Feast of the Annunciation - Tuesday 25 March 2025

A couple of weeks ago, during after service refreshments, I was doing my usual rounds, saying hello and picking up on other people’s conversations.  Someone greeted me with an unusual line - though perhaps it will become more common - ‘you’ve come to the geopolitics corner’.  This, you won’t be surprised to hear, centred around Israel, Gaza and Ukraine, with specific reference to President Trump and the upending of so many of the assumptions governing international relations for the last eighty years.

This may all seem a long way from the angelic encounter at the heart of this evening’s gospel, focussed on a young woman of lowly birth, in an insignificant town.  No geopolitics here, on the face of it.  But perhaps this is too quick an assumption, if we attend to the way Luke constructs his Gospel. In the opening three chapters, Luke frames the story of the Annunciation and the birth of Jesus in a remarkable way.  ‘In the days of King Herod of Judea…’ we hear near the beginning of chapter one.  Chapter two begins, ‘In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus… while Quirinius the governor of Syria’. And then chapter three, ‘In the fifteenth year of the Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas…’. 

This is quite a roll call of the influential and the the powerful - emperors, kings, governors and high priests.  All of whom would have been entirely unaware of an encounter between Mary and Gabriel that is arguably one of the key conversations in human history.  What seems to be important, Luke is showing us, is actually marginal and background, and vice versa.  Here, with Mary and the Son she will bear, is the real story of the human race.  Here is what really matters.

This theme of upending assumptions is further developed by Luke as his Gospel unfolds, for example in relation to outcasts, Samaritans and women.  But for this evening the focus is rightly on Mary, and what we learn of her significance through the way she is presented to us in the Gospels.

Luke is writing in Greek, but he is constantly echoing the Hebrew of the Jewish scriptures.  For any steeped in those scriptures, the resonances are not hard to spot.  Consider, for example, the sixth Chapter of the book of Judges,verse twelve: ‘The angel of the Lord appeared to him and said to him, ‘The Lord is with you, you mighty warrior.’ 

This angelic appearance is to Gideon, who is rather sceptical, saying, ‘well, if God is with us, why has Israel been conquered by the Midianites?’  But as the conversation continues, Gideon is commissioned to deliver Israel and drive out the conquerors.

So when we hear the angel saying to Mary, ‘Greetings, favoured one, the Lord is with you’, she is being presented like Gideon: a heroic figure of Israel who is going to deliver the people from slavery and oppression.  Mary, too, is sceptical; before accepting her commission: ‘Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.’

Once again our priorities and assumptions are being turned upside down, as the liberation made possible by Mary is not born of the power of battle and military victory.  What she enables is something more fragile, and yet more powerful and long lasting - eternal, even - the presence of God amongst us in the face of the infant Christ.  

Just a few verses on, Mary visits Elizabeth, the expectant mother of John the Baptist, and speaks what is sometimes referred to as ‘Mary’s song’, the Magnificat.  Talk about upending assumptions.  She speaks of the God who brings down the powerful from their thrones, and lifts up the lowly; who fills the hungry with good things and sends the rich away empty.  God’s commitment to those otherwise forgotten, without status or leverage, could not be clearer.  This is not the way of the world, but it is God’s way as seen in Mary’s Son Jesus Christ.  This is what the reign of God requires, this is our future, and everything must change.

And in order for that to happen, what took place with Mary is what must happen to some degree in each of us. She, uniquely and once for all, says a yes to God so complete that her entire material life is altered; God’s everlasting gift of himself that is the Son, the Word, is born from her to begin that life which will change everything.

But we are called to the same task, the same commission: to give God room, so that we may be transformed, so that the eternal Word will live in us and speak and act in love to others, especially those considered of little account. Only so may discover our true calling as human beings, not by rushing around in panic at the state of the world, but by being still enough to reflect and absorb the light flowing from God the Holy Trinity, and to hear the message of the angels.  For here is such good news that it can put into perspective the fears and pettinesses and indeed the geopolitics that we take for real life, and silence us for a moment, letting true life in. 

Nowadays we only remember King Herod of Judea, and Quirinius the governor of Syria, because of that conversation of which they knew nothing between Gabriel and Mary.  The powerful of our own day, take note.  They, and you and me and the whole human race, are called to live lives magnifying God, prioritising those of least account, shaped by the light and life of Christ, in the power of the Spirit.  By God’s grace, may we respond like Mary to this invitation:

‘Here are we, the servants of the Lord; let it be with us according to your word.’  Amen,