1-1-21 - A New Years Wish

You can listen to this reflection here.

Poor 2020. It started out great. Such an auspicious set of numbers, suggesting perfect vision, the doubling of multiples of fours and fives… And now one of the most loathed years in history, when it seemed that everything that could go wrong, did. Repeatedly.

We do know, don’t we, that it’s not 2020’s fault? And yet, what rejoicing, even relief we feel with the turn of that calendar, and the first writing of “2021.”

As we savor the hopes of this new year, this new set of 52 weeks and 365 days, here are some wishes for you and for me:

That we work no more than we rest and play.

That we buy no more than we need.

That we give away more than we think we can.

That we open ourselves to the discomfort of relationship with people who think differently than we do.

That we come into deeper relationship with the natural world, cherishing and protecting its life.

That we learn to expect blessing from a God who lavishes love on us.

That we deepen our essential relationship with Jesus/Y’shua, who makes God’s love real for us.

That we allow the Spirit of God/Y’shua to truly empower us to believe and do more than we can ask or imagine.

We do not know what 2021 holds, but we do know that if our sense of well-being rests in our relationship with the living God, and not in our circumstances on a given day, it will be a year of grace and the peace that defies understanding. And then we will be agents of that peace.

I wish you a Happy, Hopeful New Year!

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12-31-20 - God's Plan - Or Adjustments?

You can listen to this reflection here.

A family forced to flee across the border in order to keep their son safe from violence: this part of Jesus’ ancient story is as up-to-the-minute as the latest news cycle. This part of Jesus’ story is often overlooked, yet it surely resonates with the millions in our world who have been torn from their families and birthplaces by geo-political realities, vengeance and violence. This is a Syrian family, a Salvadoran family, a ghetto family.

This is a dark topic on which to end our year, but perhaps right on point for a year so marked by darkness and terror. So let’s turn our focus from the reasons for Joseph and Mary’s flight to the hand of God in ensuring Jesus’ safety. This prompts a tricky question: did God always intend that Jesus spend his early childhood in Egypt and end up in Nazareth, as Matthew – ever seeking to link the details of Jesus’ life to Israel’s prophecies, no matter how obscure – would have it? Or does God adjust to human choices, inviting us to follow the new route as it unfolds?

If we hold to a strong view of free will, believing that God gives humankind the free exercise of will, then we must also affirm God’s voluntary non-interference in the exercise of those choices. I believe the biblical record, certainly the accounts of Jesus’ life, bears out this view. Herod had a choice not to pursue his murderous campaign. Judas had a choice not to betray. Pilate had a choice not to condemn. Even Jesus had a choice, as we see in his agony in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Where God intervenes, it seems, is in the aftermath of our choices, offering comfort and guidance into new choices that can bring healing and hope, even redemption as we move through the consequences of human will. As I have often been reminded, God does not prevent the messes – God shows up in them. There could be no greater “mess” than the brutal death of God’s own son; yet look at what God brought about three days later.

As we turn from this year when so many of the consequences of human choices hit us, one after another (remembering that even pandemics and forest fires and floods, and certainly racism are rooted in human choice), we can see even more clearly the Good News in this story. God’s shepherding Jesus’ family into exile, and Joseph’s choice to agree to this divine instruction, allowed God’s plan to be carried out. Jesus got to Nazareth in the end, whether or not that was always intended to be his home town.

And God continues to make adjustments to God’s plan in our lives. Millions dead of Covid-19, many preventably, was not God’s plan, not the God who is Love. Lives, careers, educations, relationships massively disrupted are not God’s plan. The persistence of racial discrimination, economics and politics are not God’s plan.

What is God’s plan is us: our willingness to make ourselves available as agents of God’s adjustments to the plan; our desire to be filled with God’s Holy Spirit and attentive to the Spirit’s leading; our capacity to carry the Spirit’s power and make visible God’s love. Where are you being invited to do that?

2020 may have been a year when the messes overwhelmed us, but God is still showing up in right smack dab in the midst of the messes, bringing hope and healing. This new year will not magically undo the messes – it just offers us another 365 days to allow God to bring redemption through us.

I want to offer my deep gratitude to you for your reading and responding to these offerings - I love what God is doing with this far-flung community. Water Daily continues to be my own offering of love and Spirit and you are welcome simply to receive. If you wish to support the ministry that supports my work, feel free to make a donation to the Christ Churches here, selecting Open Plate and indicating "Water Daily" if you have the chance to leave a note. 

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12-30-20 - The Frightened King

You can listen to this reflection here.

Ah, sweet little lord Jesus, tucked away in a manger, asleep on the hay… Well, sleep while you can, little buddy. For you, as for too many babies in this world, this story is not so sweet. Mom and Dad are far from home complying with Roman law, administered at the point of a sword. And if the Romans aren’t bad enough, their puppet, the Jewish King Herod, will soon hear of your birth – and he doesn’t behave well when threatened.

We turn now to another passage appointed for Sunday, in which the infant Jesus and his parents become refugees in a strange land. 

Now after they [the magi] had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.’

Few things are as frightening as taking power. Once you have it, you have to worry about it being taken from you. Herod heard from some foreign visitors that they’d seen celestial signs of a “king of the Jews” having been born. Well, he was the king of the Jews, wasn’t he? And he hadn’t had any new offspring. How seriously was he to take these clowns from the East?

According to Matthew, Herod took this threat seriously indeed, calling together all the advisors and prognosticators he could muster, interrogating the magi themselves and directing them toward Bethlehem. If they found something there, he’d know about it. If they didn’t, he could relax… for a little while.

Herod is only the first of many human rulers to be alarmed by Jesus. That’s what happens when we become attached to human power. We can forget the God who entrusts us with leadership in the first place. Our world is full of Herods. And what do Herods do when threatened? They slaughter children and wipe out communities, and they never, ever feel safe.

