Thurs, April 11, 2024
The Annunciation: A Love Story
The Rev. Aaron Jenkyn
Full text of the homily given at Thursday's Healing Eucharist based on the readings assigned for the Feast of the Annunciation of our Lord found here.
Today’s readings may give you a bit of lectionary whiplash, but rest assured we are still in the season of Easter. We are still celebrating the Resurrection, still walking with the risen Christ, but today we are taking a bit of a pause from the Eastertide stories to look ahead.
Because of the way Holy Week fell so early in the calendar year, the Annunciation of our Lord, which is normally celebrated on March 25, was transferred to April 8th to give it it’s own rightful place in the lectionary, and because we don’t gather for Eucharist until Thursday, I moved it once again to today. And somehow, that feels very real, considering that babies and due dates are not an exact science. And considering too how very important this moment is in Jesus’s story, in Mary’s story, in our story.
The feast of the Annunciation is centered around the Incarnation, which signifies that God has become one of us, that God has come to be with us, to put on flesh and walk with us as beautiful and flawed beings that we are, to teach and heal, to love and serve, to show us who God is, and who we can be, to lead and guide us through our lives, to go to to the cross and show us that death is not the end, that love, that God, remains with us always. There is no greater gift, no greater love than that.
The annunciation, is the story of how love is made.
The greatest love story of all time. It is The story of love being revealed to us in this new way, and consequently, of the sacrificial yes, that is required for God to be born unto us, for God to be born unto the world.
I want to think for a minute about what that means. About what a sacrificial yes looks like, in Mary’s life and in ours.
Mary: Love Forever Being Born by Kelly Latimore
When the angel Gabriel visited Mary with the news that she was to become the mother of Jesus, Mary said yes without being able to fathom the full depth of what her answer would mean. She couldn’t have known, in the detail that we know now, how it would shape her life. Her yes was a leap of faith — though what was posed to her was admittedly undeniable: “you will bear the son of God. He will do great things. His Kingdom will have no end” the angel told her. Nevertheless, she said yes. Not a yes filled with resentment, wondering and angst, but a firm, clear and full “yes” Her yes was not conditional, but sacrificial, an offering of her whole self. “Here am I, the servant of the Lord” she proclaimed.
It isn’t ever day that an angel of the Lord appears before us and asks such things of us. In fact, I suspect none of us have had a moment quite so revelatory. But the child that Mary bore into this world, the child that is love incarnate, the child who came to show us that the way into the heart of God is through following him, through loving and serving our communities and our world, demands nothing less of us.
We too are the favored one. And God desires to use each of us to bring love, to bring Jesus into the world again and again. But what is this “thing” that we are saying “yes” too.
It is unspecific, unclear, unknowable to all but God. It wouldn’t make a particularly good marketing strategy.
“come, offer your whole self, you souls and your bodies, to do Gods work in the world. We don’t really know what that means, or what it will require of you, or what path it will lead you down. Choose community over self. Choose peace over conflict. Choose the cross over comfort. You won’t regret it, and you won’t be alone, but you won’t know what you are doing along the way either.”
In today’s world, that sort of ask is almost unheard of. It isn’t a stepping stone into a successful career or a life of luxury. It doesn’t carry the markers of modern day “success” story. And yet. Those who have come before us, have said “yes”. And There is part of me, part of us, that feels the undeniable “yes” bubbling up inside. That longs to be able to say “here I am Lord, lead me and guide me.”
I feel that “yes” deep inside of me, but I also sense the doubt, the insecurity, the fear and unknowing of what that “yes” looks like. I long to have faith like Mary, to be able to say yes and not look back. But I am not sure that is how it works for most of us. It is in moments like this that I thank God for the Gospel stories, for the stories of the Acts of the Apostles, for story of Jesus’s friends, his followers, his disciples who longed to say yes, who did say yes, who followed - but who also faltered, and wavered, and doubted, and fell and stood back up again — and in doing so, show us that it is in the trying that we are affirming our faith, that in the return we are committing ourselves to God over and over again.
In our baptism, in our confirmation, or reaffirmation, in sacred moments of divine intervention, moments of promise and understanding and sacrifice too true to speak, we have the opportunity to say “yes” like Mary, But we have a lifetime to learn how to navigate that “yes”.
Perhaps that is the promise, and the prayer, that we are making in those moments. “Here I am Lord. Unique, flawed, and unsure, but I am here, help me to know how to serve you.” And when I fail, send me a messenger, send me an angel, send me a friend, to whisper, to shout, to annunciate the good news, that God is with me, that God is within me, that God will do great things through me and Gods kingdom will have no end. Send me a friend to remind me that my yes is forever and always. Send me a friend to strengthen me on the weakest of days, to pick me up when I fall, to remind me that in my weakness God calls us to return.
Saying yes, to God, to church, to baptism, to confirmation isn’t the end, but the beginning.
Mary had Elizabeth to teach her how, how to trust, how to serve, how love Jesus into being. And we have each other. This weekend many members of our beloved community will step forward and say yes to God, some for the first time, and others to reaffirm their faith, to reaffirm their “yes” whispered so long ago. May we love them, embrace them, hold them up and shine our lights on them in this moment of annunciation. And from wherever we sit, wherever we find ourselves on our journey of faith, may we whisper “yes” along with them.
Thanks be to God. Amen.