Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Today’s text

Luke 1:26-29

In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph, of the House of David; and the virgin's name was Mary. He went in and said to her, 'Rejoice, you who enjoy God's favor! The Lord is with you.' She was deeply disturbed by these words and asked herself what this greeting could mean.

Reflection

Come, Lord Jesus. Upset our lives with your holy purpose.

We know our routines, and though we complain that they are too full, too busy, too boring, too dreary, too distracting, too common, too killing to body and soul, their regularity comforts us. With predictable assurance, our routines tell us who we are and what we should do.

But then you--or your angel--appear, upsetting our order, telling us that everything is not as it appears, that something is up, something that will redefine our worlds--and us, stripping away the comfort of the regular.

Is this why Mary is afraid?

She has fallen into your hands, this child of your favor, a young woman for whom you have the holiest purpose of all.

She is to bear your life into the world in fleshly form. That is your favor to her: She will carry and give birth to you who break apart our ordered existence, revealing that mortal flesh should never be only human.

It is intended to reveal the Love that is before the stars and will remain after they have blinked out billions of years from now. Mortality is intended for infinity, the human is intended for the divine, the fallen and broken is meant to hold the wholeness of you who hold the whole of the staggering universe, so vast and incomprehensible.

‘The Lord is with you,’ the angel says to Mary, which means nothing can be the same. She can never live a quiet life in an out of the way place, safe from the deepest drama that happens on Earth.

That drama happens in her, in her womb: you seek to born in mortal flesh, lifting it to its true intention. But not only in her, my Lord.

For this is the drama taking place in me. I can barely write these words. It warms me to see it happening in Mary, but that is only half the truth.

What happens in Mary is happening in me--and in all in whom you seek to be born, that our sinful, weak, mortal, finite, faltering flesh might bear the Infinite and All Loving, the Immortal and Unending, that I might know the joy and fear of holding you within, even as your beloved Mary.

This is your holiest purpose and eternal intention.

So come Lord, Jesus. Be born in us. Be born in me. Fill us with your fullness that we may know who we are and the love for which you intend us.

Pr. David L. Miller