Greetings, favored ones! The Lord is with you. Amen.

The Lord is with you. Do not be afraid. For nothing will be impossible with God.
When God decided to surrender to flesh and blood, God needed help. It sounds unlikely but God needed help when the Word was to be made flesh in the first cry of a newborn, wet and red, with wrinkled skin, and in the cry of a man on a cross who cried, “Why,” “Why have you forsaken me?”

God needed a mother for God’s son, someone to bear the Son of God. “Theotokos,” God-bearer is the name Mary was given in the Eastern church. God needed a God bearer, who in turn consented herself to surrender and carry, give birth to, nurse and raise the Son of God. God who surrendered to flesh and blood needs a mother of flesh and blood.

Mary is the chosen one. She is engaged to Joseph from the house of David so through her the prophecy of the one who sits on David’s throne can be fulfilled.

In the drama of God’s surrender to flesh and blood, God intervenes in Joseph’s and Mary’s relationship, interrupts the usual sequence of the steps to marriage and first child, tapping Joseph on the shoulder and saying, “Excuse me, may I cut in?”

The scene between the angel and Mary called the Annunciation, has been rendered throughout the centuries by artists in works of wood, paint and glass. Mary is always the picture of femininity, dressed in yards and yards of silk or brocade, her hair golden like a crown, her nails perfectly manicured. She looks so composed it is hard to remember she is just a girl who has had precious little experience with men, or angels, or the world. In the paintings the angel usually comes out of nowhere, is just as beautiful as she is, dressed like a papal emissary, with wings spread open, often white but also to be found with feathers like a peacock in all the colors of the rainbow. A lily, an olive branch, or a royal scepter in the angel’s hand often are a sign of purity, peace, and authority that he brings from above.

This past summer I spent a few days in Florence, Italy with my family. There in the San Marco convent the Annunciation is painted in a fresco on the wall of the corridor leading to the individual cells of the Dominican monks who used to live here. The Renaissance artist Fra Angelico placed the painting of Mary and the angel so that as the monks came up the flight of stairs they were met and embraced by the larger than life image of the annunciation, before turning to their cells.

Gabriel is half kneeling in front of Mary, his body bent forward in a slight bow. He is not standing over her. He is expectantly waiting for a response from the perplexed young woman. How is she going to respond to the announcement that she will bear a son who will be called Son of the Most High and be given the throne of his ancestor David? Never by the way is she asked if she would like to try out for the role. She is simply told, “The Lord is with you.” - And now, upon her response rests the successful delivery of the angel’s message. Upon her response ultimately depend God and the whole creation. Will the Word become flesh? How will she answer?

And I wonder, how did the monks answer as they walked up the stairs? And how does the Florence tourist answer?

Mary’s first response is, “How can this be?” She wants to know; whose idea was this? How is this exactly going to happen? She is trying to make sense out of what makes no sense: that God decided to surrender to flesh and blood but needed her help, needed her to surrender as well in order to carry out the plan.

As we wonder about Mary’s response to the divine proposal and while we quietly wonder about our own responses taking cover in the shadow of the Florence tourist, it would be easy to make a common mistake, as if Mary, or the former monks of San Marco or the tourist, would have a choice. There are so many choices in life, and it does appear that it is up to each of us to choose our own lives. But more often than that, the choices of life seem to choose us before we get to choose. Our 5 and 10 year plans are interrupted by life’s own plans for us: by sudden illness, or surprise babies, by aging parents, kids needing intervention, career opportunities, the economy, hurricanes. Wonderful things happen and terrible things happen, but seldom do we know ahead of time exactly what will happen.

Like Mary’s, our choices often boil down to yes or no: yes, Here I am, I will live this life that is being held out to me, or: no, I will not. Yes, I will explore this unexpected turn of events, or: no, I will not.

If not, simply drop your eyes and refuse to look up until you know the angel has left the room. Then smooth your hair and go back to whatever it was you were doing before the angel came on the scene; pretend nothing happened.

If your life changes anyway, you have several options.
You can be stoic. You can refuse to accept the change, the fact that a proposal has been made; you can put all your energy into ignoring it and insist that nothing happened to you in spite of all the evidence.
If that does not work, you can become angry, actively defending yourself against the unknown and spending all of your time trying to get your life back the way it used to be. And then, of course, you can become bitter, comparing yourself to everyone else whose life is more agreeable than yours and lamenting your unhappy fate. If you succeed in this, your life may not be an easy one, but you can rest assured that no angels will trouble you ever again.

Or like Mary, you decide to say yes. Actually not ‘say yes’, but recognize, accept that something has happened. Mary is being called. The Lord is with her. He needs her to surrender so he can surrender and be a wet, red, wrinkled baby, and a man who cries out “Why?” The monk and the nun are called to the monastic life. A surrender of its own kind.
God is still looking for more fruit-bearers, for more who bring Christ to the world. The angel still descends and walks up the steps with the Florence tourist, with you and me.

You can say like Mary, yes, now I see it. You can begin acting like who you already are, and join the community of the favored ones. Who upon seeing begin to take part in a plan they did not choose, doing things they do not know how to do, for reasons they do not entirely understand. It can be thrilling and even dangerous; there is no script and no guarantees. You agree to smuggle God into the world inside your own person, mind, body, entire being.

When you answer to the angel “Here I am,” it does not mean by the way that you are unafraid; it just means you are not willing to let your fear keep you locked in your room.

All who say, “Here I am, let it be with me according to your word,” become one of Mary’s people like the monks, the saints, a tourist here and there; one more God-bearer, theotokos, willing to bear God into the world. One, two, three and many more of Mary’s people are called, chosen, full of grace, bearing fruit and giving birth to the Son of God in our time and our culture.

Greetings, favored ones! The Lord is with you. Do not be afraid. For nothing will be impossible with God. Amen.