How many times a day does Psalm 115 come to mind?
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The Heaven, even the Heavens, are the Lord's;
But the earth He has given to the children of men. |
Today we celebrate one of the Twelve Great Feasts of Orthodoxy: the Annunciation. Let stop whatever we are doing to ponder this most holy mystery. Go to the highest mountain summit and survey all that you see. It is yours. And it is mine. It belongs to humankind. What happens in these valleys and plains, upon these hillsides and mountaintops, on land and at sea .... all that happens everywhere on earth .... is up to us. We are the governors, the stewards, the deciders. The spiritual temperature and general state of health have been given into our hands even from the dawn of Creation.
God does not sit in Highest Heaven pulling strings or pushing buttons. He does not fashion marionette puppets throwing His own voice hither and yon. He does not sit in a sterile playroom surrounded by the robots He has manufactured and programmed. The essence of God's gift of life to humankind is freedom. And the sovereignty of that freedom He will not abridge, for that would nullify the gift. A freedom that is not completely free is not freedom at all.
I do not say that God has not given His angels charge over us (Ps 91:11). To tempt God with that question is Satan's ploy (Mt 4:6, Lu 4:10). I do not say that He is not "our refuge and strength, / A very present help in trouble" (Ps 46:1). I do not say that our guardian angels are not powerful guides and allies. My point is more basic: in your moment of greatest crisis and consequence, when profound self-sacrifice is asked of you, when the lights are all shining on you, when you have been singled out and called upon, it is you, and you alone, in the almighty power of your freedom, who must decide, say, act. God will not act for you. Nor will His angels. In the end, every little thing that happens on the earth is the outcome of us: what we think and do and what we fail to think and do. Whatever life we have around us God has made, but the direction of that life is entirely ours.
I do not say that God does not speak to us. A holy sister, my spiritual guide in seminary, assured me that sincere hearts among us have heard the Lord speak to them and have seen Him even through their own eyes.
Who does not know that God continues to speak albeit indirectly? Does He not write His messages to us on the walls of our daily experience? Atheists wave off these encounters as "mere coincidence." But in God's meaning-bearing world there are no coincidences. He may not be a tyrant-emperor who enforces the disposition of all things, but without doubt He is present as a kind of invisible director in every scene of our lives. For everything we say or do is either godly, or it is not.
Once, of course, He did enter the Creation, but not with His Almighty Power, but rather as a mere creature. He could not stop being God, of course, for God has no beginning or end. But in His Divine Power, He could, and did, endow Himself with all the properties of a human. He could become fully man.
Why did God enter human history when He did? This question is one of the great imponderables. Let us recall the scene and era. Three thousand years ago along the eastern shores of the Mediterranean there was once a United Kingdom, ruled by Kings David and Solomon. It marked a golden age in the history of His chosen people. Worship was centered on intimate communion with Him — personal transformation, whose purpose was to keep fresh the family resemblance to keep alive the birthright to Heaven.
From our perspective it is remarkable that God entered history two thousand years ago: on a boundary scaled to our own era and that of Kings David and Solomon. This golden age had been shattered and lost. The religion of theosis and the Temple in which it was ritualized had been destroyed. In its place Mesopotamian religion had been established supervised and underwritten by pagan overlords. Hebrew religion had been supplanted by blood sacrifice. As the Psalmist has written:
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.... they mingled with the nations
and adopted their customs. They worshiped their idols, which became a snare to them. They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to false gods. .... and the land was desecrated by their blood. They defiled themselves by what they did; by their deeds they prostituted themselves. (Ps 106:35-39) |
On the other side, through no fault of their own, God's chosen people had been captive to military occupiers, beginning with Alexander the Great in the fourth century and now are lost. Many had adopted the ways of pagan life and religion with many young Judean men seeking ascendancy in the affluent and powerful Roman world — reversing their circumcisions, attending pagan temples, and seeking preferment within the Roman power structure.
It is at this juncture, with the people Israel scattered as hopeless, lost tribes, when God chooses to enter the non-fiction story of His Creation, but not as its Author, but rather as a character: Jesus of Nazareth.
Now, the Heavens and the earth are living masterpieces that have spurred imitation from every artist ever born. But surely, this new creative act defies comprehension. It is mind-bending: the Creator of the universe becoming a mere creature, the One more expansive than the Universe entering our narrow humanity, the Omnipotent One emptying Himself that He might draw near to us in love and friendship.
Surely no art imaginable could rise to this scale. Exactly what will He do? How will He enter our life-scene without abridging our freedom? How might the Creator set His feet on the Creation without rupturing Heaven and earth to accommodate so great a royal entrance? Caesars erect soaring arches of triumph to frame the drama of their entrance into a city. What will the Caesar of Caesars, the King of kings, now do? His choice, His most audacious choice, is to ask the permission of a twelve-year-old girl.
Perhaps it is difficult for us to understand in the twenty-first century what it meant for God to wait upon the freedom and will of the lowliest among all human creatures — not a male, who owns property and signs contracts; not an adult, deserving of dignity and respect; but a young girl, humble and powerless. It is a twelve-year-old girl who stands at the crossroads of history. This slight figure, this slip of a girl, will make the once-for-all decision for humankind.
Her answer will be enshrined forever in every heart that loves God:
| "Behold the handmaid of the Lord! Be it unto me according to thy word." |
On Mary's side, a certain scene has also been set. God has acted in the invisible domain of His Power. He grants the holy gift of a child to her saintly and elderly parents, Anna and Joachim. The child is raised in the Temple according to the consent of religious authorities. As she enters adolescence with the onset of her period (forbidden within the Temple precincts), devout older men are gathered to determine her guardian. God calls one, Joseph. But he, too, must consent (at first he does not).
Exactly what role did God play in this chain of crucial decisions? What role did His holy angels play? They were present. As the Psalmist teaches us, God is present, and a very help in times of trouble. And what will God's role be following her decision? He will be with her. And we recall God's action in the moment Israel committed to worship God:
| Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go .... (Gen 28:15) |
Indeed, this presence has been God's pledge since His earliest Self-revelation: I will be with you, "your shield and your very great reward" (Gen 15:1). It forms that most Christian of salutations: "The Lord be with you!"
It continues to be the essence of each person's journey to Heaven: God will be with us. That is His promise. And it is the heart of His leave-taking message when He departs from the lifeworld that He freely entered:
| "And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age." Amen. (Mt 28:30) |
Above all humans, God is with that twelve-year-old girl who re-opened the doors to Eden, who set aside her personal happiness and freedom to become the handmaid to God. And that is her hallmark and sign:
| Hail, Mary! The Lord is with you! |
On this Feast of the Annunciation let us reverence the Most Holy Theotokos. Let us follow her, setting aside our freedom that we too might be handmaids and servants. Let us ponder liberation attained through obedience. And let us meditate on that greatest achievement of the human will to be conformed in every way to God's. For we too receive annunciations. We too are called by God. And we also stand at the crossroads of human history.
Well might we grieve at the the evil that proceeds around us on every side, which seeks to deform the precious God-given gift of our children. But we must never forget: this evil cannot succeed without our general consent.
Yes, I know that
we can do nothing without Him (Jn 15:5).
But be assured
that He has also taught another principle
that joins it:
He can do nothing without us.
It is this gift of our sovereign freedom,
which God must wait upon.
Ask a twelve-year-old girl
upon whom
the fate of humanity depended.
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.