Today - this last Sunday in Advent, which happens to be Christmas Eve, we remember Mary
It means that we have the story of the annunciation this morning and the birth this evening. Shortest pregnancy ever!
And this morning I would like to focus for a few minutes on Mary's Yes to God:
'Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word'
She did not need to say Yes.
Indeed, she is contrasted to Zechariah (the double reference to ‘the sixth month’, [Luke 1.26,36] places the annunciation in the story of the birth of John the Baptist)
Many similarities: an angel appears to him and tells him that Elizabeth his wife will have a baby. But clearly Zechariah responds with unbelief: How is this possible? I'm really old and my wife is getting on.
He is a priest in the temple of God and he does not believe the word of God. And so he is struck dumb. He cannot speak because he has nothing to say.
But Mary responds with faith. She says, Yes to God.
It is a yes which shapes everything:
It shapes her relationship with Joseph
It shapes how other people saw her
It shapes what happens to her body
It shapes her future life, her identity and her destiny
1. She says yes to the love of God
The first words that the angel speaks are. 'Greetings favoured one!'
The first word that God speaks to any of us are words of love. The call of God to us is a call of love to love.
There must have been many times when Mary did not feel favoured.
She probably did not think she was favoured being told that something very scary is going to happen to her. She was going to have a child – and in the process she would probably lose her reputation, her fiancee, her family, even - at the extreme - her life.
And I wonder whether she felt favoured when she had gone into labor and there was nowhere for her to give birth
I wonder whether she felt favoured when she saw her son dying on the cross.
But she holds on to the fact that the first words that God speaks are words of love: she is the favoured one; 'Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God'
2. She says yes to the power of God, to the Holy Spirit
"The power of the Most High will overshadow you"
Mary does not know how she can possibly become pregnant while not having sex with a man.
But she is told that the Holy Spirit can do the impossible
And she trusts God, that he can do it.
3. She says yes to being part of the story of hope that God gives us
God had promised that one day a descendant of David [David was the great king in Israel's history], would be born, and would establish God's kingdom - he would be Son of God and he would be the Messiah: God's king in God's world.
Of course, many people dismissed that as a fairytale.
Others paid lip service to it but didn't really believe it could happen - and just got on with their lives.
But there were a faithful few, who believed the promises that God had given in the Old Testament, and who longed for and looked for and who lived their lives in the light of the one who was going to come as the fulfilment of that promise.
And in saying Yes to God, Mary does not only say a personal Yes to him.
She says the Yes of all those who had longed and waited for the birth of Messiah.
She says Yes to being part of that story of the fulfilment of hope.
You don't have to be Roman Catholic or Orthodox to say that Mary is pretty central to the Christian faith.
She is, as Elizabeth says, when Mary visits her, 'Blessed among women'
She was the human Mother of God: the eternal Son of God was in her womb.
She is an example of faith in God's word: on one occasion while Jesus was teaching a woman calls out, 'Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursed you'. And Jesus replies, 'Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it'
And Mary is also, in Revelation 12, a person who embodies historic faithful Israel - that part of the nation and people who held to the promise of God and gave birth to Jesus - and she is the person who comes to embody the Church, the people of God.
So Mary's Yes is an example to us, but it is also – if we have come to Jesus Christ - our Yes to God
It is a Yes which will shape everything about us: how we use our bodies, how people see us and treat us, how we live our lives. And it will shape our thinking and our desire, our identity and our destiny.
With Mary we say Yes to the good news that - despite our sin, despite the lives that we have damaged including our own, despite our failure, confusion, our lostness, our despair - God loves us.
And that even though his call to us may be difficult and painful - to follow him, to deny ourselves, to face potential ridicule or shame for him - we are called to hold on to that love.
And when he calls us through death shadowed valleys, that even then, 'all things in the end will work for good for those who love him' (Julian of Norwich: 'All will be well').
He has not abandoned us, he came among us as one of us, as Immanuel: 'God with us', he died for us on the cross and he rose again. He delights in us and longs that we might delight in him.
And with Mary we say Yes to the power of God: that he can change us, that he can transform us, that Christ can be born in us and live in us. And not only us but this created universe which is longing to be set free from decay and death.
And with Mary we say Yes to the transforming hope of God even in the most awful of circumstances.
God may not answer prayers in the way we demand, or in the sort of time scale that we expect, but Paul in Ephesians says that God will answer our prayers in a way that we simply cannot imagine, and that he will satisfy our deepest longings:
'Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine ...' Ephesians 3:20
Mary appears in Eastern icons nearly always with Jesus.
That is because she is favoured, but he is great.
She submits and he reigns
And here is an icon of this event, the Annunciation (Ustyug, Russia, C12th)The angel brings the message to her. She hears and receives, and Christ is born in her.
With Mary we say Yes to the word of God and Christ is born in us.
