Advent IV Sunday December 21, 2008
The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa
The Cathedral Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem, Pa.
Luke
One may recall Andrew Lloyd –Webers musical about an improbable and complicated love story between a young man emerging into adulthood and a young professional starlet, taking place sometime just after the second World War. A young man touched by Love, pursues and entices the woman of his interest, begging her to say Yes, say Yes, to the Love he feels. The headline song of this production speaks something of the improbable, the complicated, the difficult, the irrational, the joyous, the eye and heart opening, the life changing Aspects that saying Yes to love bring…… the truth of the matter stated by the evolving aspect of Love, Love changes everything goes like this, (Maestro, Hit it!)
Love,Love changes everything:Hands and faces,Earth and sky,Love,Love changes everything:How you live andHow you dieLoveCan make the summer fly,Or a nightSeem like a lifetime.Yes, Love,Love changes everything:Now I trembleAt your name.Nothing in the World will ever Be the same.Love,Love changes everything:Days are longer,Words mean more.Love,Love changes everything:Pain is deeperThan before.LoveWill turn your world around,And that worldWill last for ever.
Yes, Love,
Love changes everything,Brings you glory,Brings you shame.Nothing in theWorld will everBe the same.OffInto the world we go,Planning futures,Shaping years.Love,Bursts in, and suddenlyAll our wisdomDisappears.LoveMakes fools of everyone:All the rulesWe make are broken.Yes, Love,Love changes everyone.Live or perishIn its flame.Love will never,Never let youBe the same.
Today we are invited to the miraculous, wondrous, complicated, faithful epic truth of God’s announcing to the world that Love will come into the world anew, and indeed it will change everything!
Similar to the story found just prior in Luke’s Gospel account, the story of God’s announcing through the angels to Elizabeth in the sixth month of her pregnancy that the child she carries will enflesh part of God’s action in the world for salvation by bearing the Son who will prepare the way, John the Baptist, we hear again that the angels are busy at work, doing what angels do. The angel comes bearing a message that God is up to something big and with a pastoral word, “fear not”! This time the angels’ big news is for a young virgin girl. The news is that she will be what she never could have imagined for her own life, a player in God’s saving action for an entire world and its inhabitants. The young girls response would be to become an obedient servant of God trusting in both the big news and the pastoral word, “Fear Not!”. Well, yeah, right, we all know how that goes, God shows up, we take it on faith, trust in the pastoral word to not be afraid, and move on! All of us love when God shows up!
Perhaps you and I know a it better than this cleaned up version of Luke’s presentation of this story that connects God’s plan of of salvation for the world to the human birth through the most innocent and vulnerable! Indeed between the lines you and I know that God’s showing up is often upending, interrupting, and unexpected and can disorient, and even take us off track for a bit. “Fear not” the angel says, “Fear not indeed”!
The scriptures tell us that Mary pondered these things in her heart!
Ponder indeed!
What will she say? How shall she respond? How could this be? How improbable, How complicated, How difficult, How irrational, How eye opening, How inconvenient!
Certainly she must have pondered, What if I say yes? Can I say No? Either way, Life will never be the same! But how will it not be the same?
For Mary, this encounter with Love will change everything. If she says yes, glory will be brought into the world, shame will certainly come to her from those who cannot see God at work, certainly nothing of her life or the life of the world will ever be the same.
For Mary, this encounter with Love will bring her long days and nights, the words of the angel will take on more and more meaning as she parents the one who grows in her womb, she will know the depth of loving, the pain and promise of sacrifice.
Love changes everything,Brings you glory,Brings you shame.Nothing in theWorld will everBe the same.Love changes everything:Days are longer,Words mean more.Love,Love changes everything:Pain is deeperThan before.
God interrupts and Mary ponders the interruption! Love chooses the most interesting people and places to invite a yes from. Disorienting and disruptive as it may be, a yes to God is a yes toward redemption. A young peasant girl, the most powerless of powerless, is invited to say yes! She would ponder these things and she would say yes, and Love would change everything.
Mary’s yes, would bring God’s plan of Salvation into the world! Freedom! Freedom to Say Yes to Love and dare to accept what Love would bring!
What Mary’s yes would bring would be the word made flesh and the name of Mary’s child would be Jesus. In Hebrew, his name is Yeshua, which means, “Yahweh or 'God' liberates.” Mary’s yes would be a yes to God’s promise of freedom! Freedom from all things physical, spiritual, and emotional that hold hostage!
In our journey toward Christmas, today we join Mary and I ask you to ponder, what is God asking us to say yes to that might change everything? What new thing might we experience when we join Mary in a yes to serve?
I submit to you that when we say yes, when we are willing to serve God and do what God asks of us, we will find that yes is freeing. To say yes, means we have navigated our way to our yes, through the very human questions. “What do I get out of this anyway? How does this help me? What is the payoff? ” Finding our way to the yes by daring to fall in love, promises to change everything. A yes, is indeed a yes to freedom.
In the rear of our very Cathedral sits a resource table with the marvelous book written by Madeline L’engle entitled, “The Glorious Impossible”. This book captures Mary’s moment of yes in these words.
Possible things are easy to believe. The Glorious Impossibles are those things that bring joy to our hearts, hope to our lives, songs to our lips
The birth of Jesus was a Glorious Impossible. Like love, it cannot be explained, it can only be rejoiced in
Mary’s Yes changes everything, how bout yours?
