Fourth Sunday of Advent (Christmas Eve Morning)

2 Samuel 7.1–11,16; Romans 16.25–end; Luke 1.26–38

On the last Sunday of Advent, we turn to Mary of Nazareth to remember the moment that defined her life. The moment she said Yes to God, and conceived the Christ child. Particularly this year, it may seem either entirely appropriate or entirely jarring to do so, catapulting ourselves back forty weeks on what is also Christmas Eve. But we do. We step back into this moment, because if Advent is a time of anticipation, watching and waiting with the prophets for the birth of Christ, then it was in this moment that Mary’s became the crown of all prophetic expectations. She now awaited one who was both her Redeemer, and her own firstborn child.

The first words most Christians address to Mary are the greeting of the angel at the Annunciation: Hail Mary, full of grace: the Lord is with you. We come to know her as more than an historical figure. We speak to her. We come to know her as our contemporary. If we take the prayer seriously, we might well be as amazed as she was when she faced the angel. The body, nowhere to be seen: but the person, right here beside us…

As a contemporary she can be hard to form a clear impression of. She is a person of such contrasts. You have the astounding humility: she is perplexed when the angel honours her, and she subsequently calls herself the servant of God. Yet, in the same breath, she offers us the courageous Fiat, ‘Let it be with me! Here I am!’ This is the same bold, prophetic voice we hear in the Magnificat, celebrating the God who casts the mighty from their thrones. She has fire as well as humility, courage and modesty.

Mary came from our world, and yet from another experience of the world to many of our own. She lived in a small town. In Nazareth today, there is a church built over a well that dates back to the time of Mary; it is believed to have been the only well of the first-century town. When I visited last year, our guide told us that archaeologists estimate that it could sustain a community of maybe four hundred people, amounting to a few extended families. Mary would have lived a fairly simple communal life there, probably knowing the name of every person in Nazareth.

No wonder she is “stirred up” by the angel’s greeting. Why is he honouring her, she of the tiny rural settlement, and the unknown family name? It is what the angel says, not what he is, that astounds her. She is told she is to bear the Son of David, that her child will redeem her people and inherit what was promised to her ancestor as an eternal kingdom. Never mind King Herod, the then monarch; never mind the Roman Empire, that tower in history that defined so much of her world—it is the Child to come from her: he will be the Eternal, he will be the One who will change the world and keep changing it, as other towers of civilisation come and go.

And here is where the prophetic becomes profoundly personal. He will keep changing the world, because he is also the Son of God. The Face of God is being born in history, and he will be her baby, her son, she’ll name him ‘Jesus’. If other prophets bore the Word of God on their lips, Mary is to hold him in her womb. From the moment she says Yes, she expects God to come, not simply to her, but through her into the world. As she waits, she participates in bringing the promises of God to fruition.

This is the relationship that the Church now shares, with Mary’s Son. To be sure we await him to come from beyond us, out of the heart of the Father. We also know that he has already graced us, and we wait for that identity to emerge, for Christ to be “born” in us. In that sense we expect him to come both to us and through us into the world. Such a profoundly intimate connection to the Sacred is how he keeps changing the world, because it’s how he transfigures the lives of women and men within it.

So we look to Mary to guide us, to lead us into the likeness of her Son.

One can only imagine, in that small, no doubt very close-knit community, the fear that must have been mingled with joy at that prospect. She was to conceive by the power of God, by an absolute miracle. Was she more amazed and awed by the honour of the invitation, or wary of what awaited her at the village well? She could have been shunned. She could have been pitied. Or, she could have been believed. She was blessed with a trial, the prospect of life beginning, not simply with wonder and excitement, but also with shadows of  misunderstanding and pain.

Hence the profound courage of those words: Here I am! Let it be with me according to your word. It is that profound and courageous Yes to God that is the essence of her sanctity. It anticipates the voice of her Son in Gethsemane: Not my will, but your will be done. That is faith, that is courage, and that is, ironically, the beginning of freedom. It means that whatever comes next, whatever happens to us in the world, God is holding us. Mary doesn’t simply “have” courage. She finds courage in God, the knowledge that God is holding and moulding her future.

Characteristics that we might otherwise describe as opposites, come together in Mary.

This is all to the good.

We do not need to make Mary “stand for something”, in order to stand beside her, awaiting the birth of her Son in us. He did not make us to be either courageous or modest. To be either reflective or decisive. To be either prophetic or humble. When we find our centre in God, these qualities come together. We begin to see how all the elements of our nature can be reconciled in the service of God. Mary never expected all generations to honour her, but she responds to that honour with grace. When we say, ‘Blessed art thou!’ she doesn’t hold her chin out, she bows her head back at us.

So, when God comes knocking in our lives, may the courage of Mary embolden our own, may the words of Mary be on our lips, and may Mary herself be beside us, praying that it may be with us according to God’s Word.

Mthr Kathryn Bellhouse