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4th Sunday in Advent: December 21, The Rev. Dr. Barbara Schlachter
Luke gives us no idea of what Mary was doing when she was interrupted by the angel Gabriel. Was she sweeping the floor, making bread, tending the garden? We are not told. Medieval artists like to depict her praying, reading, or perhaps sewing or weaving. It was not until I went to Nazareth, her village, that I learned of another story, and this is the one that resonates with me. She was on her way to the village well, carrying a water jar, when the angel appeared to her on the path and blocked her way.
This makes sense for two reasons. Wasn’t she after all, in the tradition that has great things happening at wells? Didn’t important things in the Old Testament happen at Jacob’s well, like getting wives for the patriarchs? Don’t we treasure the story of Jesus meeting the woman at the well and promising her living water? Water seems important here, as an archetypal symbol of all feeling and particularly love.
I also like the message of the angel coming as an interruption to her daily work. Every day of her remembered life she probably went to that well. Water carrying was a chore that she and the other girls and women of her village would have done, just as it is still a daily chore for many girls and women in parts of our world today. It is the reason why many girls cannot go to school, because the journey to the water is a long one in many places. It is not only a daily task but an all-day task. It is hard for us, who can turn on the tap and get clear and safe water, to really understand what it means for a girl or woman whose life revolves around this burdensome task.
Perhaps Mary was an accepting young woman who understood this was her lot in life. Her water source was not so far away, and so perhaps it was not a big deal even if it was a daily deal. But then on the path something different occurred that not only disrupted her from getting her water that day, but disrupted her life from then on out.
A baby does that to you. When our son was baptized his godfather called him a “divine disruption.” Oh, my was that prophetic.
Mary’s son not only disrupted her life, but he disrupted the life of the country and ultimately the world, and he is still disrupting lives.
Are you someone who is irritated by interruptions? If you are doing something intently, with an idea of how much time you have to give the task and then someone comes along and needs something else from you—or maybe even just wants to chat for a minute—is it irksome?
Some of us handle interruptions better than others. But if there is one thing we can count on in life besides change, it is interruptions. Sometimes we get to go back to our task, and sometimes, it is a forever interruption that makes that task irrelevant or changes it irrevocably. Like a baby or a medical emergency or a flood or an economic downturn—or whatever.
Sometimes we can see the hand of something larger at work right away—like a relative who hasn’t visited for a long time coming at a particular time of need—but sometimes we are hard pressed to figure out how an interruption could possibly have anything to do with anything good or with God.
Certainly when I was diagnosed with breast cancer, I couldn’t see a single thing good in that. Yet God has shown me again and again how good things have come because of that. I am more patient (believe that or not!); I have more understanding of illness and its devastation; I have learned that I am called to be a healer.
I am sure you can point to times when you were disrupted or interrupted in some major way from the plan that you were following, and hopefully you have been able to find the good in it.
We make plans because we would be directionless and anxious without plans. Yet, I like to quote John Lennon, “Life is what happens when we are busy making other plans.” Or “You want to make God laugh? Tell him your plans.” I believe it was Milton who said, “Man proposes, God disposes.” Or one that I like: “We suppose, God knows.”
I am not sure that God dislikes our plans. But they do give us sometimes a false sense of being in charge of our lives. And so we will be disrupted many times until we get it that God is in charge. And when that happens, we will begin to look for signs that perhaps God has a different plan, not think that our plans have been thwarted, how awful.
Mary was willing to let God interrupt and disrupt her life. Her yes to God’s different plan was the way to our redemption. She becomes a personal model for us, but also her understanding of the significance of what she was asked to do provides us a way to understand that God was doing something for people far beyond her life and ultimately even her time and place.
Her prayer, which we know, which we have said as the Magnificat or Song of Mary, is the large picture of what God was doing by asking her to bear a child, the child Jesus, whose name means, “God saves.”
Mary prays to God:
You have shown might with your arm and confused the proud in their inmost thoughts.
You have deposed the mighty from their thrones and raised the lowly to high places.
The hungry you have given every good thing while the rich you have sent away empty.And this continues to be the way God works, in the reversals, surprises, upsets, interruptions of lives, of history itself.
God had sent many prophets to try to help people understand how God means human life to be lived. Finally, he realized his words needed to take a new form: to become enfleshed, incarnated. So God asked Mary to bear the Word in the form of a human being who would live a life that would show people what God’s love really looked like, how we were all to live our lives.
And Mary, bless her heart, said yes. So, it is now up to us, to say yes. Yes to bearing God in the deeds of our lives, in the love we lavish on those close to us and those far away, on the mercy and justice we work to make manifest on this earth. It is up to us to say yes to the interruptions, to see the disruptions of our lives as ways to bring God alive for someone else, just like Mary did.
May you have such joy as you make yourself a home for God this Christmas.
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