Canon John Bedingfield's sermon for December 20, 2020

In the name of the God of the Annunciation, Amen.

This is Mary Sunday, as you can easily tell from our Gospel reading.  This is the Sunday when we consider Mary’s decision to say “Yes!” to God’s offer to participate as God changed the world.

Have you ever seen a painting of The Annunciation – that moment where the angel Gabriel announced to Mary that God was entering her life in a very new and unusual way?  Well, I took to Google this week and started looking at all of the paintings of this event, some by masters and others by folks who painted in relative obscurity.  I found that the vast majority of these artistic representations do not come anywhere near showing how I truly believe the event of Gabriel’s visitation unfolded.

Most of these paintings show Mary to be a grown woman.  We know from our knowledge of ancient Palestine and ancient Jewish custom, that most women – girls really – married at a very young age.  The rabbis of the day held the opinion that twelve was an acceptable age for the girl to be engaged – and that thirteen was a good marrying age.  Very few of the paintings show Mary to be a pre-teen or even a thirteen-year-old.

Then there is the really odd commonality in many of these paintings, that they show Mary reading – usually something that we can easily imagine to be Scripture.  Remember that Mary was in Nazareth – a backwater town in the armpit of the Roman Empire, in the year 30 BC or so.  I am willing to bet that only the rabbi in town could read – and perhaps even he couldn’t.  And even if several people in town could read, there is very little chance that one of them was a young girl.

Perhaps my biggest issue with Annunciation paintings, is that they generally show Mary with a beatific smile (many look suspiciously like the Mona Lisa).  She is always dressed impeccably, exceedingly calm, and many times wearing what looks to be a nun’s wimple (the white head covering that all nuns used to wear and some still do).  In still others, Mary has a halo over her head, indicating that she is holy.

My problem with all of these portrayals, is that they lose Mary’s ordinariness – which, I believe, cheapens the story.  Fabrizio Boschi almost got it right.  In his painting, Gabriel and the seraphim, are about to bless Mary, and instead of the knowing smile and the total comfort with the situation, Mary is almost recoiling and looking askance at them.  This one, as I said, is almost right, but not quite.  Again, Mary is too old in the painting, and her expression, although appropriately showing confusion and some level of disbelief, she seems to be asking Gabriel, “What, are you kidding me?”

For my money, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, in his 1850 painting, The Annunciation, other than the halo that Mary wears, came the closest to representing the important things about this story.  In his work, Rossetti shows an obviously young girl, cowering as far back into the corner of her bed and the wall, as she can get.  She cannot bring herself to look at the angel, and the look on her face says, “I have no idea what all of this means.”

You see … despite the way that painters have painted this scene, and despite the way that some religious writers have written about it, Mary’s visitation from Gabriel was an example of the extraordinary intersecting with the ordinary.  It was a completely ordinary girl being confronted with the Archangel who, throughout Scripture, was tasked with taking messages directly from God and transmitting them directly to humans, usually with a corresponding power and understanding – and with a call to perform some function for God.  That’s the reason that every time Gabriel appears in Scripture, his entrance is accompanied by the words, “Do not be afraid.”  Because, let’s face it, if we saw Gabriel right here, right now, we would be petrified.

Mary being initially frightened and later confused, is important, because it means that Mary was just like us.  She was NOT born from a virgin mother herself, as some legend holds.  There is nothing in Scripture that indicates what Mary’s parents’ names were, much less about her conception and childhood.  All of that stuff comes from legend and apocryphal accounts.  And all of those legends are designed to make us believe that Mary was different from us, even before Gabriel visited.  That is nonsense, and I believe that it does damage to her story.

The true power of the story of the Nativity (which was preceded by the story of the Annunciation) is that the God of the entire universe – indeed, the God of all that is – came to be one of us in a completely ordinary place, to a completely ordinary mother; that is, completely ordinary before Gabriel appeared.  Because after the Archangel appeared, nothing in Mary’s life was ever ordinary again'.

Mary’s story is at its most powerful, not in who she was before that day.  It is at its most powerful when this completely ordinary, confused, frightened, and shocked young girl looked at the Archangel of God and said, “Okay.  I’ll do what you ask.”  That is where heaven and earth intersected for a time, and out of which came the Incarnation of God.  Without Mary’s, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” none of the rest would have been possible.

