Luke 1:26-38 (NRSV Updated Edition)
In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.” Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.
~
"The mystery is that Jesus did not come into the world to compete with Caesar Augustus the way he competed against Brutus and Mark Antony or David competed with Saul. Jesus came to preach and live a totally different way of living than the way of Empire, a way not based on violent competition but on mutual support. Rather than inflict violence in humanity’s never-ending civil war, Jesus took the whole violence of all empires in all times on himself in the place of all those who have been and ever will be victims of Empire."
- Andrew Marr, Abbot of St. Gregory’s Abbey (Three Rivers, MI), blog post from 21 Dec 2017 (https://andrewmarrosb.blog/2017/12/22/the-throne-of-david-part-two/)
~
"When it we read on Christmas night the shepherds in the field being the first to hear and being told to go to see this sign given in the house of David, [we see that] God took the shepherd boy [David] and now he's going to come back announced and understood by shepherds. This is the lowliness of God, and God's, if you like, rejection of power ... [This is] the mystery of the coming in of the Lord, the Lord who is going to come in himself is going to be shown slowly and off stage, not in any of the expected places.
...
"There's this little phrase which I think we vastly underestimate: “But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be.” ... I want to bring out that the [Greek] word is actually a very very strong word, it means 'mega perturbed'. ... [T]ypically the place where [the word] 'troubled' comes up [elsewhere] is in relation to wrath. [For example] in 2nd Samuel there is a hymn which describes the earth being “troubled at the wrath of the Lord coming in,” the earth and the heavens actually being being perturbed in this way. It's the sign, it's how you react when wrath is upon you, that's the sense of trouble: what wrathful thing is going on here?
"You can imagine here is a young girl and the first reaction to the arrival of an angel is, “Wrath is upon me! How, oh what's going to go on, what's going to go on here?” So it says she tried to work out what on earth might be going on, this is a terrifying first reaction. So it's scarcely surprising, the very first thing that the angel has to say is “Do not be afraid!” And this is a vital part of the gospel. It's the difference between the expectation that the coming in of the Lord was going to be in some sense a wrathful coming in, a shaking of the earth in terror at the arrival of the lord, the king, and the angel saying, actually it's not going to be like that.
...
"Well, any normal maiden suddenly informed that she's going to bear a son will have had a good deal of reason to have been profoundly afraid of wrath. This is what happens if you are an unwed mother in an honor society, where these things can be taken to death very very quickly. This is it's extremely difficult for someone to learn that they're going to become, in the midst of all this potential for wrath, a positive vessel of God's favour and love.
...
"Just a word here about Son, “It will be called the Son of the Most High,” because when we think of the word 'son' we also think of the word father or mother, two separate persons. There's the father and the mother and then there is the son. But in the understanding of God it's understood that the Son of God is God's self. The Son of God is God's self manifest in human form. We would say manifest as a human. In other words, it's not some distant relative of the Most High, it is the Most High in person, is what we would say. That is what is going to come here, that's what the birth of the Son means: it means the human manifestation in real presence of the self of the Most High.
...
"Mary answers quite sensibly, “How can this be since I do not know man.” She wants to understand what's going on here. And the reply is to say no you are about to become the holy place of God. “The power of the Most High will overshadow you." This is how the power of the Most High was over the tabernacle. [The angel is saying,] “You are about to become the Holy of Holies. You are effectively the Ark of the Covenant,” and that is exactly how Elizabeth her cousin would greet her when she went to visit a few days later.
"So this is what we're being prepared for: the coming into the world of the Son, God's very self, in the Holy Place. And the virgin being taught to discover this is who she is called to be."
- James Alison, from video "Homily for the Fourth Sunday in Advent Year B" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPuLnfMol90)
[Source of link to Andrew Marr's blog post, and for analysis and discussion of all three of this week's lectionary texts, see: http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/advent4b/]
No comments:
Post a Comment