little house by the road

Nowadays if you go to Nazareth excited nuns will show you what they have discovered in the basement of their convent building: a house just like the one Jesus may have grown up in, with a piece of first-century Roman pavement in front of it. You can imagine the little boy growing up there, watching the soldiers march by, the merchants and slaves and townspeople passing.

And you can go to a church where down behind the altar a little stream emerges and flows - perhaps Mary his mother took her water from this very stream, long ago.

(And over here indeed is a little house preserved to remind us of the time when she discovered, that is, when the angelic messenger told her the news, that she was pregnant.)

But back then the house by the road and the spring and the creek would have said, this is an ordinary man, the carpenter's son - what's the big deal?

A blessed event, announced in the middle of Lent ...

Back on the feast of Epiphany we remembered the visit of the magi to the Holy Family, and the gifts they bring: Gold for the king, Frankincense for the priest, Myrrh for the sacrifice. There is, I submit, one more gift - for us to offer: Praise for the Living One.

Right in the middle of Lent we encounter a part of the Nativity story, nine months before Christmas Day. Raymond Brown, the Roman Catholic biblical scholar, taught that the gospels actually were written beginning with the passion narrative - proceeding through Holy Week, the Passion, the Resurrection, the Ascension, and then on around to the Birth narratives.

The birth narratives begin with the visit of the angel to Zechariah, announcing the coming birth of John. Then the focus shifts to a younger woman, cousin of Elizabeth. It is Mary. The angel comes to Mary – and hails her as full of grace: she is to bear a son, who is to be the Messiah.

Mary accepts the burden of birth and the destiny of motherhood to the Messiah, Conception to Assumption, somehow knowing that she must not count her child as hers to keep, but must let go of him, dedicate him to the Lord, as Samuel's mother Hannah dedicated him, knowing he will go from her.

Mary, mother of Jesus, takes this task on herself, knowingly, as God's servant, because she knew that he, her child to be, was sent to set the people free: that at last God's promise to redeem Israel would bear fruit in the fullness of time, and that that fulfillment was coming very soon, and was beginning to happen, quickening even now in her.

The Word would indeed ripen in her own womb. She would bear forth upon the world he who would himself bear the pain of the world.

Like Hannah's son Samuel, Jesus the Son of Mary is one consecrated, set apart for service to the Lord, as a thanksgiving offering to the Lord. Samuel is the prophet who brought justice to Israel, and yet he points beyond himself - to Saul, first, then to David, to David's son Solomon, and ultimately to Jesus.

In the birth story of Samuel, Hannah his mother rejoices that God has remembered the forgotten, and will bring relief to the poor. “My heart exults in the Lord; my strength is exalted in my God,” she sings (1 Samuel 2:1-10).

In the birth story of Jesus, Mary his mother rejoices that God remembers the forgotten and brings relief to the poor. (Luke 1:46-55) And in our prayers, even daily, we join in her song, the Magnificat, the Song of Mary, Canticle 15 in the Book of Common Prayer: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior...”

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Anunciation 2012 (March 25)

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The Annunciation

"The Annunciation" by Henry Ossawa Tanner (1898)

"But a shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse and from its roots a bud shall blossom." (Isaiah 11:1, New American Bible)

“When you think you're at the very end, the rotten stump, in decay, something grows. You keep tending to the thing that seems dead or not working, and, with your tending, something new and beautiful sprouts up.”—Father Rick Frechette, in "Children's Champion", Financial Times, House & Home, December 17/December 18 2011, p.2. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/a5aadbee-226c-11e1-923d-00144feabdc0.html##axzz1gr9MuKu1

 

"Then a shoot shall grow from the stock of Jesse, and a branch shall spring [Heb., bear fruit] from his roots." (Isaiah 11:1, New English Bible)

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us... (John 1:14)

Th' angel went awei mid than/Al ut of hire sighte;/Hire womb arise gan/Thurw th'Oligastes mighte./In hir wes Crist bilok anon,/Sooth God, sooth man in fles and bon,/And of hir fles/Ibore wes/At time,/Warthurw us kam good won;/He bout us ut of pine,/And let him for us slon. 

