MLC, Dennis Township. NJ
Advent 4, Dec. 21, 2008
2nd. Samuel 7.1-13. 16,18,21. Lk.1.46b-55, Eph.
2.19ff
Like Mary, David also was interrupted in the midst of his
young life, and granted participation in God's work in history.
We know a great deal more about David, including his sins.
Yet David is beloved by God, and models for us an honest relationship with God.
In today's passage, David gets the bright idea of building
a house for God.
The prophet Nathan initially thinks this is a good idea,
but subsequently hears otherwise from the Lord.
There are two aspects of Nathan's subsequent words to David
that bear emphasis.
The first is that the Lord who chose and anointed David,
and traveled with David through all his trials, is a God who cannot be
enclosed in a human house. God is on the move.
And secondly, in an ironic reversal, Nathan tells David
that God will build him a house!"
What a lesson in humility!
We think we do things for God, but all the time we are in
the position of receivers.
David's humble response names the reality: "Who am I, O
Lord God, and what is my house, that you have brought me thus far? ... 7.18
“Because of your promise, and according to your own
heart, you have wrought all this greatness, so that your servant may know it"
(2 Sam 7:18, 21).
The house that God builds for David is, of course, the fact
that Jesus is descended from him.
So, in the midst of busy preparations for Christmas, the
story of the angel Gabriel's visit to Mary strikes a counter-cultural chord.
This first "advent" is not a matter of preparation but of
interruption.
There is nothing about Mary in the Bible
prior to this unimaginable interruption in her life.
Artists’ depictions show her as beautiful,
young,
submissive,
devout,
welcoming Gabriel's news, with bowed head, sometimes
kneeling.
Yet for all we know she was headstrong and free spirited;
for all we know she was fat and pimply.
Mary's "estate" prior to the advent of Christ irrelevant,
because God simply chooses her for his purposes.
Much as he chose David in our OT reading today.
What matters is that the angel comes to her, and disrupts
her life,
opening her to a world of joy as well as pain.
Rembrandt painted many images of the annunciation.
A favorite is a very rough sketch in pen and ink. The angel
leans over Mary, taking her hand in a comforting gesture.
But Mary's face is turned away,
she has fallen out of her chair onto her knees.
She looks anguished. And well she might be.
The angel's news can only mean bad news for her….
ostracism, rejection by her family and her betrothed, inevitably a life of
poverty on the margins of society.
Yet listen to the words the angelic messenger whispers
insistently in her ear, even as she turns away
"Hail, O favored one, the Lord is with you!"
Our English translations don't get the meaning of "favored"
- it is a verb, not a noun, and it should be translated: "you who have
received grace."
Anne Lamont a writer and poet from CA.
gets this perfectly when she writes that it means, "you
have been loved for a very long time."
That's the good news of Christmas.
We have been loved for a very long time.
This has nothing to do with our appearance, or piety, or
even faith.
It has to do solely and simply with the fact that God
loves.
And because God loves,
God interrupts our lives and takes hold of them,
so that each of us may bear Christ in the world.
It is built in Mary's womb,
in the Christ child who also lives in us,
and in and through whom we also are built into a holy
temple,
a house in which God dwells
amen
(Eph 2:19-22).
