 |
| Nazareth McDonald's, where Jesus used to get his burgers... |
Earlier this year, as you may know, Philip and I visited
Nazareth, the site of our Gospel story. It’s a busy, crowded town now, and the
coach dropped us off at a rather unimposing square beside the main road, opposite
Nazareth McDonalds.
 |
| The reconstructed (but not functional) well head, built for the millennium celebrations |
In the centre of the square stood a not terribly inspiring
reconstruction of an old well head, with three spouts, but no water, under the
shelter of a semi-circular modern structure. Behind it was an ancient Greek
Orthodox church – there had been a church there from the 4th Century, though it had been
rebuilt many times - which housed the
spring that fed the well. To get to the spring you had to squeeze down a narrow
passage, to a rather dismal looking damp hole in the ground lit by bright
lights powered by a tangle of very dodgy looking electric wiring. It was almost
completely empty of water, but that didn’t seem to have deterred the pilgrims
who had thrown a large number of coins and prayers written on scraps of paper
into it. Like many sites in the Holy Land it was an incongruous mixture of
ancient and modern, sacred and mundane.
 |
| The original spring, in the Greek Orthodox Church of the Annunciation |
This, we were told, was the main water source in Nazareth at
the time Jesus was born. Its significance, though, lay in the story we have
heard in the Gospel today. Luke’s story of the annunciation is set in an
unnamed location, but the assumption is that Gabriel comes to Mary in her home.
But early legend, in a document called
the “Protoevangelion of James”
says that the angel made not one but two visits to Mary, and that the first of
them was at this well. She’d come to gather water when Gabriel spoke to her,
but she was so alarmed by his message that she ran off home. He had to come to
her again there, in the story Luke tells us.
Whether it’s true or not, I like that tale. Hearing angelic
voices is probably terrifying enough in itself, but if that voice tells you
that you are going to bear a child when you know that ought to be impossible,
and you also know that it will cause a scandal which might destroy you, it’s
quite understandable that you might not want to stick around to hear more. Some
news takes a bit of getting used to. Sometimes it’s only when it’s repeated
that we find the courage to believe it. It can take even longer for us to
realise that challenging news might also be good news. But that’s what happens
to Mary. Whether it took one visit or two, she found the courage to say, “Here I am Lord, ready to do your will.”
She had the faith to see that whatever was happening, if God was part of it, it
was going to turn out to be good news.
 |
| Mary's house, allegedly, in the Roman Catholic Basilica of the Annunciation |
In the Psalm we heard today, the psalmist made the same
declaration of faith. “Here I am; I
delight to do your will, your law is within my heart” He has learned, it seems, that God is a
god of steadfast love and faithfulness. He has learned it by heart, by deciding
to trust God’s word again and again and again until it becomes second nature,
something he can’t help but pay attention to.
At our Messy Church session a week or so ago, we made a
giant picture frame for people to have their photos taken in – it’s at the back of church. Around its edge it proclaims“Jesus
is God’s message of love,” but we’d be forgiven for not immediately seeing
that message of love in the circumstances of Jesus' birth and much of what happens
to him in adulthood too. He is born as a poor baby, with only a manger for a
bed, to parents who have already been driven the length of the country on the
whim of the distant Emperor of Rome, and will soon have an even longer journey,
fleeing the wrath of another ruler, Herod, and becoming refugees in Egypt. When
he is grown he will wander the countryside with nowhere to lay his head,
challenged and opposed at every turn by those in authority, until they finally
crucify him as a trouble maker. As
Teresa of Avila is supposed once to have said when she and her nuns were enduring
hard times, “ if this is how you treat
your friends, God, is it any wonder you have so few of them”. And yet through
this beleaguered and man, battered and bruised, despised and rejected, all the
world will be blessed. “You have given me
an open ear” says the Psalmist. Mary could have said the same thing. Her
ears are open to God, open in the faith that whatever God is up to, he is a God
of love, and so he can’t be up to anything but love in and through what he is
asking of her.
In our next two Breathing Space communions we’ll try to open
our ears to the good news that Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist hears,
and the good news that the Shepherds hear on their cold dark hillside, but I
pray most of all that we will have an “open ear” for the good news that God is
speaking to us this Advent, the messages of love he sends to us in the birth of
the Christ child.
Amen
No comments:
Post a Comment