Readings for the Day:
Sermon:
Go to iTunes or SoundCloud for Audio Podcast
Original Manuscript:
This is an interactive manuscript. To follow links, click the highlighted words below.
You can view the whole service by clicking here.
When I went to Nazareth four years ago, I learned there are two sites that claim to be where Mary received the Annunciation from Gabriel, one for the Orthodox and one for the Roman Catholics.
The Orthodox have a church built around a well. Wells were places in Scripture that people often went to in order to find love. Abraham’s servant found Rebecca, Isaac’s future wife, at a well. Moses meets his wife at a well. The woman at the well we heard from a couple of Sundays ago even found a new kind of love, a love for God not a love for another human husband, when she met Jesus.
But Mary would not have been anticipating finding such love, let alone an angel, at the well. She was a normal girl with a normal life and a normal betrothed husband.
This leads to the Roman Catholic theory. Their idea is that Mary did see the angel at the well, but then she thought “Oh no, there’s no way this angel is here for me. I should go and leave this angel to deliver this message in private.”
Thus Mary went home to her parents’ house, and the angel followed her and told her all she needed to hear. This is the second site of a church that celebrates the Annunciation.
The fact that Mary says “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” speaks volumes about her. Mary, by becoming pregnant by the Holy Spirit, was putting herself in great danger. She could have been stoned to death in those days for being found pregnant out of wedlock. Yet Mary takes this risk to serve the Lord.
In this time of social distancing, we find ourselves mostly at home, except for the occasional venture outside for sustenance and maybe exercise. In other words, our lives have be limited to our homes and the well.
And yet, God can speak to us through these seemingly unlikely places. My hope is that when God speaks to us, we will listen, and that we can be as open to what God is saying as Mary was upon hearing Gabriel.