the Angel Gabriel appears, or perhaps better, is suddenly perceived to be with a young woman named Mary.
My new favorite portrait of this moment is a sixteenth century painting by Lorenzo Lotto that shows God in the clouds sending Gabriel into Mary’s kitchen, with a clearly alarmed cat dashing away from the angel, and Mary, with her back to Gabe, who is on one knee with a lily seeming to make a proposal, as Mary seems to appeal to the viewer, her hands palms-up facing us, perhaps inviting us into the experience of the very surprising holiness that has taken hold of the entire scene! So that the angel is not only proposing to Mary, but also to the viewer, you, me, all of us who dare to hope, pray, prepare, and wait for the arrival of Christ in our lives. [i]
I suspect Lorenzo Lotto’s scene is closer to what it must have been like than the traditional placid, quiet, orderly depictions with which we are all too familiar. This is the moment. This is the starting point. For without Mary’s response, we would not be here at all. For indeed, she was asked, not commanded, to participate in the most extraordinary way to exceed all human expectations. After being invited to bear a child of God, God incarnate, she becomes, as our Orthodox siblings call her, the Theotokos, the Mother of God, and calmly replies, “Let it be with me according to your word.” [ii]
Maggie Ross, reflecting on the Annunciation, writes that she suddenly realizes “…that the bread made God and the God made bread with which we live so intimately in the Eucharist was possible only because of her response, her acceptance; that the Sacrament is the earthly and tangible culmination of her saying, “yes.” Let be with me according to your Word. [iii]
To sit with this story, we need not only let go of our own very real human expectations, but also to let go of any and all concepts we have of God and try to begin to understand God’s concept of us – who, and what, and how we are meant “to be.” We may recall that night when Nicodemus went to see Jesus in the dark of night, only to be told of his need to be “born again,” or “born from above.” Poor Nic cries out, as Mary does at first, “How shall this be?” Just as John the baptizer’s father Zechariah cries out, “How shall this be?” Just as Abraham’s and Sarah’s laughter when they learned that he, age one hundred, and she in her nineties, would have a son!
“How shall this be?” it turns out, is a central dimension of faith and just what God’s concept of us is all about. As we read in Hebrews, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” [iv] It turns out it’s those things that are ‘unseen’ which are most central to faith. Surely, Mary never saw, let alone imagined, what she was being asked to do: to bear Christ to the world. Do we begin to understand that what God asks of Mary is what God asks of us all? That we are to bear Christ to the world in all we say and all we do.
This leads Maggie Ross to conclude, “This is the answer to Nicodemus: that in order bear the Word of God, to enter the Kingdom, we must indeed be born from the Spirit, not for the second time in the womb of our natural mothers, but continuously in the love of the Mother of God that brought forth her Son, and at the same time, like her, to bear him as well. Mary, then, is my mother in this second birth, just as she is Nicodemus’s mother.” [v] Mary becomes the Mother of us all.
Mary then rushes to see her cousin Elizabeth, who in her advanced age became the surprising and surprised mother of John the baptizer. Elizabeth understands. What ensues is one of the very first song texts of our tradition which we call the Magnificat, or Song of Mary. The Greek text is unclear as to whether Mary or Elizabeth made this pronouncement, but it is so vitally important to understanding who and what we are meant to be that we read it twice on this Fourth Sunday of Advent. It is so central to what it means to be a follower of Christ, that every household is expected to read it every evening as appointed in our Prayer Book for Evening Prayer. It is a revolutionary creed really. It speaks to turning the world right-side-up again: it speaks of scattering the proud, casting down the mighty, lifting up the lowly, filling the hungry, and sending the rich away empty. All of which is wrapped in repeated mention of God’s everlasting mercy! As Jesus asserts in the Beatitudes, “Blessed are the merciful!”
One wag once suggested that the Beatitudes are attitudes of being, what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ: merciful, peacemakers, righteous, pure in heart, the salt of the earth, the light of the world. [vi] Long ago I heard a French hymn by the poet, Didier Rimaud. It’s called Les Arbres dans la Mer – Trees in the Sea. It is based on Jesus teaching his followers how with just a tiny bit of faith as small as a mustard seed, one can plant trees in the sea, help the blind to see, the lame to walk, and set prisoners set free. The English text of the poem goes something like this:
1
Look! The Virgin has a child,
A man is born of God,
Heaven is among us,
the people are no longer alone!
It would take only a bit of faith
and you would see trees in the sea
Beggars who are kings
The powerful overthrown,
Wealth is shared!
2
Look! Water turns into wine,
Wine becomes blood,
Loaves multiply,
People are no longer hungry!
It would take only a bit of faith
and you would see trees in the sea
Deserts full of flowers
Harvests in winter
Granaries are overflowing!
3
Look! the lame can walk
the blind see the light of day
the deaf are delivered
the people are no longer in pain!
It would take only a bit of faith
and you would see the trees in the
sea
Executioners without work
Rusty handcuffs
Prisons are useless!
4
Look! The cross is empty and bare,
Your graves are pierced,
and the man stands
the people are no longer afraid!
It would take only a bit of faith
and you would see the trees in the
sea
Guns buried
Armies discarded
Mountains dancing!
I believe this is the vision Mary and Elizabeth mean to share with us every day. This is what it means to take that first step into God’s kingdom. I believe were we to read the Magnificat, the Song of Mary, at least once a day, this vision can become not just a part of us, a part of our Community of Love, but a reality for all the world. For this we wait. For this we prepare. This is Advent.
It all begins when we join with Mary and say, “Let it be with
me according to your Word.”
Lord, give us mercy to bear your mercy.
Come, Lord Jesus, come…
[i] https://www.etsy.com/listing/976761420/annunciation-angel-young-mary-god?gpla=1&gao=1&&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=shopping_us_ps-d-art_and_collectibles&utm_custom1=_k_CjwKCAiAgoq7BhBxEiwAVcW0LNLhcv56CLFHGbzacxyIuAyH1hRDAcEU-xdSXnR1I2Zwkd4zCoqzyBoCW8AQAvD_BwE_k_&utm_content=go_21506855477_167985809239_716809480969_pla-314954651933_c__976761420_5328323151&utm_custom2=21506855477&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAiAgoq7BhBxEiwAVcW0LNLhcv56CLFHGbzacxyIuAyH1hRDAcEU-xdSXnR1I2Zwkd4zCoqzyBoCW8AQAvD_BwE
[ii]
Luke 1:38b
[iii]
Ross, Maggie, The Fire of Your Life (Paulist Press, New York:1983) p.19.
[iv]
Hebrews 11:1
[v]
Ibid, Ross p.20
[vi]
Matthew 5:1-16
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