“Here am I, the servant of the Lord;
Let it be with me according to your word.”
Luke 1:38
Each year as I come around to Advent I return to familiar texts and ask myself, “What passages will I reconsider this year?” Where do I dig to find that vein of ore that has so far remained undiscovered? How do I listen for that voice that “I have not heard” (Ps 81). What fresh breeze of the Spirit might turn my head and awaken a new insight?
It is not a case of familiarity breeding contempt, but it is a case of familiarity producing a longing, a kind of emptiness that wants to be filled. I want something to blow out the walls of my stunted imagination and usher me into a broad and open space where I take in the majesty of the whole thing in a new way. The Word becoming flesh, God emptying himself of his divine prerogative and becoming human, the One who holds all things together joining us in the entropy and chaos of this world. How do we talk about it? How do we let it in? How do we reconsider this familiar and utterly unbelievable mystery in such a way that it gets into us, takes up residence in us and so transforms some otherwise untouchable area of our lives? How do we become pregnant with this mystery and let it grow inside us until it is ready to be born?
I suppose these questions are the reason that the story of the Annunciation in Luke 1 usually rises to the top of my list of texts to reconsider during Advent. As a male I don’t know much about being pregnant. I have only watched it from afar and then at the end of nine months watched the emergence of, and eventually held, the little ones who grew inside of my wife, Mary Ann. But the story of the annunciation asks me to consider the ways in which pregnancy is an apt metaphor for our spiritual lives. It invites me to consider how I am pregnant and how to make room for something that is going to be born. It reminds me that we all have to turn our questioning gaze toward Gabriel and deal with his outlandish and incomprehensible message that God is asking to take up residence inside us. Along with Mary we wonder what these words mean and then have to decide whether or not we want to make space for God. We have to ask ourselves if we want to pray that prayer “Let it be with me according to your word.”
The icon above is something I saw in 2007 at the Getty Center in Los Angeles. They were hosting an installation of icons from St Catherine’s Abbey, a monastery on Mt Sinai that was established sometime in the second century and holds some of the oldest icons in the world. This one is different than most icons of the annunciation. Mary is usually depicted with her hand up, her palm facing Gabriel as if she is fearful and trying to ward him off. But here she is simply turning her head. Her weaving project has been lowered to her lap, and she looks to the one who has interrupted her work. Her gaze is not fearful but questioning. She is more Queen of Angels in this icon than she is terrified teenager. Seated on her throne she is considering what is being said to her and seems to have the agency to be able to say no. No one is forcing this pregnancy on her. She is getting to choose. And the Holy Spirit is hovering between heaven and earth waiting for her approval.
Mary is a picture of all of us in this moment. There is a sense in which the question put to her and the decision she has to make are things we share with her. We all have to work with the question of whether or not we will respond to God, whether or not we will make space for God. What’s more, we never stop working with this question. The opportunities to grow in our relationship with God, the process of discovering the ever-expanding dimensions of God’s love for us, will never end. At the end of each day we will always be able to retire with the expectation that a new day will also give us a new opportunity to hear “a voice we had not known” and embark on a new journey into the “broad and open space” of God’s love.
Joy to the World, the Lord is come, let earth receive her king.
Let every heart prepare him room, and heaven and nature sing.
David Rohrer
11/22/21