How are we to respond to these terrified and terrorizing figures? Few of us are in a position to confront directly. But we can pray for, and pressure our governments to stand against tyrants. And we can wield the power that so fills despots with fear – the power of Jesus, of whom Simeon said, “He is destined to cause the rising and falling of many in Israel.” Wielding the power of Jesus means refusing to seek human power ourselves. Power over others always makes human beings prey to the power of evil.

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., among others, knew that. In his practice of non-violent confrontation he invited those with human power to unleash their worst - and as they did, they revealed their inhumanity. The wounds they inflicted were real, but they gave away true power with every blow. We are not finished learning those lessons.

In his earthly life, Jesus refused to be drawn into the power game. In seeming to yield to human power, he modeled the strongest power the world has ever seen, power that overturned death and the source of evil itself. We who bear his name are invited to subvert human power by committing ourselves to non-violence, to reconciliation, to praying for our enemies, to making peace. That’s power without fear. That's Jesus' Way of Love.

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12-29-20 - A New Star

You can listen to this reflection here.

I don’t know how one looks at the heavens and discerns the significance of a new star, but our magi seemed to have had that ability: 

In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, "Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage."

They must have been acute observers of the night skies to notice a new star. We now know that a new light in the sky can signify the death throes of a star, its light only becoming visible to us long after it has ceased to be. That’s not how our magi would have seen it, I suspect – they saw a new and wondrous light, so bright it had to be of great import, telling of a new king.

A pinpoint of light. There are days when this world can seem so dark that the light of Christ is no more than a tiny point. There are those who find it completely irrelevant, who claim his star flamed out years ago. That’s not how our magi would have seen it, I suspect – nor how we are invited to see it. With the eyes of faith, and our experience of God, we know that that pinpoint is the merest echo of the vast presence of the One who is light itself, energy in its purest form.

At Christmas, we celebrate the dawning of a new star, the “Bright Morning Star,” one of the names by which Jesus is known. And we claim that Jesus was that vast presence, unknowable to our human senses, who made himself knowable in human flesh, the One who said, “I am the light of the world.”

That One also told his followers they were to be lights for the world. We are to be reflectors of that star. Our spiritual work in this life is keeping our mirrors clean and de-fogged, the better to reflect the radiance of the Bright Morning Star.

Do you feel anything dimming your radiance today? Are you under the shadow of a feeling or a memory or a loss? How might you identify that, and offer it to God in prayer? How might we experience the Holy Spirit as glass cleaner, making us more radiant?

This star we celebrate is ancient, and yet ever-new. The darkness we’ve experienced this year will not automatically vanish with the turning of the calendar in a few days. It’s still up to us to bear Christ’s light, to shine more and more brightly with the radiance of Christ’s splendor. That’s way more than a pinpoint of light in the darkness – that’s a light that obliterates the dark.

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12-28-20 - Star-Chasers

You can listen to this reflection here. 

Next Sunday we will still be in the Christmas season, but our gospel reading is an Epiphany story (no time to stretch it out – by the second Sunday in January, Jesus will be all grown up and getting baptized…) We will encounter those mysterious wise men from the “East,” who followed the star so far from home – right into our pageants and crèche sets.

Where did Matthew hear this story that has come down to us in the nativity narratives? Did Luke not hear it, or not include it?

And who were these star chasers? A new light had appeared in their night sky, and their interpretations suggested a new king had been born for the Jews. What had these people to do with the Jewish people? We do not know that, or where they came from, or how many they were. We can reasonably assume that their names were not Caspar, Melchior or Abednego, or whatever the third guy is said to have been called.

Why were they willing to travel so far to offer obeisance to a foreign king? What was it about that star? Its brightness? Its sudden appearance? Some astronomers think a super nova was visible in the heavens around that time, and that this is what the magi saw. (I once read such a book – The Once and Future Star; here’s a link, though I can’t tell if it is the same book.)

Why did these men care about a king for the Jews? Did the star they saw signify great power? Did they want to be the first to get in his good graces? The gifts they are said to have brought are of extremely high value and very symbolic: gold as treasure; frankincense, a resin prized for its scent; and myrrh, also a fragrant resin, from which ointment was made for anointing bodies for burial. These are gifts for a king indeed. What did they think when they found a mere child? Matthew only tells us that knelt and worshipped him and offered the gifts they had brought. 

What do these visitors signify for us? How do you find your way into this story?
Do you feel like one who is seeking and has found, or is still on the road hoping you’ve read your guidance correctly? If you heard about Jesus, would you travel to see him? What is the most precious gift you might offer him?

We can start with our time. As we begin another round of Jesus stories, we might invest more deeply in getting to know Him in these stories. That means not only reading, but spending some time contemplating, meditating on the story, discerning who you most identify with in that tale on a given day, asking Jesus to be real for you as you allow the story to usher you into prayer.

When we truly find ourselves in Jesus’ presence, we have no need to look further. Perhaps that is why those magi, for all their wealth and knowledge and sophistication, knelt and paid homage to this small child. As unlikely a king as he appeared to be, they knew they had found the Real Thing. There was no need to look further, only to bask in his presence, offer what they had come with, and take the long way home, their hearts full, their longing satisfied.

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12-26-20 - Word Made Flesh

You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.

How do you take your theology? Straight up or with a twist? Abstract or concrete? Philosophy or story? The gospels are flexible enough to incorporate many learning styles.

On Christmas Eve, we are steeped in story, personal and intimate, sweeping and glorious, each element a rich vein of symbol and language to speak of how much God loves us. And then, on the first Sunday after Christmas, in Episcopal churches we go to the prologue of the Gospel of John, which is as abstract as a love story could possibly get.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Right away we are invited to suspend our literal mindedness (“how can something be with God and be God?”) and enter a swirl of words that convey a truth. What does “Word” mean? Most likely “logos,” translated as “word,” means something closer to the “mind” or the “primal thought” of God. Does that make it more or less confusing?

That first paragraph tells the whole story – of what was before we were, of creation, of life and light, and light overcoming darkness. In theological language, we see the doctrines of God, Creation, Incarnation, Salvation – all in a few short lines.

