Thoughts about the Annunciation

….  I’m preaching on the Annunciation (Luke 1 6-38) on Sunday, just a 5 minute homily at our early communion service, and reading the passage again I’ve been struck not by the two things that commentators home in on – the virgin birth, and Mary’s obedience to God’s will, but by what seems to me the sheer strangeness – horror even – of what Mary was being told.  Thanks to Dylan for much of the working out of this idea.  We have so many images of Mary, submissive, loving, triumphant even, but I wonder how she felt, seeing her life being changed, her private future lost to a greater cause…. And though we talk about obedience, she wasn’t actually being asked…..suppose she had said no….?  These ideas are very much of now and need a bit of refining before Sunday! 

Thinking about images of Mary, I was reminded of my favourite one of all.  I don’t have a picture so words will have to do.  It’s a dull grey metal relief of a Madonna and child that hangs in the mediaeval pilgrim chapel at Malling Abbey, a Benedictine convent in

Kent

.  The figure of Mary acts as a frame, a pointed upright oval, an oyster on its side.  Her face is severe, stylised, grieving, echoing the crucified Christ of countless icons, and at the base of the oval her feet are flattened, pointing downwards, as if they were waiting for a nail.  Between the two her cloak flows out to frame the sculpture, lying open over her breast, sheltering and revealing the baby in its deep folds.  And in contrast to the stylised severity of the mother, this baby is so real you can almost feel the softness of his head and the warmth of his breath.  He is not long born, curled within his mother’s arms as he curled in her womb, heavy head drooping slightly against her body, and one tiny, perfect chubby hand just resting on his mother’s wrist – a heartbreaking gesture.  For me this sculpture is a symbol of many things, amongst them how Jesus made himself utterly vulnerable for us, the horror of his death, and the assurance of the love and security we have in him.  But Mary, in her frozen severe grief, is the symbol and archetype of suffering parents down the ages… this is where the angel’s words led her…..  how could anything reconcile a mother to seeing a son die….? 

I seem to be floundering here.  I know the answer in theory – obedience, acceptance of God’s will, the fact that He is greater than we can understand…. But somehow tonight my own motherhood and Mary’s seem to have got muddled together, and my 21^st century sensibility has tried to impose itself on her utterly different one.  So I can’t at the moment find the end of my homily…. a good thing it’s only Thursday (or Friday, just).

Comments

[supras shoes]

Those are super cute. I like you on Facebook.