Image: "Magnificat,"
© Jan Richardson
© Jan Richardson
December 21, 2014
Do you remember sitting in the
classroom as a kid, when the teacher was calling on students for an answer you
weren't prepared to give?
Do you recall the feeling? "Oh
please ...don't call on me! Don't ask me ...I'm not prepared!"
Our tradition is filled with stories
of people being called on, being asked to do things they didn't want to do or
feel equipped to do.
Moses, for example, tried to squeeze
out of the terrifying task of confronting
Pharaoh with the excuse that he
couldn't speak well enough.
Jeremiah, called to be prophet in a
nation gone astray, also responded: "I don't know how to speak ... I’m too
young!"
An unmarried teenaged Jewish girl,
called to bear a child, responded: "How can this be? I'm a virgin."
But God has continued to call people
to take on awesome responsibilities, perform tasks they hadn't anticipated or
didn't feel equipped to do, and certainly wouldn't have chosen in a million
years.
The unexpectedness of the call and
the reluctance to embrace it has elicited familiar responses: "Who, me?
Why me?" "How can this be? "I'm too young; too old."
"I have a family to take care of."
In addition to the reluctant
reactions, we notice that most of those chosen for hard tasks have been rather
ordinary folks.
They've been people whose lives have
moved unspectacularly along until the call came, the voice spoke, the finger of
God touched them.
However that call has been delivered
or however the messenger is named, the summons is essentially the same:
"There is something I want you to do, or to say; someplace I want you to
go; Something I can do only through you."
And once the challenge is accepted,
there is no turning back or stopping what has been set in motion.
Men and women set out on arduous
journeys to new places.
Apprehensive, inarticulate people
become bold leaders or fearless prophets.
An insignificant teenager bears the
Son of God.
Ordinary people partner with the Holy
One, and extraordinary things happen.
Today's readings tell us something
really quite amazing as we prepare for this Christmas season.
It's not that there wouldn't t be any
Christmas without God's empowering action (though that is true).
The amazing thing is that there
wouldn't be any Christmas without us-
without that simple Jewish girl!
The amazing thing is that what God
wants for this human race will manage to get done through those willing to
cooperate and be a part of the action!
You would think that God would have
learned by now that we're a rather inept bunch-
not the kind of folks you'd rely on
to accomplish big things.
Perhaps it is that one little word
uttered by Mary in today's gospel and by so many others before her and since-
that tiny, but powerful
"Yes!"
"Yes, I'll bear the child."
"I'll go..." "I'll speak out..."
Perhaps that "yes" is what
keeps God coming back to us again and again, extending the invitation, issuing
the call, planting the seed, seeking us to help inch the Kingdom along.
The exciting event we are about to
celebrate is not so much about what happened 2000 years ago in Bethlehem.
The exciting thing is what is
happening here, among us as a pregnant people called in so many ways to give
birth to God made flesh in our lives!
And, like Mary, Moses, Jeremiah,
Isaiah and all the others, we are no doubt perplexed, reluctant, resistant to
that call.
Like those who have gone before us,
we wish it were not so.
We wish that the call – whatever it is – would come to someone else.
"Please, don t call on me
...."
But we too can take heart in
Gabriel's words to Mary: "Don't be afraid!"
We take heart, because along with the
call comes the assurance that God is with us.
As we prepare for the great feast of
God born among us, let dare to speak that most powerful of words,
that "yes" that links us to
Mary and all the others.
Let us shout it, if we are courageous
enough, or whisper it if we are afraid.
But let us each speak the word that
God longs to hear.
This Christmas, as we ponder what God
asks of us, let us thunder our resounding "Yes!"
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