But on the Saturday after Christmas, who is thinking about theological doctrines? Some of us are cleaning up or eating leftovers. We may be enjoying another day with family, if we were able to safely gather, or just resting. I hope none of us is taking down Christmas decorations, as we have a full eleven more days of Christmas to celebrate. (That siren you hear is the liturgical police ready to pull you over….)

If you want to take a little devotional time today, read over the passage several times, slowly, and see where you get snagged. If something is confusing, take note. If something is pleasing, read that part again. What is the overall sense you come away with? What is the heart of the passage?

For me, the heart is “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.”

The story of God, so far away, so holy, so “other,” moving into our neighborhood and settling down so that we can draw near – that’s a story that never gets old. I feel frustrated in how to convey it as Good News to a people for whom it has become hum-drum, and to others for whom “God” is entirely irrelevant, and in the midst of so much global pain and trauma – yet I believe it is the heart of the gift Christians have for the world. I will continue to try to get inside that mystery and discover the “Word made flesh” who wants to know me and be known by me.

However it is that you best comprehend the story of God’s amazing love and desire to be close to you, I hope you are both shaken and stirred.

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12-25-20 - Merry Christmas!

You can listen to this reflection here.

A BLESSED FEAST OF THE INCARNATION TO YOU!

No post today - there will be a Water Daily tomorrow.

I'm sending a gratitude for you, along with a heartfelt prayer that your Christmas is a joy, whatever the circumstances this year.

Perhaps this year the words my favorite Christmas carol, It Came Upon a Midnight Clear, resonate for us, especially the last verse:

It came upon a midnight clear, that glorious song of old
From angels bending near the earth to touch their harps of gold
"Peace on the earth, good will to men
from heaven's all gracious King"
The world in solemn stillness lay to hear the angels sing

Still through the cloven skies they come
with peaceful wings unfurled
And still their heavenly music floats o'er all the weary world
Above its sad and lowly plains they bend on hovering wing
And ever o'er its Babel sounds the blessed angels sing

O ye beneath life's crushing load, whose forms are bending low
Who toil along the climbing way with painful steps and slow
Look up! for glad and golden hours come swiftly on the wing
O rest beside the weary road and hear the angels sing

For lo! the days are hastening on, by prophet seen of old,
When with the ever-circling years shall come the time foretold
When peace shall over all the earth its ancient splendors fling,
And all the world send back the song which now the angels sing.

They are still singing... can you hear them?

Blessings,
Kate

12-24-20 - Why Is This Night Different?

You can listen to this reflection here. The Christmas story is here.

It’s safe to say that, for many of us, this will be the first Christmas Eve in our lives that we do not bundle up, pile into cars and head off to church for a joyful, chaotic worship service. For many of us, church will be coming to us instead, zooming right into our living rooms. I feel so strongly that my congregations need to worship together this year, instead of masked, distanced and fragmented, not singing carols in nearly empty buildings, that I’ve had candles and consecrated wafers delivered to every household for a unifying element as we gather online. We pre-taped our pageant on a farm in October, and when the carols roll around, we can all mute and sing to our heart's content in our Covid bubbles, and then unmute again.

Welcome to Christmas Eve 2020! Will we miss the familiar routine, or will we find ourselves discovering this amazing story in a new way precisely because it comes to us differently? It may help to remember that that holy, not-so-holy night was unprecedented for every one of the characters in it.

Mary and Joseph never dreamed that she would be giving birth in a stable, warmed by the breath (and stench?) of farm animals, in a town far from home.

Those animals probably wondered at these intruders, and the terrible noises that one was making, and then the greater noise emanating from the small one.

The shepherds, drinking on their hillside, blitzed by a celestial son et lumière show, could never have anticipated the racket made by a multitude of heavenly host, singing praises to the Most High God – or the news they told of a savior born in Bethlehem that very night.

I can’t guess at what angels think, but maybe they were enchanted by the chance to visit this earth they’d heard so much about.

Oh, and Jesus? He left the safety of his mother’s womb, having already left the safety of his Father’s realm – everything was new for him, the all-powerful now made completely vulnerable.

Like the magi following that star, we don’t know what we’ll find, only where we’re headed. I pray that this story breaks open in new ways for you tonight, that you are touched and awed by the overwhelming love God has for you. For above all else, tonight is a love story, one that's never been told in just this way before.

We hear the Christmas angels their great, glad tidings tell…
O come to us, abide with us, our Lord, Emmanuel!

You are welcome to join my service tonight online at 6 pm (Here is the link - passcode LPWay; or watch on Facebook)

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12-23-20 - Shepherds and Angels, and You

You can listen to this reflection here. The Christmas gospel is here.

The stable wasn’t the only center of action that original Christmas Eve - God had a wider canvas in mind and a bigger cast. The holy child arrived, we fade out on the manger for awhile and shift focus to the fields outside Bethlehem, to a bunch of shepherds “keeping watch over their flocks by night.” Flocks were valuable assets, and nighttime was perilous – predators, thieves, all kinds of dangers lurked in the dark.
 
Sheep herding was not a glamorous profession in Jesus’ time. Shepherds were considered the dregs of society, dirty, crude, unkempt, the last group on earth you’d think would be the first to hear of a cataclysmic, world-transforming event. But our God of surprises doesn’t see in those categories. The least likely became the first – does that sound familiar?
 
And not only the first to hear; also to see. These "low-lifes" were the recipients of a celestial visit, a host of angels. The highest possible order of being, shining with the glory of the Lord, and rough-hewn riffraff, brought together on that bright hillside to share joy.
 
In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.” 
 
Think God was up to something? Think God is still up to something? A group of people of whom no one expected anything good were entrusted with the best news of all – the birth of the Messiah, a savior, the Lord. It became their news to tell, backed up by the most amazing light show ever seen. To be the bearer of news everyone wants to hear – that’s quite a status upgrade.
 
Of the many messages in this strange tale we tell over and over, here is one: that no one, no kind of person, no category of person is insignificant in God’s eyes. In God’s Life the most marginalized become the center of the story. 
"Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom God favors!"
 
