Monday, April 8, 2024
Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Mary’s poetry
The Lord will give you this sign: the virgin shall be with child and bear a son, and shall name him Emmanuel, which means “God is with us.”
Once you hook up Isaiah’s words with the birth of Jesus, and once you accept the idea of a virgin birth, it all becomes clear. Jesus was born in fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy.
I have waited patiently … now here I am, Lord, I have come to do your will. To do your will, O my God, is my delight, and your law is within my heart.
In his Writer’s Almanac Garrison Keillor writes on William Wordsworth’s birthday (April 7, 1770) of Wordsworth and his friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge, both classically famous English poets.
Wordsworth believed that poetry “takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility” and that poets should use the language of the common man. Coleridge wasn’t interested in tranquility; he said that “poetry reveals itself in the balance or reconciliation of opposite or discordant qualities.” Though they remained friends, Wordsworth grew tired of Coleridge’s addictions, his mysticism, and his volatile behavior, and wanted a more stable life. When he was 32 he married a childhood friend, settled down to have five children and got a government job.
I don’t think of Jesus as tranquil, exactly. The poetry of Jesus’ life revealed itself in the revelation and vision of God’s work in the lives of his most loved, most frustrating creatures of all his creation – mankind. Womankind. Both equally wacko and wonderful. Tranquil and discordant/chaotic/selfish/unfocused/exhausted.
So now here we are, found by Jesus and now at last at peace, tranquil. But here we also are, aware of the most contradictory impulses in ourselves, impulses that lead to God and those that lead away.
Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you. But Mary was greatly troubled at what the angel said and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. “Do not be afraid, Mary,” Gabriel the angel said.
During “table talk” yesterday, on the first of seven Sundays of “Living in Jesus Zipcode” at our church, we discussed two questions: 1) What is most similar and different about your life in Austin and first century life in Judea/Galilee? 2) Who or what do you serve?
Question #1: no cellphone computers or search engines in the first century. On the other hand, our bodies work about the same now as they did then. We are born, we live, and then we die.
Question #2: Now, I feel the power of Wordsworth’s desire for an active, peaceful, settled life and Coleridge’s excitement when life seems like it’s just getting started. The farmer and the mountain climber.
But who or what do I serve? I serve God, and I serve my appetites. God draws me toward himself in spiritual conversation and in prayer. My appetites are strong and often centered on myself. They draw me away from God, even if those appetites are indeed his gifts. In my regular repentance (as regular as walking stones along the path of my life) I struggle to receive his gift and keep my focus on him while I do.
Nothing will be impossible for God.
Mary is a profound example of how I want to live as the person God made me to be – full of the fire of life, and full of surrender to his Spirit.
Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done unto me according to your word.
Don’t tell me this is easy. Not for me. Not for Mary. Her mind teemed with thoughts she did not share with Gabriel. But she had been blessed with confidence in God, her maker, that she needed every day for the rest of life.
Then the angel departed from her.
(Isaiah 7, Psalm 40, Hebrews 10, John 1, Luke 1)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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