Good morning!
You’re beautiful with God’s beauty,
Beautiful inside and out!
God be with you.

Wonderful words I’m sure you will agree, but when spoken by a messenger from God they carry a very different significance!  Imagine how Mary must have felt on hearing those words “Greetings, you who are highly favoured! The Lord is with you”.

It’s quite hard for us today to imagine life as a young Jewish woman living in Roman occupied territory – Mary, like those around her, would have been brought up on stories of God’s deliverance from Egypt, of the great prophets, of King David’s lasting dynasty and the expectation that God sends messengers to declare his purposes. She would also have been familiar with poverty and the insecurity of living in a land that had been fought over for generations.  She would have had her share of hardship, seen the struggles of her people and must have wondered about the fulfilment of God’s promise to his chosen nation.  But her ready response to God’s messenger shows that underneath the reality of her life in the little town of Nazareth she nursed a faith that a Saviour would come and redeem them.  A Messiah had been promised by God.  And God would act!

In his book ‘Storytellers’ Andrew Brandon writes an imaginative story from Mary’s viewpoint: here is an excerpt:

As soon as I could string sentences together, my father sat me on his knee and taught me our genealogy:…the son of Heli, the son of Matthat, the son of Levi….
Nazareth was full of rumours of the Messiah. 

“Mary”, said my father, “learn their names and teach them to your children for a Messiah will come from our family.  And when he comes, he will turn he world the right way up and shake out all evil’’

‘What if I were to be the mother of the Messiah and gave birth to David’s greater son,’ I thought, and then I’d pretend to hold the child king in my arms.  Even in my daydreams he was as heavy as the world and I staggered under his weight.

My childhood passed quickly, almost too quickly, and I was suddenly a woman.  Dreams dwindled and the world closed in on me demanding surrender and conformity.  I was no longer a child chasing dreams across the hills, but a daughter of Israel: a fertile field to be sown with sons and daughters.  I accepted the restraints of puberty without protest, but the poetry of wonder lived on.  Down in the depths of me I was free.  I was Mary, daughter of Abraham, daughter of Judah, daughter of King David, daughter of Heli…daughter of God.  Hallelujah!.  But only my heart was free.  In every other respect I had made my peace with the world and accepted my place in it.

My parents arranged the marriage with Joseph and we were betrothed.  Some other girl would rock the Messiah in the cradle of her womb; some other age would see Him.  Some other girl from some other age!

And then the angel came!

Of course, these are the musings of one individual - we actually know very little about Mary but what we read from the Gospels, but it is good sometimes to invite God to shape our imagination and meditation in such a way as this.  What I find remarkable about our reading from scripture today is that Mary did not appear to question the divine announcement, just ‘how’ it was it to happen. 

She was betrothed to Joseph, which necessitated a period of time which lasted a year before marriage, a binding contract that could only be broken by divorce.  She could not have been unaware of the stigma attached to such an action, nor to being a single parent and suffering almost certain banishment from her home and family.  Yet her simple heart response was: “I am the Lord’s servant, may it be to me as you have said”.   How was she able to do this?

Mary trusted God and her willing response suggests the gift of being able to dream of a better future in the face of the realities of the present.  When she offered her life to God for him to use she could not have known then how his plan would unfold, but she dared to believe, to dream dreams – to hope for change, and to believe that God could, and would, initiate it.  Her ‘yes’ was received in heaven and God came down among us, putting his mark on his beloved creation and reclaiming his lost people.

Each Advent, we hear the wonderful familiar scriptures that announce God’s intervention and fulfilment of promise – words that carry us forward to celebrate the incarnate word, born in a stable in Bethlehem, to celebrate God coming amongst us and immersing himself in his creation, showing us who he is and leaving us with his portrait while we wait for the fulfilment of his mission.

We continue today, like so many before us, to wait in expectation for God to act.  But for some, that expectation can be dangerously dimmed as a very real struggle goes on – the struggle to reconcile God’s intention for a world driven by love with actual experience – senseless violence and suffering with whole nations dissipated through poverty, and dreadful catastrophes that seem to snatch the weakest and the poorest.

Many individuals declare a powerlessness to do anything about it and retreat, living a blinkered life, accepting the situation as a fact of life.   But we are not just impotent individuals - we are individual’s known and loved by God and when we respond to that love we see differently.  We look with Jesus’ eyes and see the possibilities for transformation - possibilities for forgiveness and reconciliation – possibilities for re-creation.

God is active in the world today, shown amongst those who dare to say ‘yes’.  Dare to believe that we can play our part in growing his Kingdom.  It is time to bring our Christ-light out from under the cover of confusion and let it shine into our dark and troubled world.  We need to become visionaries, dreamers of a better life that can be the destiny for all.  Not a wish list, but a vision that is the result of our trust in God and the work of the Holy Spirit. 

We heard in the OT reading today of King David’s wish to build a permanent house for God.  God’s response was to build a permanent house for David, and through that promise has made us a Holy lodging for his Spirit.  He has never left us in the dark about his intentions.  His plan has not been set aside nor swept away by our lack of understanding, and he hasn’t abandoned us! 

God’s plan resides in the hearts of his children and he calls us to have courage to hold that vision when all we experience seems to contradict that desire.  We are his ‘foretellers’ and ‘announcers’ of a message that is good news, that transforms, that can offer hope for change - that can give life.   

‘Nothing is impossible for God’ and we cannot know what results our ‘yes’ to God will achieve.  Therefore, let us demonstrate our hope, be expectant for God to act say as Mary –  ‘I am your servant, may it be to me as you have said’.

Amen