“Happy is she who believed
“that the Lord would fulfill
“the promises he made to her.” (Luke 1:45)
This is a simpler translation
of what you heard in the Gospel reading:
“And blessed is she who believed
“that there would be a fulfillment
“of what was spoken to her by the Lord.”
Certainly, what God’s messenger Gabriel
brought to Mary was a promise:
“Thy son shall be Emmanuel by seers foretold,
most highly favored lady, Gloria.”
God with us, the Son of God,
the heir of King David,
whose kingdom will have no end.
But what you heard in the Gospel
is a more literal translation:
The Lord simply “spoke” to Mary,
and by speaking, did.
Human beings make “promises,”
and we have learned not to bank on them.
We have learned, through hard experience,
not to go too far out on that limb
based solely on the promise
that it won’t be cut down behind us.
But Mary is dealing with the God who said,
“Let there be light, and there was light.”
All God had to do was say it, and it happened.
Mary is dealing with the “Word,”
by whom all things were made, with just a word.
We are all dealing with a God for whom
word and action are one and the same.
God’s promises are as good as done.
At least, that’s what we hear today.
After today, Mary goes silent.
At his birth, we are told,
she treasured all these things in her heart.
On the day of Pentecost, we are told,
she was praying with the disciples,
but what she prayed, we are not told.
What did she think of God’s promises
when she tried to get past the crowd
to see her son, only for her son to say,
“My mother and brothers are those
who listen to God’s word and do it”?
What did she think of God’s promises
as her Son, the “King of the Jews,”
was nailed to a cross?
We don’t know.
All we have to go on
are her words and actions that we hear
in our hymns and readings:
“Then gentle Mary meekly bowed her head,
“To me be as it pleaseth God, she said.”
“With all my heart
“I glorify the Lord!
“In the depths of who I am
“I rejoice in God my savior.
“He has looked with favor
“on the low status of his servant.”
Even as she accepted God’s promise,
Mary understood that its fulfillment
was beyond her imagination.
But she could see enough to know
that God the Son, her son,
had accepted the same low status.
God would not impose God’s will
from the top down
with superior force and irresistible power.
God the Son would encounter
resistance, opposition, hatred, betrayal.
But God would find a way to fulfill the promises
from the bottom up, through meekness,
through weakness,
through defeat and death.
Nothing is more powerful than God’s love,
God’s Son proved that on the cross.
God’s love has the last word,
the Resurrection proves that.
God’s promises to Mary are fulfilled
through her Son’s Body, the Church.
Mary was of low status.
Jesus became of low status.
And in the Church’s low status,
those promises are fulfilled.
In meekness and in weakness,
in defeat and in death,
the risen Christ fulfills God’s promises
through Christ’s church.
As it was in the beginning,
so it is now and so it shall ever be,
for as long as it takes for all of us
to accept the same low status
as Mary and Jesus did,
As it was in the beginning,
so it is now and so it shall ever be,
world without end. Alleluia. Amen.
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