Who is on the margins of your life, or your community’s life? Can you invite someone into the center? Can you honor the least likely person by entrusting her with this amazing news? Maybe you feel like you are the least likely person. Know this: God has chosen you, to share God’s most precious gift. Acknowledge that you are so loved, and share it with someone else.

For a little while that night, there was peace, there was joy, there was amazement and wonder, shared between shepherds and angels, earth and heaven. I pray that for us tomorrow night as we hear or tell the Magnificent Story again, as we look for those at the edges and invite them into the center: Peace. Joy. Amazement. Wonder. O come, let us adore him!

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12-22-20 - No Room In the Inn

You can listen to this reflection here. Today's gospel reading is here.

Have any other two sentences ever given rise to so much drama for so many centuries? While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

That’s it, all Luke says. But because he mentions an inn with a no-vacancy sign, every Christmas pageant has to include an innkeeper, and every nativity drama a race against the clock by a desperate couple frantically seeking a place to have a baby, who is going to pop out any minute now…

Who knows – maybe Mary and Joseph had been in Bethlehem for awhile before her contractions started. Maybe they camped out somewhere, only needing warmth and shelter when the baby arrived. Maybe the place in the house where the livestock were kept was the warmest, and that’s why they put the infant Jesus in the manger filled with straw when there was no human habitation available.

We know so little, yet make so much of these few words. Because it’s a great story, all of it. The homeless couple, the smelly shepherds representing the marginalized of society, the glorious angels, the friendly beasts… and in the midst of all of it, the incarnate son of God. You couldn’t make up a story this good.

Do the details matter? Maybe not – but there’s richness in them. It is significant that Jesus spent his first night on earth in a feed trough in a stable. It reminds us that he did not come to make his home in this world. He did not seek the comforts that keep so many of us holding on to more than we need while others go without. Though the Gospels suggest he lived a regular home-based life once he and his parents settled back in Nazareth after a period of exile in Egypt, when he began his ministry he stayed on the move. “The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” That's pretty much how he started life.

Jesus is never recorded as leading anyone into a building – he led his followers out. Out of the building is still where most of our church ministry is to be lived. We get it backward when we think of our sanctuaries as our "church homes." Now that so few can gather in them, we can widen our view of what church is.

Last night I hosted our region’s Homeless Persons Memorial service, online this year, at which we remember those who died homeless in our community in the past year, celebrate those who are moving into housing, and raise up the work of the agencies that address needs for mental health, addiction recovery, job training and placement, and healthcare as well as shelter and housing. It reminded me that Jesus spent his first night not at “home,” but camping out in temporary lodging, sharing space with animals, in a city his parents did not call home.

What we call homelessness was his first reality. The company of the marginalized was his first community. Maybe we need to pay more honor to the life going on outside our homes. Though there is dysfunction and injustice in it, we don't want to miss the life in people whose lives aren't in a mold we consider normal. We need to eliminate homelessness, yes, but along the way to that goal let’s draw nearer to those who find themselves homeless now. In doing so we may just draw closer to Jesus.

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12-21-20 - Getting To Bethlehem

You can listen to this reflection here. Today's passage is here.

I labored long under the illusion of the “perfect Christmas.” All shopping/wrapping/ baking/decorating done, perfectly chosen gifts on their way to everyone. The pastor’s version (especially if you’re female, and single…) is all that PLUS all bulletins finished/ pageant rehearsed/special music ready, and the Spirit having delivered to you a brief but brilliant, life-transforming word of life to share with those gathered in the church for one chaotic hour – perhaps the one hour per year.

Well, thanks to our pandemic, a lot of that pressure has been lifted this year. I’m occupied instead with getting gift bags to every household in both churches, and putting together the perfect slide deck with pageant videos for our “Christ Church Christmas At Home” online Christmas Eve service. Will I manage to be calm and serene and oh-so ready for Christmas Eve that even I will have a spiritual encounter with God?

Who am I kidding? If Luke’s story has any historical accuracy, the Holy Night we celebrate was a mess, its protagonists exhausted, scared, lonely, anxious, no doubt cranky. And at least one was in agonizing pain, delivering her first child in a stable, with only her betrothed to help her – and he more helpless than she.

Mary and Joseph didn’t want to be in Bethlehem, especially not so close to her time. They were there at the behest of a cruel tyrant seeking to squeeze yet more taxes out of a conquered people. Luke is so specific about the people in power at that time – Caesar Augustus, Quirinius; and the towns Mary and Joseph traveled from and to – Nazareth in Galilee, Bethlehem in Judea. His specificity reminds us that the gift of God in flesh, Emmanuel, God-with-us was not general or vague, but personal, bounded in human time, space and history. And emotion.

Jesus didn’t come into this world on an eiderdown comforter. He came into a mess, a chaotic night in which a young couple desperately sought accommodation in a strange city, finally accepting the offer of space with household livestock as the woman’s birth pangs grew in urgency. He came into a political and religious mess, to a people exhausted by generations of oppression at the hands of a succession of occupying empires.

And he comes into our mess. If you are sad not being with family this year due to Covid, or harried with only 72 shopping hours left before Christmas, that Amazon order still unplaced, cards not yet embarked upon, arguing with your spouse or children or both – don’t think you’re not in the Christmas spirit. You’re ONE with the Christmas spirit, the original one.

Where are you today? What feels most urgent? Is it something life-giving or spirit-sapping? Try to name the feelings attached to the urgency or the stress. Naming feelings is the first step to ushering them away, their work of making us pay attention done.
Invite Jesus to be with you in what you’re feeling. As we accept his presence in our turmoil, we become readier to identify with what he experienced as a newborn – complete vulnerability, confusion, cold.

And if you’re ready and serene, glory to God in the highest, and peace to God’s people on earth! That’s the Christmas Spirit too. Share that calm with someone harried.

Getting to Bethlehem can be a stressful slog, and a journey full of pain and expectation. All of the above. We’re right where we need to be.

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12-18-20 - A Father's Song

You can listen to this reflection here. Today's passage is here.

