Let It Be

A Sermon for the 4^th Sunday of Advent (RCL B) 12-18-2011

Offered by Nathan Ferrell for Trinity Episcopal Shared Ministry

Texts:              2 Samuel 7:1-11,16; Canticle 15; Romans 16:25-27; Luke 1:26-38

Themes:         Mary, Theotokos, change, discomfort
Title:               Let It Be

Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Strength and our Redeemer. Amen +

Before you sit down, my friends, I will ask you to do one thing. Please move forward one pew. OK? Before you sit down, everyone please move into the pew in front of you. Just one pew forward, that’s all. OK?

There. You did it! Excellent work! Now, was that a bit uncomfortable? Was my request an inconvenience? Good, because today is our time to reflect together upon Mary, the Mother of God, and especially upon how God so completely interrupted and inconvenienced her life.

Our entrance hymn this morning was an old classic appointed for the Feast of the Annunciation on March 25: “The angel Gabriel from heaven came, his wings as drifted snow, his eyes as flame.”

I love this carol. It is quaint, lovely, pious poetry from an old Basque carol, but – to be honest – I doubt very much that this is how it actually occurred.

White wings, flaming eyes, blazing light! Is this how angels really appear?

Well, what about that admonition from the Letter to the Hebrews which calls us to practice hospitality “for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it” (Hebrews 13:2)?

This is more likely, I think. Angels – those messengers of God – are more likely to come among us without fanfare, without flaming eyes, to walk among us as strangers.

I picture Gabriel walking into Mary’s home looking like an ordinary Jewish man, but as a stranger.

And in that part of the world, women have long been discouraged from conversing with strange men, lest they bring dishonor upon their family by suspicion of wrongdoing.

The message brought by this stranger is itself a strange one, and troubling. What is worse still, it was quite inconvenient.

To be pregnant while still engaged to be married? Before the wedding itself? And to have God as the Father of the child? Who could ever believe her story?

This is not at all how Mary had pictured her life to be. 

Gabriel had said that she had found favor with God, but this angelic news was difficult and troubling and uncomfortable.

This should be no great surprise, of course, because that is God’s specialty, after all.

God is the Inconvenient One.

God is the One continually interrupting our lives. God is continually inconveniencing us with plans and goals and purposes which we have not yet chosen for ourselves.

But that, my friends, is a good thing, a very good thing indeed.

Because the basic struggle and challenge of our lives is learning how to deal with change.

Why is it that the ordinary, instinctual human response to change seems to be resistance and anger?

We live in a world, and in a universe or a multiverse, that is constantly changing. Everything is in motion; everything is continually shifting and moving and changing.

Long ago, the Greek philosopher Plato spoke of God as “the unmoved Mover”, the unchangeable Being that set everything else in motion. But given what we know of reality today, it is more fitting to think of God as “the Moving Mover”!

Everything is in flux and motion, and in the midst of all of this movement, God is present, working out plans and purposes that we cannot comprehend.

It is an illusion for us to cling to those few things which only appear to be unchanging around us, as if we can hold onto them and wrestle some security for ourselves out of them by the sheer force of our will!

But this is a lie. The Gospel calls us to truth, and the truth is that everything is changing continually and we have no control over that whatsoever.

What we do have control over is ourselves, at least, this is what we are working on!

There are very few of the major changes of life that are within my control, but I can control how I respond – how I think and feel and act in response to these things.

There is another song that comes to my mind when I hear this story of the Annunciation, a song that is very different from the hymns and carols of the church. It was first sung by a young man named Paul. Most of you know it. You can join in, if you like.

When I find myself in times of trouble,

Mother Mary comes to me,

Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.

And in my hour of darkness,

She is standing right in front of me,

Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.

Let it be, let it be, let it be, O let it be.

Whisper words of wisdom, let it be.

(If you don't know this song,...ouch! You need to hear it. Look here: Let It Be on YouTube)

Now, if you know the story, Paul McCartney is not singing of Mary, the Mother of God. He is speaking here of a dream in which he saw his own deceased mother who visited him and gave him a word of comfort during a difficult time.

But when I hear this song, I can’t help but to think of our Mother Mary and of her response to Gabriel in the midst of her own time of trouble: “Let it be.”

“Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word” (Luke 1:38).

And here, my sisters and my brothers, is our example of one who lives in accordance with the truth.

We speak of Mary as the Blessed Virgin, the Mother of God. All of the Church acclaims her as the Theotokos – the God-bearer. David desired to build God a house on earth, but she is the divine Tabernacle, the true Temple, in which God came to dwell on the earth. She is the new Eve, who overcame, by her trust and confidence, the disorder wrought by the ego-centered choice of the first Eve. It is her body which was taken up by Jesus and through which the world was redeemed.

She is worthy of honor, worthy of praise. But don’t misunderstand! Mary had a choice to make.

God brought drastic and sudden and unexpected change into her life. She did not ask for it. She was not preparing for it. And when it came, she had a choice to make. How would she respond to this change?

We are like her. God brings change into all of our lives  - sudden, drastic, unexpected. It comes into all of our lives, and rarely – if ever! - do our lives progress the way that we had envisioned.

When change is brought to us, we have a choice to make. How will we handle it?

We can complain. We can fight the change. We can pout. And so we can continue on in our spiritual immaturity, clinging to the falsehood of our own desire to control.

Or we can choose to see in each change an opportunity to grow, a chance to become more than what we are now.

When confronted by the unwanted changes in life, we can in fact choose to respond with trust and confidence, like Mary, and so to give praise to God who fills the hungry with good things.

May it always be so among us and among all who are preparing to greet the festival of Christ’s birth with joy. Amen.