The Fourth Sunday of Advent

Sermon

The Fourth Sunday of Advent

24 December 2023 (Christmas Eve)

The Reverend Canon Richard Ames-Lewis 

The Fourth Sunday of Advent falls on Christmas Eve only occasionally. The last time was seven years ago, and the previous time was six years before that. It is a strange co-incidence needing a certain amount of careful planning. For example, the church flower arrangers have to plan ever so carefully to keep Sunday morning reasonably respectful of the Advent season, while having the church decorations all ready off stage to put up in time for Christmas services this afternoon.

But also, it is a strange coincidence because of the liturgy. Advent 4 has a special flavour, as we have heard in the readings for today. We are concentrating on the Blessed Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus, and the Gospel reading speaks of her annunciation by the angel Gabriel back then in Nazareth. Usually there is space of up to a week between this occasion and Christmas Night – a week in which to reflect on the part played by Mary, the meaning of her annunciation; a week perhaps in which to enter into her situation and consider how she might have prepared for the birth of the Son of God. But today we have barely half a day to prepare!

So I thought at this service what we can do is to focus our thoughts, not on the childbirth which she will shortly undertake, nor on the “no room at the inn”, nor on the manger, nor on the message of good news given by the angels to shepherds in the fields. These are for later. For now let us focus on Mary herself.

The story of the annunciation comes from the gospel of St Luke. St Luke also gives us the Christmas stories and what are often known as the “Infancy Narratives”. It is to St Luke’s gospel that we go for all we know about this virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, and the virgin’s name was Mary. Tradition has it that Luke was with Mary after the Resurrection and sat with her in the Upper Room at the feast of Pentecost. He had from her the stories of these experiences and wrote them into his gospel.

And it is just as well that he did, for no other New Testament writer has these stories. Mary is otherwise only mentioned in passing by St Matthew, for he is really more interested in Joseph. St Mark makes no reference to Mary or even Jesus’s birth. For St Mark, it was Jesus’s baptism which marks the beginning of his ministry, not his birth. And St John, the great evangelist of the incarnation speaks not of Mary but only that the Word was made Flesh. 

Even St Paul seems to have no interest in Jesus’s birth or upbringing and never mentions Mary. All he says is “When the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, in order to redeem those born under the Law, so that we might receive adoption as children.”

So what are we to make of Mary? Why is she so hidden, while yet called to bear such a weighty calling? At one level we can say, with feminist interpretations of scripture, that Mary’s place has been diminished by a male-dominated canon of scripture, and Mary’s voice has been suppressed by all the writers except St Luke. We could even say that we have the Christmas stories only by chance, because of Luke’s friendship with Mary in old age.

But at another level we can reflect upon her hiddenness by considering her call by God as we have heard it in Luke’s account of the Annunciation which we have heard today. The Angel Gabriel was sent to Nazareth, a non-descript town in northern Palestine, to an unknown virgin about whom we know only her name, Mary. In the encounter we meet a young woman who is at first perplexed to be described as “favoured one”; then we see her almost argumentative, as she answers the angel’s announcement with the words “How can this be, since I am still a virgin?” And then we see Mary change. She becomes co-operative. The angel describes what is going to happen: “the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the most high will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy, the Son of God.” Mary says “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”

What we see here is calling by God in action, and we know from experience that there is the ring of truth here. What Mary went through that morning in Nazareth has been replicated down the ages by men and women who have heard the call of God.  Your first response is to be perplexed: “Why me? I’m not good enough”. Then you are argumentative, “Hold on a bit, Lord, you’re making a mistake. It doesn’t happen like this”. Finally, you cooperate, “Ok here am I, send me.”

For many people the process of wrestling with their call evolves over years. But for Mary it seems to have happened in an afternoon. Her hiddenness was over. Her secret was out. Next day she would hurry to her cousin Elizabeth and sing, “My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my saviour…from now on all generations will call me blessed, for the mighty one has done great things for me and holy is his name.”

Nine months later is the gracious consequence: the birth of Jesus Christ, which we read of in St Luke’s gospel.

But we do not have to wait nine months to celebrate this. This year we have to wait only a matter of hours.