What did Zechariah do to deserve to be made mute for nine months? All he asked was “How?,” when the angel told him he and Elizabeth would become parents in their old age. But let's look more closely: what he actually said was, “How will I know that this is so?”

That’s what the angel was punishing, if punishment it was – his lack of faith in what was unseen, his worldly reliance on "observable facts," his desire for assurance. Here he had an angel standing in front of him! And he wondered how God would accomplish what God had purposed? Maybe Gabriel gave him nine months of silence to reflect on faith and endurance – and maybe to prepare to have an infant in the house.

So, at the moment when Zechariah in faith declares his son will not be named after him, but will be named John (“God is gracious”), his muteness is lifted and he bursts into poetry: “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has looked favorably on his people and redeemed them. He has raised up a mighty savior for us in the house of his servant David, as he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old…”

Zechariah, having waited so long for his prayers for his family and his oppressed people to be answered, is so astonished that God is indeed faithful, he can scarcely contain himself. After praising God, he turns his praise to his infant son: “And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the forgiveness of their sins. “

Zechariah is now ready to declare that he believes everything the angel told him, and what the prophets of old had foreseen – and what this miracle child of his will be, long after he is around to witness it.

Our faith is often strengthened when we see answers to prayers. But then it’s not really faith. Faith by definition is trusting in promises we can’t be absolutely certain we’ve received. We gather confirmation from others, and marshal evidence that God is moving in the way we think God is moving… and we wait, believing in the good will of God no matter what we experience. That’s hard! Thanks be to God, we are often (not always…) given just enough signs to encourage us to persevere, and discernment to give thanks for what we experience along the way.

Do you have a long-term prayer project requiring extra faith? What indications do you have that God is moving? What do you wish you could witness? How do you maintain your faith in the not-knowing?

Zechariah did not excel in faith to begin with – but he seems to have learned from his enforced retreat. For he sees in his own son – the fact that his son exists, and the promise he represents – God’s larger purpose to redeem the world, to restore all things and all people to perfect peace. And so this father’s song gives voice to the deeper song of the Father Almighty: By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.’

Next week we will gather, even if it’s online, to celebrate that rising Son from on high breaking in upon us - may He guide our feet into the way of peace.

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2-17-20 - A New Name

You can listen to this reflection here. Today's passage is here.

John. It’s hard for us to think of a more ordinary name. But boy, did it cause a stir when Elizabeth said that’s what her newborn son was to be called.

Families often mark their identities by passing certain names along the generations. (The technology enabling us to livestream our worship from the sanctuary is being set up and run by three generations of Gerald Poe’s, to our great blessing.)Parents will name a child to honor an ancestor, or confer an aspirational name of someone significant. Names matter in families. So it was one more oddity in Elizabeth and Zechariah’s late-life adventure in parenthood when the day came for the baby to be named and circumcised: 

On the eighth day they came to circumcise the child, and they were going to name him Zechariah after his father. But his mother said, “No; he is to be called John.” They said to her, “None of your relatives has this name.”

Unwilling to rely on the insistence of a women, they motioned for Zechariah to chime in: He asked for a writing-tablet and wrote, “His name is John.” And all of them were amazed.

Amazing – a new name. A break with the past for a new chapter in Israel’s history. “Israel” itself was the new name given to Jacob when he wrestled with the angel. Now, as God started a new story in human history, built on the old but with new themes and characters and movement, he ordained a new name for this child who would “make ready a people prepared for their Lord.” John, a form of “God has been gracious.” Amazing.

Even more amazing: as Zechariah was faithful to what the angel Gabriel had told him the boy was to be called, his muteness was lifted. “Immediately his mouth was opened and his tongue freed, and he began to speak, praising God.” Apparently all of this caused such a stir, the whole region was talking about how the hand of God was on this child.

I know people who give themselves new names at certain junctures in their lives, to mark a new beginning, or give voice to a new identity they’re taking on, trying on. There are other ways we might make a practice of naming. We could name the eras in our life. Superficial labels might be “childhood,” “adolescence,” “young adulthood,” “singleness,” “first married,” and so on. If we were to dig a little deeper, we could find names for the periods in our lives that told the emotional story. “Afraid,” “Mad at the world,” “Trusting,” “Sick,” “Delighted.”

What name would you give the time in your life you are now living in? Do you want or foresee a transition to a different mode? What would you name that next section? John’s name was set down before he was born – we can name ahead too.

In this life we are about discovering our true name, our true identity, what God already sees when God looks at us. So let’s give a name to the next portion of our life and live into the new story God is writing us into.

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12-16-20 - Blessed Is She Who Believes

You can listen to this reflection here. Today's passage is here.

Luke the Evangelist would have made a good filmmaker - he does a great job “cross-cutting” these two miraculous pregnancy tales. First the angel comes to Zechariah, and on his return home, Elizabeth becomes pregnant. Elizabeth stays in seclusion for five months, and in her sixth the angel appears to Mary, who then becomes pregnant. And then these parallel stories come together: 

In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth.

Luke doesn’t tell us why Mary made that journey, but reasons spring to mind. She may have wanted to “get out of Dodge” and the increasing questions and stares at her notably unmarried pregnant state. Her situation was more than socially awkward – adultery was punishable by death, and it was hard to reckon any other explanation for her expanding figure. We don’t know about her parents; were they supportive? Did they believe her tale of the angel and what he said? Would you?

A deeper reason for her journey may have been what the angel told her about Elizabeth’s improbable pregnancy, “…and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.” Maybe Mary needed to be with the only other person on earth who had a clue what she was going through. Maybe she needed some confirmation that she wasn’t losing her mind.

If that was the case, she received it the moment she came into the house. 

When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leapt in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leapt for joy.”

When God has outrageous revelations or instructions for us, we can trust God to give us independent verification – at least, that’s what happens in the Bible. One person gets a strange notion or order, and the Spirit makes it known to someone else as well. It’s like in Field of Dreams,when Ray and Annie have the same dream one night, just when she’s ready to write him off. In Mary’s case, God offered confirmation not only via Elizabeth, but even by the unborn John with his in utero "leap for joy."