Episcopal priest and extraordinary author, Barbara Brown Taylor, said, 

"Mary wins her place in history not for her cleverness, nor for her beauty, nor even for her goodness.  She becomes the most important woman in the world simply because she is willing to say yes to an angel’s strange proposal without a clue where it will lead her.  Doing so, she becomes the prototype for all of us who are also invited to bear God into the world."

And that is really the point of Mary’s story, isn’t it?  She received a call from God that was decidedly more dramatic than most of ours.  But make no mistake, we are all called to bear God in the world.  And how we answer our own calls dictates whether or not that part of God’s mission in the world will be accomplished.

Sometimes when we get a call from God, it can seem that it is not really a call from the Almighty.  After all, the work that God calls us to do can seem so ordinary: handing out bulletins, cooking for a potluck (or even more important, cleaning up afterward); setting up for, or clearing after a Eucharist.  In some cases, our calling seems somewhat higher: teaching a Sunday school class or being a church musician.  But as we all know very well, everything God calls us to do can be a struggle, so that sometimes we wonder why we bother.  The point of the story is that everything we are called to do: the high and the low; the ones that bring adulation and the ones no one notices; those that seem irreplaceable and those that feel completely unimportant; all fit into God's scheme of things in ways that we cannot understand, any more than Mary could fully understand what Gabriel told her.  And just as it was with the totally ordinary Mary, it matters less whether or not we execute our tasks with skill and gracefulness, than it does that we approach them with devotion.  I read recently that, “God desires, not the skill of our hands, but the love of our hearts.  The person who has only the ability to love God and neighbor is all important [to] God….”

When God asks, say “yes.”  Then dive in and watch what wonders God can work.  Amen.

[Advent 4B Sermon 122020, 2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16; Canticle 3 or Canticle 15; or Psalm 89:1-4, 19-26, Romans 16:25-27; Luke 1:26-38]

Canon John Bedingfield's homily for December 13, 2020

 

This is twice in two weeks that we’ve had a Gospel reading about John the Baptist.  What’s the deal?  Why would the lectionary compilers put the same story in, to be told on successive weeks?  The short answer is, the characters may be the same, but the story is not.

In last week’s passage from Mark’s Gospel, we heard about John the baptizer, where he lived and where he preached.  We heard that the central message of his preaching was repentance.  That’s not exactly what John’s Gospel wants us to understand from this event.  

As you are probably aware, the three synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) along with the Gospel of John, all tell the same story – the Good News of Jesus Christ – but each tells it in its own way.  And just as it is with families, where stories that are central to the family’s history are told differently, depending upon which family member is telling the story, so it is with the Gospels.  Mark’s account brought the spotlight to bear on John the Baptist’s message – repent and return to the Lord – whereas the Gospel of John wants us to understand who the Baptist was, who he WASN’T, and what John (the Gospel writer) saw his mission to be.

You see, St. John – the Gospel writer, not the Baptist – has a very central point to make in his telling of Jesus’ story.  He wants to make sure that we “get” the fact that Jesus was God Incarnate – the same God who created the earth, who chose to become fully human in order to connect with us in a new and different way.  The “Light,” which is how the writer of this Gospel refers to Jesus before the beginning of His earthly ministry, the “Light,” came into the world to save the world from itself, from its sin and the death that naturally follows sin.  The Light came into the world to show the world what was hiding in the dark corners that humans had created, and to save humanity from all of the horrors that they had created in that darkness.  But those who were in charge of Israel’s religion in the first Century did not understand who Jesus was – and they showed that they didn’t understand who John the Baptist was either.

When the leaders of the Temple in Jerusalem went out into the wilderness to find this crazy preacher who was out there baptizing people and teaching them about the Light, they asked the Baptist, “Who are you?”  But John didn’t tell them who he was.  Instead he told them who he was NOT.  He was NOT the Messiah.  He was NOT Elijah – the greatest Hebrew prophet.  John didn’t acknowledge to the authorities, the fact that he WAS a prophet, instead he told them that – whatever they decided to call him – he took his marching orders from the same place that the prophet Isaiah took his.  He was the one whose voice was crying in the wilderness, make straight the way of the Lord.

