(Each Saturday, a faith leader in Franklin County offers a personal perspective in this space. To become part of this series, email religion@recorder.com)
Luke 1: 26-35
Why is Gabriel, who was so puffed up and abristle with your importance and his own and with his impatience with Zechariah, almost shy, now, as he approaches Mary?
It feels like all his history with you and with humankind has fallen away … does him no good at all … hasn’t prepared him for this moment.
Up until now in all human history he has announced, pronounced, demanded, promised, or warned, but now he offers, now he asks, now he waits for an answer he doesn’t already know.
Quiet the memories that would push us also through this moment and beyond because we’ve already heard this story from beginning to end, over and over again.
Kneel us next to the arch-angel waiting for Mary to answer. Find in our hearts the hope for her that she will answer no and marry Joseph and bear their children and live a long life and die simply with the honor due any mother. And maybe even find in us such wild courage as would say yes to the angel in her place and bear for her this child and all that she will have to bear for us.
And finally touch and rouse everything in us that needs her to say yes and is grateful that she did and would sing with Gabriel and with Elizabeth and with the centuries:
Hail, Mary, Mother of God!
Matthew 1: 18-34
We don’t know, but we think Joseph had waited for Mary for a long time.
We don’t know why, but we think he was old and she was his wish coming true.
We think he probably planned and built a home for her before he ever knew who she was to be, and we think he probably planned a baby, too, in due time, to crown his plans and achievements by making a father out of him.
And then your future stirred and scrambled time and Joseph’s plans, and picked him up and set him down outside the bounds of common decency and faced him with a choice no man should ever have to make: Should he choose you and your child and his own humiliation, or should he say “no” and keep his honored place and time-honored plans?
“Fear not,” the angel said to him and says to us, and gentle Joseph, bless his heart, took your child into his arms and said, “mine, too” and put his honor and his future in your hands and risked his life to save your future, and then simply disappeared, too unimportant for history to even note his death.
But we still struggle to fend off your untimely birth in us.
“Not ready!” we say. “Not yet! So many more days to shop around.”
Well, God, make us ready.
Make us fear not.
Make a place in us for you.
Be born in us, anyway.
Rev. Comstock is interim pastor at Montague Center Congregational Church, Trinitarian, UCC.
About the Montague Center church
The Montague Center Congregational Church, Trinitarian, is a United Church of Christ congregation located on the green in Montague Center. It was founded in 1751, a year before the town was founded. It is a thriving congregation with 65 members. You are invited to join us for worship and fellowship every Sunday morning at 10 a.m. Sunday school is available for children of all ages, September through May.