And Elizabeth utters words that must have settled Mary’s heart for the first time since her encounter with the angel, calling her “blessed among women” and the “mother of my Lord.”

Have you had occasion to confirm for someone a call they believe they’ve received? Has someone done that for you? Are you wrestling with a question of call and discernment now? Who might be your “Elizabeth?” If no one comes to mind, ask God who you should talk to. A name or encounter might just crop up.

Elizabeth’s affirmation of Mary goes to the heart of what she must have been feeling. “And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.” Sometimes, even when we go forward in trust and faith on something we believe God has invited us into, we are still assailed by doubts. “Was I an idiot to believe that?” we think, especially if we don’t see outcomes. In those times, we can hold onto Elizabeth: Blessed is s/he who believes. If God has spoken it, God will deliver.

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12-15-20 - Silent Gestation

You can listen to this reflection here. Today's passage, Luke 1:18-25, is here.

What a strange pregnancy Elizabeth must have had. To be pregnant in the first place, her body long past the blush of youth, years after such a thing seemed possible... Imagine what changes in body and spirit she was experiencing. And on top of that, the silence. Her Zechariah, usually so articulate and voluble, rendered mute for the term of her confinement.

How much had he been able to tell her, in signs and letters, about what transpired in that sanctuary with the terrifying angel? How he had been rendered mute until the child’s birth for daring to ask the question Mary also asked, “How?”

Zechariah said to the angel, “How will I know that this is so? For I am an old man, and my wife is getting on in years.” The angel replied, “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news. But now, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time, you will become mute, unable to speak, until the day these things occur.”

Was he able to tell her what the angel had said about their son-to-be, about the ascetic regimens laid down prior even to his conception. Was he able to describe the mission their John was to have: “He will turn many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. With the spirit and power of Elijah he will go before him, to turn the hearts of parents to their children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”

The spirit and power of Elijah?! Who was this child to be?
To make ready a people prepared for their Lord? How was he to do that?

Perhaps Elizabeth knew nothing of these things, only that her husband had come home from his temple service unable to speak, and somehow more affectionate than she’d known him in some time. In the deep and familiar silence of long years together, they lay down and conceived a child, their lovemaking at last producing fruit beyond mere connection. And for five months she stayed home, relishing the silence and the joy, making room for the new life growing within her, saying, “This is what the Lord has done for me when he looked favorably on me and took away the disgrace I have endured among my people.”

Bringing new life to the point of birth is always holy work, if we can call allowing things to happen inside us “work.” So much of what we call spiritual work or spiritual discipline is meant to be leaning back more than forward, letting go, allowing the Holy Spirit to work with our spirit at a level deeper than we can affect with our conscious mind – unless we want to thwart it. We can always choose to disengage from growth, sinking into our familiar patterns, though a sad choice it is, to hold back new life.

Can you feel anything stirring in you, stretching you, changing your inner landscape, even kicking a little, saying, “Let me grow until I’m big and strong enough to be born – and then what a gift I will be to you, and to the world!” Can you begin to name it and make space and time for that growth? Perhaps adding some retreat time in this season – or after it?

Some silence in our "gestation" can allow us to become more in tune with what is being done within us, beyond our reach. If the new life comes from God, it is holy – and will be a gift to us, and to the world.

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12-14-20 - Another Anunciation

You can listen to this reflection here. Today's passage is here.

I’m going to jump the lectionary track again this week. We would have had another reading about John the Baptist, full of good and worthy things to explore. But I’d like us to examine instead the rich stories about Zechariah and Elizabeth, John’s parents, and their own encounters with the miraculous. The theme of our Advent series at Christ Church this week is “Live Expectantly,” and these two are exemplars of doing that – and not. 

Having already taken up the stories of John the Baptist and Mary of Nazareth, we’re out of sequence here. But when the angel Gabriel came to announce the miracle birth to Mary, he had already had some practice with Zechariah. Zechariah was a priest at the temple, and happened to have been chosen by lot to make the incense offering in the inner sanctuary. He was alone – and then suddenly most profoundly not alone. Luke tells us he was “terrified, and fear overwhelmed him.”

But the angel brought him good news – news all of us would love to hear, I imagine:
“Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard.”

If God sent an angel to tell me my prayer had been heard, I would be terrified too, not just by the angelic presence, but by the knowledge that God had heard my prayer. We believe God does; I tell people God does; but when years pass and some of our deepest felt prayers seem to go unanswered, it can be hard to believe. Sometimes we’ve given up on our prayers, and aren’t so sure that’s what we want now. Surely Zechariah and Elizabeth had long since come to accept their childlessness, despite the stigma and sorrowful glances of their friends. They were aged now – were they to begin parenting at this stage of life?

Have you carried a prayer in your heart for a long time? What is it? Recall it to your mind. Do you feel God has heard it? Have you discerned any answer to that prayer, or are you still waiting? What happens when you talk to God about that? Are you being invited to wait, to let go, to pray something else?

Sometimes I’m afraid to let go of my long-held desires, as though if I let go they’ll definitely never come to pass. But somehow the letting go just seems to create more space for God to bring in blessing. That’s a lesson I seem to have to keep learning, over and over again.

Part of prayer is making our desires known to the God who knows us and loves us. And part of prayer is letting go of our desires, and trusting in that God who knows us and loves us. And sometimes those desires come back to us in the strangest way imaginable, as Zechariah and Elizabeth found out.

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12-11-20 - Nothing Is Impossible

You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.

Could Mary have declined the mission conferred upon her by God? Would that baby have filled her belly no matter how she felt about it? The Angel Gabriel doesn't ask for an answer; he only announces what will be. Her grace in accepting was amazing, if not essential.

And yet the angel did add a detail to settle her mind, which might have helped her get to that “yes.” “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.”

