Sermon for Sunday, December 24, Advent IV, 9am service
2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16 Psalm 89:1-4, 19-26 Romans 16:25-27 Luke 1:26-38
Particular Annunciations
Two weeks ago, Ken and I went to New York for two days midweek. Being in New York City was a little like being on another planet – so fast paced and tightly packed with people and traffic. To be fair, the City is just our being Americans at our most intense: a snapshot of our culture: so very 21st century consumer, so very self-absorbed, and so very trendy. So much of what Ken and I saw seemed to be about claiming identity – fashion, and style, image, culture, context. A whole crowded teeming city screaming, “Don’t you know who I am?!” to the universe, and feeling a little put out that the universe wasn’t stopping in deferent reply.
We happened to be in New York when I saw an image of the annunciation, this story of Gabriel appearing to Mary, depicted as if it were happening on a subway. The Rev. Barbara Crafton (Episcopal priest, theologian and art history buff) posted the image (on the site I often use for my daily prayers) that Wednesday because the text was assigned in the lectionary, but mostly because the trains were still running and people like us were still riding them, despite the attempted suicide bombing in the subway line under Times Square just two days before. The painting, created by Caroline Jennings in 2010, is entitled Subway Annunciation.
The image is of two people sitting very closely on the subway, it’s winter, they have on their winter coats. Mary has clearly been reading a book, which is now sitting next to her on the subway seat. Above the book, just over Mary’s right shoulder, we can see the dove descending, silhouetted against the black background of the train’s window. Gabriel is on Mary’s left, his face almost touching hers as if telling her a secret, or supporting her through a difficult time. There’s an intimacy between them you don’t see in most depictions of the annunciation.
[Caroline Jennings, Subway Annunciation, 2010]
But maybe that’s got something to do with the setting, they have to sit close to hear one another over the noise of the train, the seating has them side by side, squished together, cities afford so little personal space!
Crafton writes: “The traditional elements are there: Mary with a book, an offering of flowers from the angel, the Holy Spirit arriving in the form of a dove. Other things are a bit unexpected: the angel sits so close to Mary that I am tempted to say that only she sees him – in most annunciations, he rushes in from stage right. And, of course, they’re on the train.”1
But as Crafton points out, because the traditional elements are there, we know what this is, what we are looking at. We know what’s going on in the scene – and what’s at stake, even here on this train in this exchange between these two passengers.
At the end of her blog post, for the purists among us, Crafton includes a more traditional version of the annunciation as well, one by Fra Angelico, the Cortona Altarpiece, 1433. Yet even this painting has elements portraying the event in contemporary time, rather than attempting to set it accurately in the first century. For the point of the annunciation, the significance of the incarnation, the breaking of God into history, is that it becomes a HERE and NOW event. God exists outside time and beyond the tedious context of our mundane every day. Yet God chooses to step into all that and become part of time and place, to become one of us, to live in relation to us, subject to all that is particular to us.
[Fra Angelico, the Cortona Altarpiece, 1433]
But first, in order to do so, there is a moment of choice when it all hangs in the balance. Our Choice. This moment.
Which we hear about in this story today. We have Gabriel and Mary, and Gabriel and Zachariah before even that. As Gabriel appears as a messenger to Zechariah before he appears to Mary, saying the same thing: Do not be afraid.
He is known to us in this messenger role even before Luke’s Gospel, in the book of Daniel.2 Gabriel is the messenger of God who helps Daniel understand his visions and the situation of Israel within the larger unfolding drama of human history, and God’s acts of deliverance. So Gabriel has already played a central role in a divine encounter intended to disrupt not only the everyday life of an individual, but also to alter the circumstances of God’s wider people.3 Gabriel should start all of his conversations by saying “Do not be afraid…” His appearance is more than unsettling, he’s known for bringing news that upends everything, not only for the person to whom he appears, but for many, many others. When he appears, he begins his pronouncements with reassurance, “Do not be afraid,” and continues to explain the expansive nature of God’s hand in history. Basically, while this will happen through you, it is not about YOU…, or not just about you.
When Gabriel appears to Zechariah, to tell him about the child who will be born to him and Elizabeth, who will be the one to prepare the way for the Messiah, Zechariah has to be made mute so that Zechariah, priest of the Temple, won’t mess it up.
But when Gabriel appears to Mary, she has a voice, possibly for the first time in her life. (Note to self: even 2,000 years ago God was modeling what consent looks like. Over and against a culture which considered young women like Mary to be more property than fully human, God weighs in to counter that– as will God’s son in his ministry.) Here in this moment, Mary is empowered to speak, empowered to choose, not only for herself, but on behalf of the people of God. As a woman, she knows – it is not just about you, but about those you serve, those you love, those who will come after you, it’s about others.
Perhaps this year in particular, we understand this story better than before; as we have been sickened and disillusioned by so many powerful men who have manipulated and abused others, as if, they are somehow entitled to do so. Is it any wonder that God chooses the powerless? That God would choose the otherwise voiceless in society and say, “It’s up to you.” Will the powerless be lifted up? Will the hungry be fed? Will the poor be lifted high? Through you? Because the powerful would never give up everything to do something like that for others – much less the least of us.
God knows better than to approach the powerful. But the powerless, that’s a different story. “Will the hungry be fed? Will the poor be lifted high? Through you?” We know what that means, and we know that the cost of it to us personally pales in comparison to the immense possibility offered to everyone through God’s promises. And perhaps more important, we understand how to put our faith in God, rather than in ourselves. We haven’t been filled with the arrogance of the world of power and influence. This world has never offered us vast admiration or respect, position or authority. We don’t feel the need to bellow and beat our chest, “Don’t you know who I am?” For we have always known the world’s clear answer – no.
Is it any wonder that we respond when God reaches out with unconditional acceptance and love? That when God asks us to give of ourselves, values our lives, our possible contribution, and gives us a choice – that we might say YES. Whole heartedly. In the face of the world’s resounding no – we say YES to God, because God said YES to us, first. Yes, to enter history, our particular history moment in time. Yes then, and yes now.
Gabriel shows up even now; a familiar figure, breaking into our own context. In the form of a friend or an acquaintance, possibly even a stranger, but bearing the familiar message. “Do not be afraid… God who knows you, and loves you, sees how you, particularly you, are the key to this portion of the plan of God’s salvation.”
Can we imagine how we might be instruments of YES for God’s plan of salvation for the people of God, beyond US? Can we hear God’s invitation to us? Intimately particular to us, and about so much more than us.
Oh, Gabriel… hello. Okay, I won’t be afraid, not too much anyway. I’m listening. … Oh. You do know who I am. And through me, ME, the world might be blessed? The lowly lifted up, the hungry filled, mercy extended… right now, through me? …
Oh.
Oh, My God… yes.
- Barbara Crafton, The Geranium Farm, Two Annunciations, December 13, 2017. 2 Daniel 8:16-17 and 9:21-23
- Shively Smith, Commentary on Luke 1:26-38, Working Preacher, Dec. 24, 2017.