That’s how the writer of the fourth Gospel understood the mission of John the Baptist.  He was the herald – the one who announced the coming of the One who was so great that John wouldn’t even presume to untie His shoe for Him.  But as important as this announcing aspect of John’s mission was, the writer of this Gospel gives John an even more important title – witness to the Light.  

The author of the 4th Gospel says that John was “the witness,” or in Greek, (martyreo).  If we think for a minute about how different that is from Mark’s description of the baptizing preacher of repentance, we might get something quite profound out of this Gospel portrayal.  

Have you ever testified in a courtroom?  Perhaps you saw an accident happen and were called to testify about it.  Or maybe someone you knew had a dispute with someone else and you knew some important facts about the dispute.  Maybe you’ve only seen courtroom activities on television and in the movies.  If that is the case, let me tell you that what you know about courtrooms is NOT true.  Not only have I examined and cross-examined quite a few people in courtrooms in my time, I have also been called to testify on one occasion.  And it gave me a whole new empathy and appreciation for what witnesses are called to do.

During my second year out of law school, one of the projects I was given to do involved a piece of property being foreclosed upon and determining whether or not an insurance policy had to pay out when the debtor defaulted on his note with the bank.  I did my job and advised the insurance company on how to proceed.  Years later, I was called to testify in Federal Court after the bank had sued their insurance carrier – the carrier I had advised.  It was while I was sitting on the witness stand, being attacked, not only for my legal abilities (or lack thereof), but also for the accuracy of my memory and my propensity to tell the truth (or lack thereof), that I developed an understanding of the word witness.

Legal proceedings cannot move forward without witnesses.  Witnesses establish what happened and what did not in any lawsuit.  Each side in a lawsuit knows what it believes the truth to be and therefore each side knows what the witnesses need to say in order for their side to win.  But witnesses are funny things.  They only know what they know.  And if they’re honest, they only testify to what is within their knowledge and understanding – and that makes one side or the other angry.  That’s why it is interesting to note that the Greek word, martyreo has the same root as the word martyr.

John the Baptist was the first witness to the Light that came into the world – Jesus.  The knowledge he had of Jesus, the knowledge that he worked so hard to impart on the crowds who came from all over to listen to him, was knowledge that didn’t make John popular with the Pharisees and Scribes.  John witnessed to a Light that was desperately needed in the Temple as well as throughout the world.  He testified to a Light that would come and illuminate all of the abuses that were taking place in Israel, abuses of the Romans against the Israelites; abuses by the wealthy of the poor; abuses by these religious leaders of both the system of worship and the people who came to the Temple to worship.  

Sometimes light shining on our activities is the LAST thing we want to have happen.  And so, the martyreo becomes the martyr, which we know ultimately happened to John.  When witnesses don’t testify the way we want them to, the way that helps OUR case, we want them to pay a price, to be martyred for what they have done.  And that’s what King Herrod ordered be done to John later in the story.

John witnessed Jesus.  John knew things about Jesus that the court of public opinion needed in order to make up its mind.  John witnessed.  And some members of his jury believed, and some got angry because their version of the truth was shown to be wrong.  But the important thing for John was the witnessing itself, the simple telling of the truth about the Light of the world.  No matter what the authorities thought; no matter what the world thought, John witnessed to the Light he knew.  We can do the same.  We are called to do the same.  

This morning, listen to what John witnessed – the Light of the World coming into our lives to lead us in the way of truth and life.  This week, when you’re out there trying to avoid virus exposure as you finish your Christmas preparations, or while you are trying desperately to get everything done before the holiday gets here, stop and remember what John witnessed.  We are called to witness the same thing.  

We’ve experienced the power of Christ in our lives, just like John did.  Now it’s our turn to witness that power to the world, in the things we say, the things we do – in the way we live our lives.

In the name of the God who comes into the world to save and judge us, Amen.

[Advent 3B Sermon 121320, Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11; Psalm 126 or Canticle 3 or 151 Thessalonians 5:16-24; John 1:6-8, 19-28]

On-line service option from Father Garrett at Church of the Holy Cross, Shreveport, December 6, 2020

Father Garrett Boyte and others at Church of the Holy Cross offer a Morning Prayer for today's service.  Follow the link to Facebook below to watch the service: 

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