Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”
I have always held a special place in my heart for Luke’s Gospel. His stories are so rich with all of the things I can easily understand – details about places, sights, relationships, sensory details and human emotions. It’s always felt accessible to me, more accessible than perhaps all of scripture. And I have a new insight as to another reason.
To me, Luke’s storytelling is more humanly compelling. I can absolutely put myself in these stories, imagining how I’d respond. Jesus is placed in a very mundane, human world. Jesus is grounded in his fully-human nature. In other sections of scripture Jesus is shown as his fully-divine self.
I can more easily connect to the fully human stories. I get fully rooted in the humanness of Jesus, and Mary and then, WHAMO, they do something that’s spectacularly grace- and love-filled. It’s the relationship between our mundane humanity and God’s grace that makes me weepy.
Take this morning’s stories. Among other things, we hear about Gabriel visiting Mary and Mary visiting Elizabeth. Mary is frightened at the appearance of an archangel. Who wouldn’t be? She questions how this pregnancy will occur. I’m sure she worried about what it would mean to her betrothal. And as young as she was, sorting all of this out would have been hard.
And yet, Mary said yes. Here I am, a servant of the Lord. Let it be with me according to your word. It’s Mary’s frailty and humanity that make her response so powerful. I marvel at Jesus’ divinity; I can relate to Mary’s humanity. And I can relate to Jesus’ humanity. It’s only through their humanity that I can relate to God’s miraculous love and mercy. It’s only through my humanity that I can relate to God’s miraculous love and mercy.
No comments:
Post a Comment