Greetings, favored one!

December 21, 2014
Advent 4, Year B
Luke 1:26-38

In the Godly Play Sunday School room we have an impressive collection of donated Legos that the kids use to work with the stories that we hear in there.  At first I worried the Legos might not belong in the room.  I think in the back of my mind I was worried that they were too human and not properly holy.  And sometimes they do become spaceships for aliens or Jedi Starfighters.  But they also have also become the Temple in Jerusalem and the tomb where Jesus was laid.  I recently found a Lego-compatible Nativity set online, so bought it hoping it could be on the scene for the Advent stories.  Unfortunately, it just arrived, and since the kids have pageant practice today during Sunday school time, they won’t get to create the scene from this morning’s Gospel story where Mary is visited by the angel and is invited to become part of God’s wildest plan yet.

            And yet, in a way, I think many of the kids would already find themes from this story familiar because of its parallels to the Lego Movie.  If you don’t have a 4 to 12 year old, you might have missed this piece of pop culture.  So let me introduce you to Emmet, living a normal unremarkable life as a construction worker in a humdrum town called Bricksburg.  Emmet doesn’t know it at the start, but Bricksburg is controlled by Lord Business whose greatest desire is to freeze all the Legos into their proper places according to the official instructions.  When we meet him, Emmet is an unflinching part of the status quo system.  He is unfailingly positive and cheerful, following the rules and doing what is normal and expected.  Every day is pretty much the same as the last. No one really knows him deeply, and he doesn’t really know anyone else deeply either.

            Emmet at the start is a little like Mary when we meet her in our Gospel reading this morning.  We don’t know much about Mary, but what we do know is unremarkable.  So unremarkable that it was scandalous that she would have become such a central part of the story of God.  Here is a young woman in an unimportant Galilean town.  A woman without power or prestige.  An incredibly vulnerable woman whom no one but a very small circle have any interest in at all.  And then suddenly God erupts onto the scene with a message for Mary from an angel.  "Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you."  Suddenly this unremarkable woman is invited to become an integral part of God’s plan.  Invited to turn her life upside down.

            Emmet is surprised not by an angel but by Wildstyle, a woman who most decidedly does not follow the rules and who thinks Emmet is destined for much more than a normal, uninspired life.  Wildstyle tells Emmet that he is the Special, the person predicted by the Prophet Vitruvius to help save the world.  And she wants him to leave everything that is familiar and venture out into the unknown.  Emmet is dumbfounded.  It has never occurred to him that he is special in any way, or that he could possibly have a role to play in saving the world.  And in that moment, Emmet faces a choice.  Will he continue in his life that is safe and normal, or open himself to this new possibility?

            Sometimes Mary is made out to be a passive vessel, someone without any choice in the matter.  But I think at the heart of this story lies a very real choice that the angel presents to Mary.  Will she become an active agent in God’s unbelievable plan?  Will she be true to herself and embrace her identity as mother of God?  Will she open herself to the risk and heartbreak that are part and parcel of this calling?  Or will she shove aside this interruption and continue in her life that is relatively safe and unremarkable?

            For his part, Emmet makes himself vulnerable and opens himself to the impossible.  He has no idea what is being asked of him or how he can possibly fulfill his role, and he is full of questions.  But he is willing to try.  And even though he doesn’t have Batman’s strength or Wildstyle’s courage or Vitruvius’ wisdom, the unique things that makes him special enable him to do his part to save the world. 

            Mary is similarly perplexed and pondering – “How can this be?” she asks.  But she agrees to become part of the impossible: “Here I am, the servant of the Lord.”  That, I think, is my favorite part of this story.  Mary has no idea what is going on – she is fearful of the angel and perplexed by his message.  And yet she is willing to move forward in her uncertainty.  Willing to wonder and be open to the kind of adventure that is probably only possible when you have no idea what you are getting into.

            And I won’t give away everything, but a bit of a spoiler alert, Emmet eventually ends up inviting evil Lord Business to see himself as Special as well:

You don't have to be the bad guy….  You are capable of amazing things. Because you are the Special.  And so am I.  And so is everyone.  The prophecy is made up, but it's also true.  It's about all of us.  Right now, it's about you.  And you... still... can change everything.

            Maybe that is Mary’s message for us too.

            God-with-us breaks into our individual and corporate stories in unpredictable ways.  Jesuit teacher and writer James Martin (called the Chaplain of the Colbert Show) talks about how he was eating a bowl of spaghetti and watching TV and tired at the end of a terrible day when God found him.  “That’s where God met me because that’s where I was,” he says.  That is how God works.  God bursts onto our scene, without regard to where we are or what we are doing, and deals directly with us beloved creations and invites us to become the selves we were created to be.

            There has been heated disagreement through the centuries over why Mary was chosen.  The more traditional Roman Catholic and Orthodox thought has been that Mary was chosen because she was extraordinary – unlike other people – sinless and perfect.  But Protestant thought has tended to stress that what was extraordinary about Mary was her very ordinariness.  Mary was not favored in the human realm, had done nothing particularly notable to earn the favor of God.  And yet, she was exactly who God was looking for; she was chosen just as she was.  She illustrates for all of us God’s mysterious promise that we are all included in God’s work.  We are all special.  We are all chosen.  

            God invites each of us into God’s wild plan that will change everything in ways we can’t imagine.  God gives us permission to question, to contemplate, to ponder, to ask “How can this be?”  And then God smiles and encourages us as we take baby steps forward even when we do so more often than not in perplexity rather than certainty. 

            

Greetings favored ones.  The Lord is with you.  Amen.