With that, the angel went away, out of her sight; her womb began to swell through the power of the Holy Ghost. In her Christ was straightway enclosed, true God and true man in flesh and bone, and of her flesh was born in due time, whereby good hope came to us: he redeemed us from pain [of hell] and allowed himself to be slain for us.

Angelus ad virgenum, 13th C. Arundel ms. English version. (tr. E. J. Dobson, adapted). In Hugh Keyte and Andrew Parrott, eds., The Shorter New Oxford Book of Carols (Oxford, 1993) 7.

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father. (John 1:14)

See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them. (Revelation 21:3)

There is a stump out back,

behind the Sunday School

by the Boy Scout shed.

A tree was cut down last spring,

rotten in the core of it,

so down it came – and now look!

Go look! New growth is springing up

like crazy, like weeds, all over the place.

You never know with life, with God.

There was an old country that had been around too long,

said some. It had the heart

rotted out of it, nothing left to say,

nothing left to give—haul it away!

But somehow a stump gave birth to something new.

And emerging from that old ruin came new growth.

Out of the stump of Jesse sprang

a branch, bearing fruit—

(As the prophet Isaiah says, in chapter 11, verse 1:

Then a shoot shall growth from the stock of Jesse,

and a branch shall bear fruit from his roots.)

The old tree was Israel and the stump its old ways

of doing things— so when the prophet came,

bearing news of new growth, it was good news.

And when the angel came to Mary

centuries later, and said,

Hello! Favored one of God,

something new is happening.

Can you bear it?

Can you bring forth— give birth to—

the Son of God?

God plans for you to do it,

to be the bearer of God,

of new Grace

shone upon the world.

It’s up to you— will you bear it?

Will you bring forth the good news?

Mary was incredulous.

How can this be? A son?!

I’m only 15 years old—

and not married yet.

Oh, Mary, said the Angel.

With God anything is possible.

Your cousin Elizabeth, like Hannah

who bore Samuel in her old age,

you own cousin Elizabeth is pregnant,

with a son to be borne 3 months from now.

She’s six months along!

And so— will You bear the Child,

the One who will redeem

his people? And she said Yes.

An impossible answer to an

impossible request. Yes.

To all that will be, Yes.

And that is how it began.

With that the angel went away—

With that, the angel went away, out of her sight;

her womb began to swell

through the power of the Holy Ghost.

In her Christ was straightway enclosed,

true God and true man in flesh and bone,

and of her flesh was born in due time,

whereby good hope came to us:

he redeemed us from pain  

and allowed himself to be slain for us.

This one, this child, was the eternal Word,

and in the flesh incarnate, come to dwell among us—

come to ‘pitch his tent’ with us—

to use the literal meaning of the word.

He came among us as of old

he walked alongside the caravans

of the people fleeing Egypt.

He walked among the trees of

the primordial Garden.

But here he is walking with us

as one of us! for the first time

taking on our poverty, setting his

wealth aside, not counting

his godhood a thing

to be grasped—

and

In this poor peasant girl

the richest of kings

God himself

found a home.

He’d promised he would

make a home for the

Son of David,

and establish his house forever,

his dominion,

But did he say he would

live in it himself?

Somehow now the Son of God

became Son of Man

and that is where our hope lives

as we live in him

and he in us

so that we too in turn are

becoming the home of Jesus.

Learn to welcome him

in the stranger;

to make him room,

and when we find him homeless,

to

TAKE JESUS IN

even as we need to make home

for his kin— the poor ones of Haiti

lost homes in the earthquake—

in them we see the face of Jesus

— and the need for shelter.

So too through all the projects

of good work through World Concern

(thanks for all the fish!)

ERD and others,

we seek to serve Christ in all persons

as our Baptismal Vows call us to do—

we seek to see in the homeless

and the forgotten

the One who made his home with us

the One whom Mary made home for,

in her womb,

THEOTOKOS

bearer of God,

she bore him

who welcomes us home

whenever we stray from God

calling us to find our home in him.

May we open our eyes to see him.

May we open our homes to welcome him.

May we open our minds to know him.

May we open our lives to bear him.

May we open our hearts to be his home:

Jesus, Christ our Lord. Amen.