Luke 1:26 - 38
Suppose you are a woman in a society dominated by men; you are a Jew in an area ruled by Romans who sort of hate you; you are a teenager in a society where old people have a lot more authority than the young; and you are a peasant in a society where there really isn’t any hope for getting out of that class. And now a being who calls himself an angel tells you, doesn’t ask, tells you, that you will give birth to a son who will rule over his father David’s kingdom forever. The only thing keeping you from running out of the room screaming is that the angel has told you that you have found favor with God and that you shouldn’t be afraid.
One of our fellow parishioners told me that the phrase “Do not be afraid” occurs 115 times in the bible. I read another statistic that says this or some phrase like it, like “fear not” can be found exactly 365 times in the bible. Some translations use the phrase, “be not afraid” and one has 70 such instances. However you count, even though there are a lot of commandments we can find in the bible, this seems to be by far the most common.
God speaks directly or through his prophets throughout the Old Testament; he also sends angels there as well. “Don’t be afraid” or something like that, usually precedes a command to do something frightening or impossible; and is followed by the reassuring statement that God will be with the person. For example, in the book of Jeremiah the prophet is told to go out and preach to the people; when he balks because he is young and not prepared, the hears, “Do not be afraid of them for I am with you to deliver you says the Lord.”
God is always telling people not to be afraid, and is always promising in some way or another that He will be there to support them, to help them through the crisis, to make something good about a desperate situation.
So God through his messenger commands Mary not to be afraid. Usually being told not to be afraid is not all that helpful. But Mary, who was at first troubled, now demonstrates that she is not afraid. After being told the destiny of the child she is to bear, she doesn’t say, “That can't be. I’m not rich, Joseph is just a carpenter, what you are telling me seems highly unlikely, if not impossible.” She merely asks, “How can this be, since I have no relations with a man?” When the same angel went to Zachary, his was a response of fear: “How can this be? For I am an old man and my wife is barren.” Kind of like the answer Mary didn’t give, right? Zachary, a Jewish priest who has been praying for a child all his life, exhibits fear that his life will be changed. His answer to the angel is to put forward excuses. And in the context of the rest of the story, Zachary will have nothing more to say until the son is born.
And the angel answers Mary’s question. Her response is not one of skepticism; it’s total affirmation: “May it be done to me according to your word.” In other words, if this is what God wants, let’s get on with it. Maybe Joseph will desert her, maybe the people of the town will stone her, because that’s what you do to adulterers; certainly life would utterly change for her, and soon afterwards Mary visits Elizabeth and speaks those lines of the Magnificat, the longest speech in the bible by a woman, describing the kingdom her Son will bring about. If you ever wondered what the kingdom of heaven is all about, read the song of Mary.
Mary’s life did not magically change; in fact, she probably had more tragedy than most of us, especially those moments when she watched her son being executed in the most cruel way the Romans could think of. I think it’s interesting that nowhere in the bible does it say that Jesus appeared to his mother after his death. All the movies I’ve seen about the life of Christ have a scene where he appears to her, but I wonder if maybe he never did. Certainly he wouldn’t have to, because Mary probably needed nothing to make her faith stronger than it already was; she was still hearing the words, “Have no fear” and still saying in her heart, “Keep doing to me what you said you would do, because I trust you.”
I think that’s the lesson Mary would like us, her sons and daughters, to carry away on this fourth Sunday of advent. For some of us, one or more life-changing events have already happened. For others, they still might come. Through our baptisms you and I are assured that God is always with us -- that’s what Emmanuel means -- and Saint Paul reminds us that if God is with us who can be against us?” So in those moments that threaten to change your life, listen for your own angel, and obey the command, “Do not be afraid” and respond with Mary, “Do to me what you said you would do. I am yours to do with what you will.”
