Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Luke 1:26-38 (again)

So, can I ask - is it just that the fourth week of Advent is usually so abbreviated? Or is the two-days-later gospel repeat a regular feature?

I've been thinking a lot this Advent about how, if we fear greatness, it's because we know that it comes with a price. I don't just mean that "with great power comes great responsibility" because, when it's humans, it also means great failure. With great power comes great destructive capability. And nobody's perfect.

There's a quote by Marianne Willaimson that was used in Akeelah and the Bee (great movie): “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

Where I came from with all of this, is that when you look at what the angel said to Mary, it's pretty glorious stuff - most of which doesn't turn out the way you would expect it to from the way the angel says it (at least not yet): "Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his Kingdom there will be no end."

It wasn't a warning that Jesus would suffer and die. It wasn't even a warning that people around her would react poorly. The thing that had to be told to us, that always has to be told to us, the thing that is scary enough on our own is that we are destined for something glorious. That our responsibility is already great. That is it already beyond imagining. That we have a responsibility not BECAUSE of our power, but that we have a responsibility to take that power. Because our responsibility to our world already existed.

We are frightened of the idea of having power over our world, to change our world, because then we could not let the horrible things in it stand. We are terrified of becoming our best selves because we must be them all the time. Because we feel so little like those people most of the time that we're convinced it would be dying. Dying to ourselves that we might live.

It wasn't a trick - that Gabriel told Mary only the glorious outcome of the Incarnation. We know, deep down in our bones, what always comes of something glorious. It's one of the times you can see most clearly the life you left behind with the choice to follow God. But then, we make ten thousand choices every day, and each one drops behind us another Life Not Lived.

We are afraid to take ownership of those choices. We are afraid to follow the path that God has laid out for us - the glorious path, the powerful path. The path that involves taking up the responsibility we already have but like to pretend we don't have.

Like, in a story so popular this time of year, when Marley tried to explain to Scrooge that "mankind was my business!" Whatever job Scrooge and Marley chose, whatever they chose to care about and do with their lives, they already had great responsibility to their fellow man. Taking up the call is just fulfilling that responsibility - not acquiring it.

Mary was the humble servant of God, and she was called to be the Queen of Heaven. What we see in her beautifully simple acceptance is not only acceptance of the hardships that come along but a humble acceptance of her own God-given power. Her own power and responsibility to use the Grace she was full of.

The same thing we have to do.