Homily for 4th Sunday of Advent 2005^th

Recently a parent who may have been having a difficult day with the children offered the proposition: “You have children to show you how you treat God!”

You sometimes see your children as ungrateful, selfish, materialistic, bad tempered, or whatever. Is the way they relate to you a reflection on the way you relate to God? Are we like troublesome children?

The riots in Sydney raise many questions. Questions about how you raise children. How a migrant community with very different ways relate to the Anglo world of the majority of Australia. Questions of our own relationship to the land. Who does own the beach? Questions of selfishness. Questions of who do we blame now? We are so good at the blame game. However, it is pleasing to see that at least some people are now talking to each other. There is hope yet.

If you think our world is in a mess so was the world into which Jesus was born.

The image of Mary we are accustomed to, comes mainly from the middle ages. The rich patrons of the arts of Medieval and Renaissance Europe painted Mary in an image of themselves: an upper class, fair gentlewoman, Our Lady. In fact Mary at the time of the Annunciation was probably a 12 or 13 year old girl (Teenages didn't exist then, children were betrothed at puberty). She would have had Semitic features with a dark complection. She certainly would not have had blue eyes! She grew up in that obscure little town of Nazareth in poor circumstances.

Mary probably would have had to face the terror of the Roman destruction of the then capital of Galilee, called Sepporis (Zippori in Hebrew).

For some history of Sepporis see: http://archaeology.huji.ac.il/zippori/RomanSeph.htm

Sepporis was a large city compared to Nazareth and was only 5 kms away. In 4BC Jewish resistance fighters revolted and took over the city. The Romans suppressed the uprising and causing some devastation in Sepporis. Today it is but a ruin, an archeological dig. Surrounding villages were levied heavily to punish the rebels. Mary would have witnessed perhaps the enslavement of relatives and friends. She and her family would still bear the scars of that event which ruined the lives of many.

Luke does not give us such details. The details come from archeology and other sources. But as if to emphasise the situation Luke describes the Annunciation to Mary parallel to that to Zechariah about John the Baptist. Zechariah was one of the privileged people. A priest of the Temple. He would be a person of some standing and wealth. Unlike Zechariah's unwillingness to believe Mary responds with a courageous yes even as a young girl.

That “yes” has sometimes been translated into a kind of meek submission. Bible scholars have pointed out that in none of the 27 commissioning and annunciation stories in the Hebrew Bible does the person being commissioned assent verbally to that commission. See for example the call of Jeremiah (Jeremiah 1:1-10). Only Mary does: “Here am I, the servant of the Lord” (Luke 1:38).

She is not only being asked to be a mother. She is being commissioned in a prophetic role as well. She would bear the Word of God. And that is just what Luke shows her doing in her famous canticle the Magnificat. So when Mary sings of God doing great things for her; bringing down the powerful from their thrones and raising the lowly, feeding the hungry and senting the rich away empty she is being portrayed as a prophet. This occurs in the very next paragraph when she visits Elizabeth (Luke 1:46-55).

I came across an interesting quote from the American poet and novelist Kathleen Norris. She says of this picture of Mary at the Annunciation courageously committing herself that it may provide an excellent means of conveying to girls that there is something in them that no man can touch; that belongs only to them and to God. In the context of the plight of many women today particulary in poor areas of the world the Magnificat echoes their suffering.

A word needs to be said about the virgin birth of Jesus. Luke tells of the angel saying to Mary that The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Those words are not to be taken as a euphemism for a sexual relation between the Holy Spirit and Mary so that Jesus has a human and divine nature. Sexual liasions between the gods and humans were common in the myths of the ancient religions. The New Testament is clear that this is not such an event. It is a virginal birth. Apart from the fact that the spirit has a neuter gender in Greek, not male, what is happening here is what happened in Genesis when God's Spirit hovered over the waters (Genesis 1:2).

Often in the bible the Spirit is spoken of as coming upon someone (eg Judges 14:19) and overshadowing (cf Matthew 17:5) a person. We do not know the mechanics of the birth of Jesus. What Luke is telling us by using that phrase come over you is that the conception will be a creative act of God. And in using the word overshadow he is affirming along with the whole of scripture that God's protection will be with Mary. So Mary is chosen by God, is commissioned by God and is offered God's protection like all the great prophets of old. But she stands above them all in her whole hearted acceptance of her vocation.

So in this last week of Advent the Liturgy of the Church observes a novena (Dec 17-25) inviting us to reflect on the mystery of the incarnation and Mary's role in it – and ours as well. We too are to bear Christ to the world.

Fr Graham