THE WORD ON A WING SERMON Christ Church St Laurence, Sydney, Feast of the Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin Mary, Monday, 9 April 2018 TEXTS: Isaiah 7:10-14; Psalm 40: 6-13; Hebrews 10:4-10; Luke 1:26-38 ____________________________________________________________ Lady Day. The medieval name for this day when we celebrate the pretty story from Luke’s Gospel about the Archangel Gabriel appearing to Mary. “Greetings, favoured one! The Lord is with you … you will … bear a son … name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High.”1 Some years ago, a group of women asked me to lead a service for them at their annual gathering on Lady Day. They wanted a eucharist and a blessing for the baby clothes they had made throughout the year—minute baby clothes for the little ones who don’t make it. Tiny lives that flutter into existence for a moment but for whom the effort to live is just too great. Or for whom something goes wrong and who could never survive. All the dead little ones whose eyes never open but whose brief existences drag both love and pain from their parents’ hearts. These women had all known the back- to-front pain of losing a child. I remember standing there holding a bonnet smaller than the palm of my hand, choked by love for my own children, fear for them in a reckless world and immense gratitude that I had never known the back-to-front pain of having my child die before me. All I could do was talk about being a mother, about the love and the fear. We didn’t do much formal praying … but we cried a lot. For those women, the back-to-front pain was partly eased by making tiny clothes so other women might dress their dead babies warm and pretty for the grave. Having them blessed each Lady Day was their way of living with the memories. We stood around the altar together, rather sodden, to offer those tiny lives and the memories to God. If ever I have felt the presence of the God of love and compassion, it was that day with those mothers. Mary knew that back-to-front pain. It came for her at the deadly climax of a journey begun one day when the feathery wings of an angel fluttered against her cheek and she heard the whisper of God telling her not to be 1 Luke 1:28, 30-32 selectively !2 afraid. She could have had no idea what she ought not fear. She could have had no idea what this vision would really mean. But on this day [the poet says] a young girl stopped to see With open eyes and heart. She heard the voice; The promise of His glory yet to be, As time stood still for her to make a choice; Gabriel knelt and not a feather stirred, The Word himself was waiting on her word.2 We know so little of this young girl. Tradition, respect and religious devotion have painted a picture that is more about love than reality. A picture of devout submission, silence and obedience. A picture dressed in sumptuous robes, often crowned in glory. Remote from real human existence but washed thoroughly with the love of the faithful. Reality was probably very different but it is only in very recent times that realism has struggled out from the strictures of sentiment and love to suggest a very picture of Mary. A peasant girl. Dusty bare feet. Grimed face. Lank hair. Nails broken and and dirty from hard work. Reality does not always present pretty pictures regardless of the fact that, in Mary’s case, such a stark picture is likely closer to her real world and that of many of her devoted followers than pictures of silk robes and Easter lilies could ever be. We all prefer, I suspect, a picture like the beautiful painting on your pew sheet. The Annunciation as imagined by 15th C Dutch painter Hans Memling.3 There is another Annunciation scene by Memling.4 It’s similar: the same bunched up bed curtain waiting to fall and break this moment when heaven and earth met. Same lilies in a vase, same desk. Same cross on Gabriel’s tiara and staff. But there’s a difference. In that other painting Mary’s gown is virginal white, her demeanour submissive: eyes downcast; hands clasped at her breast. Angels attend her as if she’s about to faint. And Gabriel … Gabriel’s more active, forthright, even slightly impatient, his gesture almost exhortatory. He could be saying, “Come, come, my child, I’m waiting. What’s your answer?” And, importantly, Mary is standing, not sitting. One stands in the presence of authority. One can sit when one is 2 From sonnet “Annunciation” by Malcolm Guite. https://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/ 2012/03/24/a-sonnet-for-the-annunciation/ 3 Hans Memling portrait (c. 1465-70) https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/437490 4 https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/437490 !3 exercising authority. That other Memling painting a familiar traditional presentation of Mary and the Annunciation. But this Memling painting suggests another way to think. It’s a remarkable contrast to so many Annunciation paintings. Now Mary, still in sumptuous robes, is seated and Gabriel is standing, could almost be in the act of kneeling. He seems, hand to breast, almost apologetic. And look at Mary! See the authority in her face, in her poise, the turn of her head. Look at her hand, raised in a silencing gesture. She could be saying, “Wait! Just a minute. I’m thinking about this!” And there’s a stillness, a silence, in this picture—as Gabriel waits, and God waits, and both Gabriel and God hold their breath … In Memling’s painting, this was the moment when this young woman took hold of her own agency, her own authority, would make her own decision, and say yea or nay to the invitation to be God’s partner in fulfilling God’s plan for the salvation of the world. This was the moment after which nothing could be the same again. This moment—when God interrupted the ordinary, “a hidden blaze of glory in God’s world”5—this moment broke into Mary’s inner life and would change her forever. If she said nay, everything would be different for her, living with this memory of an angel, and a whispered invitation, and wondering what might have been. If she said yea, nothing—not Mary’s life, not anything else—could ever be the same again. Then it would be as if that bunched bed curtain were to come tumbling down, veiling heaven once more, and Mary would be alone to begin her changed journey. Who knew where? What was the next step, and would all manner of things then be well? Mary could not have known. Nevertheless, she said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”6 The cross on Gabriel’s forehead, and the one on his staff, in Memling’s painting seem portents of the outcome of Mary’s decision—symbols of what would be. So small and simple, these crosses. Almost missable in this 5 From sonnet “Annunciation” by Malcolm Guite https://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/ 2012/03/24/a-sonnet-for-the-annunciation/ 6 Luke 1:38 !4 sumptuous picture. But immense in their meaning. Portents of the back-to- front pain that Mary’s yea would bring her. Luke’s story tells us Mary was much perplexed by [Gabriel’s] words.7 They gave her much to ponder upon. How could they not? I see that still, authoritative face in Memling’s painting, gazing at her son as he grew— pondering. I see her delighting in his first stumbling steps and his first baby words. At his delight in puppies, and flowers, and bees and bugs. Drying his tears. Watching him play and chase dust motes in Joseph’s workshop, twirling wood shavings round his tiny fingers. Teaching him the stories of God and the people of Israel. Mind full of dreams, heart full of love— pondering. “He will be great,” that angel had said,“and will be called the Son of the Most High.” Whatever that meant, Mary could neither halt his path towards that glory, nor protect him from its dangers. She could only walk her own path, be near him, trust in faith in that voice which had said, “Do not be afraid”.8 Two paths—Jesus’ path, and Mary’s. Two paths that led to Calvary and the brutish ugliness of which humankind is capable. Jesus, her son, her beloved, hoisted in bleeding agony on a cross. Mary could only stand at the foot of the Cross with the women, the soldiers and the jeering crowds, with the sweet smell of blood in her nostrils—and weep. And howl with anger, “I had him for thirty years and I loved him! You had him for three and you killed him!” Did she wish she had said “nay” to that angel all those years before? We cannot know. Her “yea” had given her a beloved child, years of love and tenderness. And then? Years of loss, bitter-sweet memories, and back-to-front pain. Just like those women who gather each Lady Day bringing their gifts of tiny baby clothes into which they have sewn memory and love. Those women are responding to the outcome of Mary’s “yea”—Christ’s Cross on which was born life marked by hope and possibility, not hopelessness and despair.