Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.
If you believe in the events of the Bible, either literally or figuratively, and if you believe in averages, that’s why we celebrate the feast of the annunciation today. In the Gospel of Luke, we hear how the angel Gabriel went to Mary to announce (root of the word annunciation) Jesus birth. Gabriel said the Holy Spirit would come upon her, and she would conceive God’s son. Today, March 25 is nine months before December 25, so it’s as good a date as any to celebrate Mary’s ‘yes’.
To be clear, I’m not suggesting and not interested in debating what conception looked like, what Gabriel looked like, if the sprit was a big scary dove. I’m not concerned with the details of how. I’m grateful that we celebrate this day; it’s obscure and a little contrived, particularly for folks in less liturgical traditions. But it is one of my favorites.
Mary, the young teen girl, is met by an angel. Mary, the most unlikely mother. Most informed estimates put her around 14 years old. I’ve parented 14-year old girls. They’re not always someone that, unlike Mary, God would find favor with. Nor are they as agreeable as Mary.
To me, today isn’t a celebration of Mary’s greatness, but rather of God’s grace, and Mary’s normalness. It wasn’t Mary’s greatness that made her say yes, any more than it’s my greatness that does diddly. It’s God’s greatness. And having said that, Mary is pretty admirable, great or otherwise. With God’s grace, this normal teenager said yes. Here am I. Let it be with me according to your word.
In my experience, people who’ve felt called to ordained ministry or other church leadership take great joy in stories like this. We affectionately refer to them as “call stories”, where God speaks and some mere mortal responds. Samuel, Hannah, Mary, Paul. We love these stories. It makes us want to tell our own call story. When I felt called to ordained ministry, it felt so clearly from God, and I felt so clearly wiling to say, Let it be with me according to your word.
And I did not, and do not feel that sense of God’s call when I was married, had or adopted kids, took jobs, deal with current struggles. This morning, I’m thinking about how any child of God should spend time thinking about how they’ve been asked to say yes. How God has called them to their current ministry. Big or small. In the church or not. In the privacy of one’s home or in the world. If I believe in God’s ever-present mercy, I should be hearing and seeing the angel’s greeting “Greetings, favored one!”, in every invitation. And I should be contemplating Mary’s response, “Let it be with me according to your word” in every response.
Call stories are a gem of the Bible. It was only after nearly a decade of formation and study that I saw the relevance in my life. But the stories are so spectacular. I pray today that we can hear them in our lives all the time, and see ourselves as these normal people called by God to do exactly what God is seeking. Let it be with us, according to your word.
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