"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.