Elizabeth was John the Baptist's mother, and became pregnant with him long after she was “in the way of women,” and after a lifetime of infertility and all the stigma that included in her culture. Though she conceived in the “normal” way, the timing was miraculous enough to comfort Mary that her strange message truly came from God.

We need to be reminded that there are no limits to what God can do, because we spend so much time in the realm of limits. And because we see so many situations in which we yearn to see the unlimited power of God break out… and it doesn’t seem to. If all things are possible with God, why is Covid-19 decimating populations and economies? If all things are possible with God, why do wildfires, hurricanes, tornados and earthquakes continue to wreak havoc? Yes, there is human agency in those examples – but if all things are possible with God, why don’t our prayers for healing always yield the results we want?

Those are good questions – and they lead only to diminished faith. We are invited to believe in infinite possibilities despite the limits we perceive. We are invited to pray to the God for whom all things are possible, and then to ask God if and how we are to be part of God's response. I certainly don’t know what to do about Covid and climate change but pray for conversion of hearts and change in behaviors. And praying for healing within the overall confines of life and death means accepting that the outcomes of our prayers exist on that continuum as well. That isn’t meant to sound facile – the fact that our prayers are not always answered in the way we desire doesn’t mean they aren’t sometimes answered that way. And that each of those “sometimes” is an occasion to strengthen our faith.

What “impossibility” are you facing right now? Are you willing to invite God to work with it, turn it over, squish and mold it like clay, bend it like time and perhaps reveal a deeper mystery of “yes” in it? Are you willing to have your boundaries of the possible stretched? Pray in that today. Ask God to show you where God has placed limits, and where you’re just assuming they exist.

The story of Jesus’ incarnation through Mary of Nazareth is beautiful in so many ways, not least for how decisively God overturns the “laws” of nature to bring about the overturning of death and sin and disease and injustice, ending the enslavement of this world to darkness. All that happens because Mary joined in the mission of God in the way she could, in the way she was asked. Jesus continued to overturn those laws in his ministry. And, of course, on Easter morning the God of the impossible demonstrated once again just how infinite his power is.

Nothing is impossible with God. The more we believe it, the further our boundaries of “possibility” will be stretched, and the deeper we will join in God's mission of restoration. And the deeper we go, the more impossible things we will see.

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12-10-20 - Girl Power

You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.

This story is so outrageous, I don’t think anyone would have made it up. Why would you posit an immaculate conception? If the idea of sexual union troubled you, you’d probably want to avoid the whole reproductive system, right? You wouldn’t write it right into the story of God!

But a young woman’s reproductive system is right smack dab in the middle of our story of salvation. The conception may have been immaculate, but nothing after that was. We get no Incarnation without the messy details of a woman’s plumbing.

The angel said to her, “And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus.” ... Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?"

Some charge that early Christian thinkers and church leaders were misogynist, conspiring to suppress women. Perhaps later, but one cannot honestly derive such a view from our Gospels. If that was your agenda, why would you tell the story of the Messiah’s emergence through a woman’s birth canal? Why would all four Gospels agree that the first person to see Jesus risen from the dead was a woman? Why would the Gospels show Jesus’ friendship with and trust in women?

Right here at the heart of our story is a young woman, whom we today would consider still a girl – and she is the agent through whom God is revealed to human eyes. Imagine! AND SHE SAYS YES! I don’t know if she had a choice or not, but Luke unmistakably tells us that she chose: Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”

“Here am I.” That’s a statement of identity and presence. Here am I. What if we started each day with those words? “Here I am, world! Here I am, God!”
“The servant of the Lord.” That’s a statement of missional life. Mary wasn’t asking what God had done for her lately – she self-identified as God’s servant and proclaimed it proudly.
“Let it be to me as you have said.” I accept. I know what you’re asking, I know in part what it’s going to cost me, and I accept. Amen – let it be.

That’s a powerful young woman! That’s an agent of change! Even before the canticle of radical reversal and equality that’s attributed to Mary in the Magnificat (or, if you prefer it sung, here's Rutter's...), right here we see girl power to the nth degree, a formidable young woman who will carry, and bear, and raise, and lose her beloved Jesus – and then receive him back, if only in part, and never to keep.

I had never thought of the story of the Anunication as an anthem of women’s empowerment, but writing this fills me with energy. I want to go out and tell every young girl I know: Look at this girl! Look how calm and clear and powerful she is! There is power in serving others, in offering ourselves – if we recognize our own worth in the process.

Maybe you know a young woman whom you can affirm today, remind of her value. Maybe you are aware of forces in our culture that rob young women of their sense of worth, and you can band with others to think of ways to overcome or undermine those forces. (Fashion industry, anyone? Advertising industry? Social media?)

God chose a young girl for God’s greatest mission. She said yes. That’s the headline: Girl power rocks the world!

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12-9-20 - Say Whaaat?

You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.

I'm not sure I'd want to hear that I had found favor with God… God’s favor often seems to come with a request for a favor! And in the case of Mary of Nazareth, a rather big one: to allow her body, her womb to be the vessel for the Son of the Most High.

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 for ever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”

Did Mary hear anything after the words “womb” and “son?” Where would you even start with an announcement like this? With the pregnancy? With the predictions of greatness, divinity, Messiah-ship? That’s what “the throne of his ancestor David” means – and no doubt Mary understood the code. Or would you focus on the words “reign” and “kingdom?” I don’t know that I would have heard any of it – after all, it was an angel speaking! My senses would already have hit “tilt.”

So even more credit goes to young Mary for not only taking it in, but responding in a most down-to-earth, matter-of-fact way: “How?” Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” How indeed? Gabriel’s answer is short on details, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you…”

Mary is left to sort through the words, the past, the future, the fear, the excitement, the bafflement. She ignores all the grand and cosmic mystery of identity about this coming child, and focuses on the reality closest to her: her body. This wondrous event is to take place in her body – a body, she insists, that has not experienced much intimacy. Is she to endure the wear and tear of childbearing before she’s had a chance to savor the joy of child-begetting?

