4th Sunday in Advent. The Great Disturbance

Luke 1: 26-38
In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, ‘Greetings, favoured one! The Lord is with you.’ But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. The angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob for ever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.’ Mary said to the angel, ‘How can this be, since I am a virgin?’ The angel said to her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.’ Then Mary said, ‘Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.’ Then the angel departed from her.

There was a humorous story with variations going around on the internet recently about a woman wondering why her husband was being quiet and withdrawn. In her head, she explored myriads of possible reasons, all having to do with the history of their relationship, current problems and what she may have done to upset him. Her reasonings and conclusions were multiple and complex. Then we get an insight into what the guy was thinking: “My truck won't start.”

The Gospel this week says that Mary was much perplexed. In my Jerusalem bible it says that she was deeply disturbed. I'm thinking that Luke at some point asked Mary about that moment of annunciation and Mary tried very hard to explain what it was like to have an angel speaking those particular words to her. Luke probably listened patiently for a long time and then wrote down, “She was disturbed.”

Fair enough. The Gospels were not written as mini-novellas with all the characters' thoughts and feelings opened up to us. They are records of specific events and the teachings of Jesus. Still, there are times when I'm reading the Gospels that I wish the writer could have written a little more than the bare facts. On the other hand, Luke probably could have written a whole book about Mary being deeply disturbed. I prefer 'deeply disturbed' to 'much perplexed' because I think she experienced something infinitely more profound than simple confusion or puzzlement over some words of greeting the angel said to her. When I read that Mary was deeply disturbed, it makes me think of a body of still water over which a strong wind begins gusting, sweeping and swirling. A Ruah wind. The wind of the Spirit was rushing over her and through her, moving her and evoking senses within her that were completely foreign yet strangely familiar - like echoes of a home known long long ago in a place somewhere far beyond memory.

The Spirit was roiling the waters in the depths of Mary's being. The moment the angel spoke, she was no longer just 'Mary'. She was 'Full of Grace' or 'Favored One'. She was “Blessed Among Women”. She had heard her true name and knew that nothing would ever be the same again. The dictionary meaning of the verb 'disturb' is “interfere with the normal arrangement or functioning of”. It wasn't just Mary's surface emotions that God was disturbing deeply; God was in the process of disturbing her whole inner and outer life.

Our God is a disturbing God. But you shouldn't take that statement and think it simply means the struggles and challenges we all deal with every day. It's not just another way of saying that life is messy. God seeks to disturb you in the same way he disturbed Mary. He calls you by the Name he has chosen for you and if you listen for that name, hear it in your innermost being and, like Mary, respond with, ‘Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word,’ you will know a disturbance like no other. Like Mary, you will hear echoes of home. You will never be the same, your life will never be the same and you wouldn't want it any other way.

The Advent time of conception, waiting and bringing to birth can be a beautifully disturbing time if you allow it to go deep. It is the Name God calls you by that invites you and it is the 'Yes!' of your heart that opens you. One of the reasons the Magnificat is so wonderful is because Mary was revelling in her name. She knew she was a lowly servant but at the same time she also knew and fully accepted with joy that she was Blessed Among Women and that all generations would call her Blessed. She knew she was a vessel being used to bring forth the Son of God but she also knew how immensely and intimately loved she was. Her vocational Name and call was to bring forth the Son and in giving her assent, she found her true self. God called Mary to a role in salvation history that none of us will ever experience but that doesn't mean we aren't called, like Mary, to listen, hear, respond and find our true selves in the eyes of the Father. She was the first mystic of the New Testament and opened the way for us all. She didn't live in a monastery or have a lifestyle we normally associate with contemplatives. Anyone who looked at her without knowing the details of what was happening would have said she was an ordinary woman living an ordinary life.

This period leading up to Christmas is often hard on us in many ways. It's a time of inconveniences, weariness, pressure and often pain and loneliness but this is where God meets us and where he calls our names. Mary's Advent was also full of these things. Life was also disturbing on the surface for Mary and it is disturbing for us. But this is the chosen birthplace of the Son of God – in the midst of chaos, struggle, woundedness and uncertainty.

Nothing became easier for Mary because she said yes to her Name and to her God. She wasn't exempt from the challenges of life. In fact, it became infinitely more challenging and complex for her. But Mary had been given a profound knowledge of something we all have access to within our Names: a deep-seated knowledge that God is. That's it. God is. It's hard to finish that sentence with one adjective. We can say he is mighty but within that mightiness is a helpless infant. We can say he is awesome but within that awesomeness is a God who overshadows us in intimacy. We can say he is holy but within that holiness is complete accessibility, a God who humbly waits for us to crawl into his arms. The knowledge that 'God is' sets us free to be wide open to infinite possibility.

We can resist the challenges we face or we can open our hearts to allow the disturbance to go deep. We can allow ourselves to crash up against our solid God and suddenly discover, as Mary did, that God's solidity is like liquid gold that pours into our hearts and stirs up sudden remembrances of who we really are: Advent people, Christmas people, people who belong to another world altogether, people who are strangers in a strange land and are on a pilgrimage home. But before that we must learn how to allow ourselves to be disturbed, how to allow the ruah wind to drive us deep into the Shekina overshadowing, a shadow made of fiery light. We need to learn how to be open to bringing the Child of the Light to birth in the small part of the world where God has placed us.



During this last week of Advent, try praying as often as you can, “Let it be done to me according to your word.”



And prepare to be deeply disturbed.