4Advent Year A 23 December 2007

*

Thoughts (just thoughts) on Miriam of Nazareth…………

The Angel Gabriel to Mary came ……. perhaps Gabriel also said (as the choir will later inform us), maybe the angel also said, ‘Mary did you know, that your baby boy would do many things, including making your life more difficult.

Circa: Nazareth in the time we would call four BC. According to different sources, an archangel called Gabriel, once or more than once visits Mary. The angel’s name means ‘the messenger of God.’ Mary shook; she knew this visit wasn’t for afternoon tea.

I was in Israel, Ben Gurian airport, to be specific, just outside the capital city of Tel Aviv. I had to travel north and east to Bethsaida. You know, not far from Nazareth, Tiberius, Capurnum and Cana. We had to stop in Jerusalem, passing by Bethlehem. No time to visit then, though, we had to move on; my job began the next morning.

Have you ever been somewhere, anywhere away from home and the rules suddenly changed? Maybe you were traveling and the flight you were on was cancelled, or the presentation you had prepared then had to be altered over the phone. Maybe you rented a car, took directions and headed off, trepidatiously, into the unknown. Scary … even if everything had worked out well in the past, what of now and this new scenario?

We’ve all done this at one time or another. His one required my maneuvering through the Middle East of which I knew little. We’ve all followed directions to new places, trepidatiously or otherwise. We’ve done it many times; however, sometimes the movement forward requires more of a leap of an added faith than at other times. There are also times when the leap requires more movement than at other times. It’s a dimension of faith that requires action and the unknown aspects of the proposition require courage.

Faith starts with an invitation to come or a desire to go; one could say that God is well aware of the retroactive process. We’re all aware, as well, that sensing the desire and even moving on it does not always require a full knowledge of the issues entailed or the destination we are moving towards. Many a journey starts in this way.

As Mary found, God’s beckoning was perplexing; being on a ‘need to know basis’ often requires more trust than any of us have. Did this child Miriam consider why God spoke so much of change and yet, at the same time, a traveling home? Did she question what there was so much about giving away and letting go in this message? Did she understand the consequences at her age? Did every one of her instincts pull another way?

I think, no I know that our obstacle is fear of the unknown, but that reality may come with more experience of life and an accumulation of years. We have so many fears: loss, strangers, and change, dying to name only a few. Each of us also, at some point in our lives …if we are true to ourselves and our becoming … each of us realizes that faith isn’t just a pleasant add – on. Rather, it is a journey whose first step may be known but whose second and third steps lie around the corner and out of our range of sight. We instinctively know that the turn around that corner may be perplexing, challenging, troubling and even dangerous. We will require both guidance and gumption to continue on.

My guess is that Mary’s ‘yes’ to God began in just this way. Yet, Gabriel’s visit left her troubled and even skeptical. Was this real and if it was, did that angel see me in a way I never saw myself … and what does that mean?

The instructions were troubling too. When she thought about it, the process of living into this offer could include shame and being sent away. If Joseph didn’t believe all this, why the Law could require that she be stoned to death or, at best, put away. If she weren’t, it meant a birth far from home, exile I a hostile country, a brief lifetime of watching her first born soar for a while and then crash … terribly. Did she really have the courage to move into this unknown, or had she just taken a step that would take her where she didn’t want to go. And what of Joseph? Would he come along?

Mary’s ‘yes’ to God began and continued in this way and I often wonder what her response would have been had she seen the whole story. However, Mary’s ‘yes’ does mean that she is not the pale icon that became the art of the Church. A simple, obedient, and gentle young girl would not have survived and God knew that. My guess is that Michael Angelo got it right with his ‘Pieta.’ He depicted a muscular, courageous woman who wore work boots and was strong enough to hold her dead, adult, child and still have faith. She had the courage to go into the unknown and she raged against the attempted slaughter of the light.

Yet, did a teen-age girl know all this; did any of us know at the age of twelve, fifteen to seventeen?

The Angel Gabriel to Mary came ……. perhaps Gabriel also said, ‘Mary did you know, that your baby boy would do many things, including making your life more difficult.

God sent the massage of God to one whom God knew could handle the situation. Gabriel came to a young woman who was strong with courage and fithful in trust.

For all that her baby boy was to do and become required a strong mother.

AMEN
The Rev. Denise P. Mantell, Rector