"Here Am I"

[Our readings were 2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16; Canticle 15; Romans 16: 25-27; and Luke 1:26-38.]

Can you imagine how this all sounded to Mary?

She is a young woman of an obscure, but presumably respectable family. Her family has made a good marriage for her with a respectable carpenter which will put her in the tiny middle class of her country. She is probably expecting a quiet life, some children, a degree of security. While she plans to follow God’s will for her life, she assumes it’s the usual stuff—keep the Commandments, obey the Law, that sort of thing.

Then, here comes the angel Gabriel telling her that God has other plans for her life. These plans are unexpected, dangerous, painful, and scandalous. They can change everything.

A Presbyterian minister, Frederick Buechner, wrote in his book Peculiar Treasures that

“She struck the angel Gabriel as hardly old enough to have a child at all, let alone this child, but he’d been entrusted with a message to give her and he gave it. He told her what the child was to be named, and who he was to be, and something about the mystery that was to come upon her. ‘You mustn’t be afraid, Mary,’ he said. And as he said it, he only hoped she wouldn’t notice that beneath the great, golden wings, he himself was trembling with fear to think that the whole future of creation hung now on the answer of a girl.”

What would Mary say? Would she do it? Gabriel and all the angels knew that God acts by freely allowing people to answer “yes” when He asks.

God is like that. God allows us to make our own choices, good or bad. God respects our freedom. He lets us do the wrong things, make the wrong choices, always waiting for the answer to be “Yes!”

We know what Mary answered: “Here am I, the servant of the Lord. Let it be with me according to your word.”

During Advent, we hear about Advent’s gifts to us. Advent is a time for self-examination, a time for repentance, for turning away from things and people and ways of life and behavior that keep us from drawing close to the God who is always looking to meet us, whether we acknowledge Him or not. Today’s Advent gift is the gift of commitment, the gift of turning toward God and making the commitment to offer ourselves as the servants of God, saying, along with Mary, our own “yes”: “Here am I, the servant of the Lord.” These words will change everything.

Others have said “Yes” to God—Noah, Abram, Samuel, and Jesus himself, in the Garden of Gethsemane. That doesn’t mean that the road became smooth and straight for them, nor will it be so for us when we say, “Here I am.”

God calls us constantly, always seeking us, waiting to hear those words from us that Mary spoke and changed all of creation: “Here am I, the servant of the Lord.” When we say them, the effect on human history probably won’t be so profound as when Mary said them. But the effect on us will be.

Saying “Yes” frees us from asking, “What’s in it for me?” and “What do I get out of it?”

Saying “Yes” to God frees us from trying to be self-important and self-serving, and frees us for service, for purpose, for meaning in our lives.

Like Mary, we have plans for our families and for our lives. As Advent ends, we need to remember that God has plans for us. We need to remember that it has been those times in our lives when things did not go as we had planned, when we thought things had gone wrong, that God was the most present.

When we say “Here I am” to God, we give up the absolute authority of our own plans. We agree to listen, and to let God say “No”, even to our best plans for ourselves, even to our best plans for God. That’s what happened to David when he planned a house for God.

Planning for the future is very important. We are expected to use the freedom God gave us responsibly. That includes making plans and decisions and carrying them out. There was nothing wrong with David’s plans, or with Mary’s. Christmas reminds us that God’s plans quite often are different from ours.

When, like Mary, we are open to hearing what it is God asks of us, we will find ourselves free to perform acts of caring and love, both small and large. We will make ourselves available for what God has in store for us, for what God needs us to do, and for what God has created us to do. And God needs you and me and every one of us to do it.

Don’t think the angels aren’t all holding their breath to hear your answer when God approaches you with a task. Don’t think that all the heavenly hosts don’t sing, “Alleluia!” when you say, freely, “yes.”

You don’t need to find new words. These words of Mary will do just fine: “Here am I, the servant of the Lord. Let it be with me according to your word.”