NewCreation

Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord

The Feast of the Annunciation Welcome, my sisters and brothers, to this the homily for the Feast of the Annunciation. We have exactly nine months before Christmas Day, the feast of when it is assumed that Mary's pregnancy began, and this is, if you like, the feast of the Incarnation. And it's on that that I would really like to preach with you about. We're so used to the reading which we hear today being part of our build-up to Christmas readings that we often don't stop to think about it as what I think it is: the feast by which we celebrate the Incarnation. And the Incarnation, of course, required the free consent of this wonderful woman whose day it also is. Let's try and go through the text a little bit. But before that, I'd like you to notice that both in our first reading and in the second reading and in the psalm, all the concentration on what's going on here is a build-up to Jesus's death. We get as the first reading the promise of the daughter coming in, of the child coming in. Then the psalm is about someone coming in to do the opposite of holocaust and sacrifice. And then we get the Epistle to the Hebrews' explanation of that. It's this moment of coming in of someone who is to do something to undo the whole world of holocaust and sacrifices that is being prepared for. So let's see how that works in today's Gospel. "In the sixth month" — that's the sixth month of Elizabeth, Mary's cousin's pregnancy — "the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth." Actually, a village in Galilee called Nazareth. Luke has hyped it a little bit, but apparently it wouldn't have had more than a few hundred residents at that time. Now Gabriel had, just before, six months before, appeared to Elizabeth's husband Zechariah while he was in the Temple, and had appeared to him as a vision, and had announced to himself: "I am Gabriel, who am always in the presence of God." So, very clear to his disturbance, Zechariah had seen a vision. Please notice that we're doing something different here. He'd seen a vision in the Temple in which he'd been told about the role that his own son would have, and of the role that that son would have with relation to the coming in of the Most High. So six months later, Gabriel, who is in the presence of God — that's how he has self-identified — appears to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin's name was Mary. And he came to her and said, "Greetings, favored one, the Lord is with you." The greeting, "chaire," is actually pretty rare in Scripture, and it's used when — Through the words of the prophets, the daughter of Zion is greeted: "Daughter of Zion, rejoice." The suggestion here is that this one is the real daughter of Zion. Now notice something. He hasn't put in an appearance. He came to her and said — in other words, rather differently from our pretty pictures, such as the wonderful Fra Angelico picture of the Annunciation, Gabriel didn't appear to her. The presence of God at this point was something even richer and deeper than appearance. He said something to her. Now, immediately afterwards, again notice how difficult our translations sometimes are. So he speaks to her, "but she was much perplexed at the word." Here our translation says she was not perplexed by his words, presumably because the translators simply couldn't believe that the word is in fact singular — but in Greek it is in fact singular. But she, at the word, was deeply troubled and wondered what on earth kind of greeting this might be. Zechariah had been troubled; she is super-troubled, and she's super-troubled at the word. Why is this important? Later on there will be discussion about words — words and things — using the other, the ordinary Greek word, chrema, things said. But here it says she, at the word, was deeply troubled and wondered what on earth kind of greeting this might be. The greeting, the word "Chaire," suggesting that she's the daughter of Zion, and "Kecharitomene," full of grace, which no one has been able to find a suitable reference for, as far as I'm aware. Then the angel said to her, "Do not fear, Mary." Of course this is the real angel thing to say. This, I suspect, is the sign that she was not being subject to some sort of satanic hallucination. The "do not fear" is the sign that we're talking about the presence of God — the presence of God whose word has come through her ear. "Mary, you have found favor with God, and now you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus." Which would have been familiar to Mary as Joshua, or the slightly more recent version of that as Hebrew things went on — but the savior of the people, Yahweh's savior of the people. "He will be great and he will be called the Son of the Most High." The Son of the Most High — this was a term usually referring to the great high priest. "And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David." So this is the priestly messianic figure who is going to fulfill the promise of the Davidic line. "He will reign over…" the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end. He is the one in human form, the human figure who was seen in the prophet Daniel, who was to come. And that's where this phrase about the kingdom having no end comes from. Now please notice that here what is being announced — so before she's given her consent — is, if you like, the celestial birth. The ancient understanding was that God's Son begat, God's human Son, first in heaven and then on earth. And that we're now involved in that process, which will finally come to fruition when Jesus is baptized and the voice will say, "You are my Son; today I have begotten you," all of which is muddling to us because we think of things in chronological order rather than understanding a single divine act taking time in the human sphere. And so Mary, reasonably enough, when faced with this particular set of astonishing remarks about the word that is coming into her, said, "How can this be, since I am a virgin?" Actually, the Greek yet again says, "How can this be, since I do not know man." Now it's interesting that we translate that straightforwardly as "I am a virgin," but that's not the point of the phrase. The point of the phrase "I do not know man" means I haven't yet concluded my marital arrangement with Joseph. Of course it's assumed that she would be a virgin — no one's questioning that. But the actual phrase is: how can all this come about because Joseph and I haven't got hitched yet? She's not talking about sex; she's talking about the circumstances in which having a baby might be legally possible. And then we get this answer which is not — and alas, this is, I'm afraid, part of our problems: the sexualization of this passage — which is not, if you like, an indication of an alternative form of sexual procreation. The angel said to her something even more astounding than that: "The Holy Spirit will come upon you" — that's to say, the Spirit of God, the one who had hovered over the waters before creation, the one who is to be found in the Temple wanting to come into the world, the one who will eventually come and rest on Jesus as he comes out of the waters — that Holy Spirit, the Creator, "and the power of the Most High will overshadow you." Okay, the word "overshadow" refers to the presence of the Most High over the tabernacle at the time of Moses. So effectively, what Our Lady is being told is: you are about to become the Holy of Holies. This, as you will understand, is not an alternative instruction concerning sexual procreation. It's taking the whole thing out of that discussion and into: this is how the Creator is going to do things for his creation. "The Most High will overshadow you" — in other words, you are going to become the Holy of Holies. "Therefore the child to be born" — and literally it's "the to-be-born one," it's a neutral term — "will be holy. He will be called Son of God." So there is the second element of the divine birth. First we had the priestly, Davidic titles, and then we had the divine, the definitive title, the ultimate celestial title, which is simply beyond any of our imagination. "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." And it's literally — essentially — "nothing will be impossible with God": all things, or all words — not logos, because the logos has already spoken. And then Mary said, "Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your rhema" — according to your saying. So here she consents to the angel a saying, because she knows that the Word has been spoken to her, and she is accepting it, and it will now become through her the structuring reality of creation, will come in and open us up for the possibility of becoming daughters and sons of God. What I want to bring out is, if you like, how this extraordinary feast brings out something utterly wonderful about the Catholic and Christian faith, which is: the Incarnation of the Word means that we don't talk about heavenly speculations, we don't try to make divine deductions. There's no way out but through. And this through was consented to by Mary, an unmarried, betrothed girl in a small village. And the center of meaning of everything spoke itself into being through her. So as we celebrate the Incarnation, we celebrate she who found herself becoming the Mother of God. But also she who made possible the beginnings of the Word of God taking human narrative form in us. We are the people who, because of this, are able slowly, historically, with enormous ups and downs, failings and pain, in the middle of our insignificance, our shame, our muck, to become people who are made glorious by the Word that made her glorious. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.