The Announcement

Gospel: Luke 1: 26-38

So much art and homiletic on this feast runs afoul of the reality of the actual event itself.  Mary was a resident of a small, poor village, engaged to a poor laborer.  Yet, the art surrounding this scene has her in royal regalia in a palatial home.  Our homiletics often misses the real existential angst of a young woman being asked to bear a child not belonging to her betrothed.  Joseph accepting the child as his own spares Mary severe consequences.  Mary accepts real hardship in accepting this mission from God.

And yet this feast is not really about an event of many centuries ago.  It is about our own acceptance of the bearing of Christ within us.  God comes to each one of us, asking if we will bear the Christ within us and bring him forth into the world through deeds of mercy and loving kindness.  That announcement to us brings with it the same hardships and the same angst as it did for Mary in her own life.  For to bear Christ is to bear his cross as well.

It is for this reason that this feast often falls within the season of Lent, so near to the events of Holy Week.  If we accept the announcement of the angel in our lives, then we must accept the path of the cross this upcoming week.  Let us bear Christ within us, bringing him forth into the world through deeds of healing, liberation, and nourishing of others.  Let us bear the cross that accompanies him with patience and joy, forgiving our betrayers and persecutors and deniers as Jesus himself did. 

You Will Look for Me

Gospel: John 8: 21-30

It is often said that the aim of religion and spirituality is the quest for God.  We undertake a search that takes us to many places - through religious texts, to shrines and temples, amid various theologies and schools of thought, and even membership in various religious communities.  Some claim to have found God in one or more of these places, while others go from place to place not finding what they are looking for in any of these places.  Jesus here says that you will look for me but die in your sins.  

It is recorded that in the beginning God created human beings and declared them to be made in his image and likeness.  We later read that human beings are temples of the Holy Spirit.  We have looked for God in all sorts of places - all of which are places created by human beings, and yet we fail to look for God in the one place God created - within ourselves an within one another.  We go about killing one another claiming to defend where we claim God dwells in these places of our invention.  So we die in our sins.  

So perhaps this Lent we search for God within the depths of our own hearts and in the companionship of other people whom God as created as a divine image.  We might find God in these other places, but only if we recognize the fact that they will only point us back to the place within and to the presence of others where God truly dwells and communicates fully to us.  Only then will the tomb be opened and the presence of the Lord fully known to us.

Put Down Your Stone

Gospel: John 8: 1-11

A woman caught in adultery is brought before Jesus.  The crowd has stones at the ready for her execution.  Her guilt is not in question.  The religious leaders ask Jesus to pass judgment, to take part in her execution.  Jesus will have none of it.  He writes on the ground, causing the crowd to drift away in silence.  He then tells the woman he does not condemn her, and encourages her not to commit this sin again in the future.

In the book of Ezekiel, we read time and again the following statement:  "As I live, says the Lord, I swear I take no pleasure in the death of the sinner, but rather in the sinner's conversion."  Throughout his ministry and most poignantly in this scene, Jesus exhibits this mercy and patience of God.  Time again he extends mercy and forgiveness.  He repeatedly invites to table fellowship prostitutes, tax collectors, Pharisees, and his own disciples who betray, deny, and abandon him.

Meanwhile, we who claim to be Christian have callous hands from holding the stone of execution, always waiting to hurl it at someone.  We cling to and defend a death penalty system Jesus clearly rejected here.  We do precious little to extend mercy, forgiveness, and restoration to those who have offended.  The stone in our hand is our heart.  Let us lay it down and allow the Lord to soften it so that we may be people of mercy, compassion, and forgiveness just as he was.