How will this be? How indeed does God work through the frail and fallible flesh of any person? Mary’s mission may be the most intimate in our whole crazy story of redemption, but nothing in that story happens without God working through a person. People are asked to yield their time, livelihood, home, safety, security, voice, identity… we are called to make ourselves available to the Spirit of God.

What has God asked of you, probable or improbable, difficult or simple? What aspects of your life and self have you made available to the Holy One to fill and use? What have you held back? What are you willing to offer?

In prayer today let's work through one of those litanies of “oblation,” offering in turn our minds, our bodies, our time, our gifts, our resources, our relationships, our networks, and, of course, our spirits. As we offer each area, we might wait for a word from the Spirit on how God wants to use that in us.

Mary was called to be a vessel of Christ’s body, to bear him into the world. We are called to be vessels of Christ’s spirit, to bear him into the world in our own ways and circumstances. That includes our bodies as well as everything else that makes us who we are. We can invite the Spirit to fill us – and then see how God makes space for grace.

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12-8-20 - Seeing Angels

You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.

Have you ever seen an angel? I know one or two people who did as children, and have heard of people having what they believed were angelic encounters as adults. I was once in a chapel when it seemed filled with a presence that was distinctly “other,” and I was terrified. Was that an angel? Probably not – for in the bible, angels always seem to show up with a message to deliver.

The angel Gabriel (one of only two angels named in the scriptures...) was pretty busy in the months leading up to Jesus’ birth. First he showed up in the temple to tell Zechariah that he and his wife, long barren and now past childbearing age, will have a son whom they are to name John. And six months into Elizabeth’s unlikely pregnancy, he appears to Mary in Nazareth to announce a pregnancy that is downright impossible.

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 for ever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”

Only an angel could deliver a message that bizarre and, if you’ll permit me, inconceivable. But that’s when angels are deployed, when God has a specific message or charge for a specific person. Prophets are human messengers for God, often with messages for a whole community. Angels seem to get be tasked when it comes announcing things to people, things like miraculous births – three angels tell Abram and Sarai about her impending and unlikely pregnancy.

What do we know about angels? The Old and New Testaments speak of them as heavenly creatures – neither divine nor human. They deliver difficult messages and occasionally do battle with the forces of evil. They are not cute, or cuddly, or necessarily looking out for us – they work for God. They are often fierce and, it appears, always fearsome, for every angelic encounter seems to begin with, “Be not afraid…”

Should we pay attention to angels? I can’t imagine they want us to, nor would they want to be worn on pins and or smile on us from posters. They certainly do not want to be prayed to. Their function is to point our attention to what God is up to. I sometimes pray that God would send a “guard of angels” to protect someone from evil, but that’s about it.

Why am I discussing something I consider peripheral to being a Christ-follower? It's helpful to examine where we are on the subject of angels. If we consider them intermediaries with God, perhaps we’re being invited to forge a more direct connection. If we want protection, maybe we can invite the Holy Spirit to be more discernibly present in our lives. If we want a message, we can ask for it in prayer. If we want to be able to relate to God more personally – well, that’s why Jesus came in the first place. Let’s get to know him better.

The one thing I feel reasonably sure of is this: If we should be “touched by an angel,” we’ll know it.

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12-7-20 - The Maid of Galilee

You can listen to this reflection here. 

At my churches, we will switch up the lectionary for the last two weeks of Advent. Next Sunday we’ll have our traditional “Baby Shower for Mary,” even online, so we’ll look at Mary’s story, which the lectionary offers on Advent 4. It’s time we got this young woman into the picture – the whole story hinges on her, and her response to God’s crazy invitation. Or was it a demand?

We meet Mary, a young woman betrothed to a man named Joseph, right about the time she meets the Angel Gabriel:  “In the sixth month [of Elizabeth’s pregnancy with John, who would grow up to be the Baptist…] 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.”

Who was this Mary? Luke tries to make a decent introduction with the “where-when-who." She lived in Galilee, considered by many a rustic backwater of Judean provinces. Scripture says nothing of her economic circumstances or her family – which doesn’t stop later generations from naming her parents Anna and Joachim, and designating them saints.

We are told that she is a virgin. To our ears that might seem an awfully intimate detail about one we’ve just met. Maybe that’s just the word Luke used to describe her unmarried state, where we might find “maiden” more decorous – but her virginity does figure into the story as well.

We learn that this young woman is engaged to a man called Joseph – and that his lineage is significant: He is of the family of Israel's legendary King David, from whose line prophets foretold the Messiah would come. Though Joseph will have no biological relation to Jesus, he will be his earthly father and establish his Davidic lineage; the Mosaic Law is not concerned with DNA – adoption established parenthood. That lineage also gets him and his betrothed to Bethlehem, David’s ancestral town, where prophecies said the Messiah would be born.

We will save for another day the encounter between Mary and this angel. Today let’s focus on the girl, this girl who has been so adored and so worshiped and so controversial for so many generations. In some ways she is a screen onto which people can project their own wishes and identities. We know little about her beyond these biographical details – and the amazing grace with which she considers the angel’s announcement and comes to a quiet “Yes,” a yes staggering in its humility and vulnerability.

It is that “yes” which has led some to attribute supernatural qualities to her – sinlessness, saintliness, even divinity. Such a move entirely undermines the power of her story for us: That God chose an ordinary girl, as capable of self-centeredness and sin as any of us, for an extraordinary ministry, and that she chose to accept the mission and let it shape her life. Were it not for Mary, there would be no Jesus of Nazareth in the way we know him. Perhaps God would have found another way – maybe there was a Leah down the street, next on Gabriel’s list – but this is the way our story is revealed. Mary is the one who bore God for us.

Today in prayer let’s contemplate Mary, however she appears in our mind’s eye. Imagine her in her room when the angel appears, and play through the story. Or go even deeper and imagine yourself in that position. What would you think? Say? Do?

However we enter her story, let us give thanks to Mary for the gift she gave us. In some way we share her mission – to allow the Spirit to fill us with life, a life not wholly our own but mingled with ours to create a new person, the Christ who comes to set all people free. And then to bear that Christ into the world.

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