Cameo Appearance

This is the one Sunday each year that Protestants are comfortable talking about Mary, and truth be told, that’s probably not a true statement for all churches as I heard from a Lutheran pastor a few weeks ago that they’d never use blue in their church – “it’s Mary’s color!”

Poor Mary. The only mistake she really made was believing, kind of, what she was told.

I found this short piece by Madeleine L’Engle that Mary was not the first woman the angel Gabriel visited – but was the first to say yes.

And how unsurprising it would be for a fourteen-year-old girl to refuse the angel. To be disbelieving. Or to say:

“Are you sure you mean—

I couldn’t anyhow—

I’d be afraid. No, no, it‘s inconceivable, you can’t be asking me—

I know it’s a great honor but wouldn’t it upset them all, both our families?

They’re very proper, you see.

Do I have to answer now?

I don’t want to say no—

But I can’t commit myself to anything this important and I should ask my parents and I should ask my—

Let me have a few days to think it over.”

Sorrowfully, although Gabriel was not surprised to have it happen again, the angel returned to heaven.

How could Gabriel not have expected those reactions? Fear is where we live—and although in this season we broadcast hope, love, joy, and peace – we’re kidding ourselves if we don’t blanch a bit when the angel admonishes Mary – “Do not be afraid!” How can we not be afraid? We can’t help it – and it’s something we know how to do!

Fear is a large part of our inner landscape and commands a sizable parcel of our emotional map.

What if the economy doesn’t recover, or our savings are wiped out, or we can’t afford our house, or my parents outlive their money, or my father’s surgery doesn’t go well, or they don’t find out what’s wrong with me, or our child gets sick, or my partner leaves me, or I can’t handle the stress and anxiety?

And Gabriel says… “Do not be afraid!”

Parker Palmer, an author on Quaker spirituality said recently:

If you learn your inner landscape well enough you realize yes, there's a piece of turf in there called fear. And you can choose to stand there if you want, but there are other places in that inner landscape where you can stand as well if you work at it. You can stand in a place of hope. You can stand in a place of appreciation of beauty.

 

You can choose where you stand within yourself if you know your inner landscape, where you stand as you move toward other people, the news of the day, the events of your own life, the situation of the moment. Those are actually choices that you can make. They're not always easy, but they're impossible if you're not reflective about your own inner dynamics.

There's no perfection in that. You screw up. But you can also stand in a place of self-forgiveness, which is also somewhere in there, and cut yourself some slack and try it again.

We are bombarded with “annunciations” all day every day – from the moment we begin our morning routine with the radio in the background proclaiming snarled traffic, skittish stock markets, frustrated occupiers, mixed sports reports, political candidates raising and falling with the tides, and the occasional heart-warming story of someone doing something decent. It shouldn’t be a surprise when we miss something important. Navigating the highways and byways of our lives, to say nothing of our “inner landscape,” takes far more time, energy, or stamina than most of us have. Simply getting through the day wears us out.

But Mary’s not overwhelmed by Gabriel’s annunciation, she’s perplexed: “How can this be?”

Awareness that we’re not fully in charge or our lives or destiny is rarely a constant, and ebbs and flows. Startling news, either good or bad, is cause for a time out – an aria during which to mull emotion and feeling before continuing our story.

Mary’s aria is simply, “How can this be?”

Her puzzlement, her perplexity is a much needed break in the action to adjust to astonishing news, to question whether or not her trials and tribulations, or God’s magnificent promises, are for real, and to contemplate potential repercussions or unintended consequences.

But that’s almost laughable because really, isn’t life more or less a free-fall of unintended consequences?

“How can this be?” is a reverberating refrain that reminds us just how much we don’t know. These may be the four most honest words in the Bible. They may be the clearest statement of faith ever uttered.

How can this be? We admit, first of all, that we’re clueless. It means wandering into the wilderness of our inner landscape, to turf that’s uneven, uncertain, and rocky. Step one, then, is admitting the obvious: we don’t know everything.

Step two is in two parts: a-neither does anyone else, b-but God does.

We’re in trouble the moment we think we have a lock on the truth. When absolutes creep into our vocabulary that profess exclusivity – we have really screwed up. But as Palmer reminds us, after doing so, we “can stand in a place of self-forgiveness, which is also somewhere in there, and cut [ourselves] some slack and try it again.”

That’s what Mary did. She expressed her questions and her doubt, and then Mary tried it again and she decided to take Gabriel at his word and uttered: “here I am, the servant of the Lord.”

Honor yoked with struggle. Not hard to see in her face an expression that somehow communicates, all at once, wariness and curiosity, caution and boldness.

Such is the stuff of a cameo appearance by Gabriel – a messenger with words of such import they are prefaced with “do not be afraid.”

And although our friends from the Roman church have elevated Mary to a status mostly out of reach, we still have a few things in common with the Mother of our Lord:

• At this point in the story, none of us, Mary nor those here today, have ever met Jesus face to face and all of us are living off of the hope of a promise. Mary is told what’s coming, and we live lives in the dawn of the hoped for return.
• Mary was an insignificant person, really even to give her status of “person” in her culture is a stretch, from a backwater, non-descript land that mattered to no one, a young, unmarried woman of no estate or notice. Why would God bother with her? Why would God bother with us? But God did bother with Mary and for whatever reason; God chooses to bother with us.
• Mary was unsure, had doubts, even questioned and resisted and frankly, while consistently depicted as faithful, understanding, and loyal – never really figured it all out, yet was a “servant of the Lord” till the end. If those descriptors don’t apply to us, then I’m not sure we’re doing this right. Honestly – my spiritual life is marked by doubts, questioning, and resistance, yet my faith compels me to strive for understanding and loyalty expressed as service.

It’s possible, even probable, that the angel Gabriel has yet to make a cameo appearance in our lives – and I’m not sure we’d know it or hear it with the cacophony of competing annunciations raining down – but of this I am sure: We, too, are among God’s favored ones – simply because we are all children of God – not because of special status or position or worth or wealth – but because God calls us God’s own.

And I’m sure that God calls us out of a place of fear and prods us to explore places of hope and peace and love and joy in our inner landscape. A fearful people eschew gratitude and generosity and grace – hallmarks of followers of Jesus. God seeks for us the fullness of life, exploration of all landscapes, knowing that we travel those places not alone, but with God and one another.

And lastly, I’m sure that our only vocation is the same as Mary’s: “Here I am, the servant of the Lord.” If all of this doesn’t find tangible and visible expression in how we live our lives, how we view the rest of the world, how we spend our money, allocate resources, write church budgets, engage our leaders, or care for the ignored and the overlooked – friends – it’s all carols and candy canes – meaningless tunes and empty calories – so grab your plant, let’s go home, and shop some more.

God came into the world in a particular time, at a particular place, in a particular person – but that event is not limited historically for it has been replicated in ways great and small throughout the ages – including this one.

Isn’t it possible that God is in the world at this particular time, right now; at this particular place, on the corner of 11^th and Market; and in the particular person…of you?

How can this be?