20/12/15 St. John’s, Buxton Advent 4
Micah 5: 2-5a Hebrew 10: 5-10 Luke 1:26-38
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.
That’s the opening of Denise Levertov’s wonderfully illuminating poem ‘Annunciation’ where she turns our usual ideas on their head. Traditionally God uses Gabriel to tell Mary what she should do but the poet unpicks the last verse of the reading and sees the Annunciation as being as much about what Mary says to God as the other way around. It’s about the compact the two make together, it’s about what can be opened up when there is trust.
In these first verses she sets the scene and brings out the familiar elements - lectern, lily, angel. Then she introduces us to the characters She says a little of what Mary is like - and the characteristic the poet begins to bring out, and that she will come back to is a very particular courteous courage.
She speaks of God too. This is a gracious God. A God who takes Mary’s integrity with absolute seriousness. He will not go beyond Mary’s consent. He is content to wait for her. He will not override her humanity and part of that humanity is her right to choose rather than be forced. As the poem goes on Levertov talks of how Mary unknowingly prepared for this moment and will expand/dwell in the verses. But first she draws us into the poem.
Mary and her experience are unique and though we have been reminded of a scene familiar from many pictures she doesn’t want us there simply as observers as though Mary were a person detached from the rest of us, and so she asks,
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.
Here is the recognition that most of us - on a very different scale - will have possibilities presented to us - opportunities will be offered, choices will have to be made. Sometimes we’ll miss them, sometimes we’ll take them but not with Mary’s wholeheartedness, and sometimes we will make the choice in a way that still feels solid and good when we look back on it. God is the same for us as for Mary - patient, waiting, not smiting but taking our integrity, our choosing seriously. Taking us seriously enough to hear us if we say no to him.
Often we do and so opportunities are missed, gates do close, pathways do vanish. But, we might say, if annunciation had come in the form of an angel then, of course I’d have got the message. But I’d bet it wasn’t as obvious as that for Mary either - how did she recognise Gabriel as God’s messenger?
She had been a child who played, ate, slept
like any other child–but unlike others,
wept only for pity, laughed
in joy not triumph.
Compassion and intelligence
fused in her, indivisible.
How does this help her recognise Gabriel as God’s messenger? She wouldn’t have seen it as preparation for anything - but moment by moment she lived Godwards. The way she lived, the way she thought, the way she made all the small trivial decisions - they all built to this. The courage Mary shows at the Annunciation is the courage of trust - not abstract trust, but trust in the God who has been her life long companion. She has spent her childhood, knowingly and unknowingly looking Godward, learning to know Him, to trust herself to Him so when Gabriel appears what he says rings true to her. As she grew, as she weighed things up she was developing what Austin Farrer called a ‘truth seeking intelligence’
‘After all the detection of shams, the clarification of argument, and the sifting of evidence - after all criticism, all analysis - we must make up our minds what there is most worthy of love, and most binding on conduct, in the world of real existence. It is this decision, or this discovery, that is the supreme exercise of a truth-seeking intelligence.’ (Keble and his College, Austin Farrer)
Farrer’s starting point as he looked Godward was academic but with very practical intent. The end to which Mary bent her compassion and intelligence was to know what/who was trustworthy and true so she could then give herself to what she found.
How can we be ready to hear God’s voice to us? The same way as Mary - live Godwards.
Her whole way of life prepared her to make the choice presented to her - her experience of God was that, though standing before Gabriel she could not yet have all the resources she was going to need, she could not know what she was going to need, yet her experience of God persuaded her that as would be her need so would be His provision.
But the decision hasn’t quite been made yet.
Called to a destiny more momentous
than any in all of Time,
she did not quail,
only asked
a simple, ‘How can this be?’
and gravely, courteously,
took to heart the angel’s reply,
the astounding ministry she was offered:
to bear in her womb
Infinite weight and lightness; to carry
in hidden, finite inwardness,
nine months of Eternity; to contain
in slender vase of being,
the sum of power–
in narrow flesh,
the sum of light.
Then bring to birth,
push out into air, a Man-child
needing, like any other,
milk and love–
but who was God.
The time of realisation, of knowing choice - as much one can ever fully know - and then Mary’s courage and dignity and grace in the saying of yes to God. This is Mary answering God accepting the cost, knowing that any cost asked of her will not be artificial, it’s not a test, God doesn’t need Mary to prove her love to Him. The cost Mary will pay is real, but she is only asked to pay it because there is no alternative if ‘God with us’ is to happen. They are co workers, this work they do together. She accepts it and we see her raised to her full stature. Our annunciations will be small beer compared to this.
This was the moment no one speaks of,
when she could still refuse.
A breath unbreathed,
Spirit,
suspended,
waiting.
She did not cry, ‘I cannot. I am not worthy,’
Nor, ‘I have not the strength.’
She did not submit with gritted teeth,
raging, coerced.
Bravest of all humans,
consent illumined her.
The room filled with its light,
the lily glowed in it,
and the iridescent wings.
Consent, courage unparalleled, opened her utterly.
The moment when Mary said ‘Yes’ ; the moment the world changed; the moment Emmanuel ‘God with us’ began.
What do learn about her? Great courage, great trust on her part, but not blind faith. She trusted that the God she was saying yes to is good, which was a discovery she had made as she grew up, in the ordinary. She had lived looking Godward and knew who was asking her to bear this impossibly large burden. Impossibly large but Mary said ‘Yes’ and gave herself whole heartedly to what God asked of her.
What do we learn of God? He waited on Mary to make her choice. Was this not an impossibly high stakes gamble on His part? If Mary had said ‘No’ He could not have compelled her without denying Himself.
What we see here is trust that goes two ways. Mary trusted God and God trusted Mary, even though she was no more God than we are. She had her frailties, her misunderstandings, her sins, but God trusted Himself to her - His plan and His person. What does this say to us? It is not an aloof, cold God we worship , but one who has in the most whole hearted, full blooded, all or nothing way said His ‘Yes’ to us. A God whose intention is not to dominate us but to bring us into a willing co-operation with Him. Co workers in God’s kingdom.
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