We spent the summer of our second year in seminary traveling in England and Wales. While touring the Tower of London, the tour guide, who was dressed in one of those Beefeater outfits looking like he had stepped off the label of a bottle of gin, detailed the famous wives of Henry VIII who were beheaded there. He worked his way around the crowd talking about Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour and Anne of Cleves. When he was right behind our oldest daughter who was about 14 at the time (going on 20) he put his arms on her shoulders in front of this large group of tourists and said, “Now Kathryn Howard would have been about 19, just your age, when Henry found favor with her.” I will never forget how much my young adolescent daughter blushed just to be singled out like that in a crowd.
Isn’t it wonderful to be noticed sometimes? Of course when you are an adolescent like Mary the mother of Jesus, or our daughter at the Tower of London, being noticed or being favored can be embarrassing, perplexing and downright uncomfortable. I think my daughter’s reaction to being favored by the tour guide must have been similar to Mary’s reaction of embarrassment and bewilderment.
“How can this be?” she must have asked. “Me, a teenage girl, a virgin, engaged to an older man, from a nobody family, in a nowhere little town! How can I be favored? How can this be? Why would the Most High God want to pick me out of all the girls in Israel? If this is really true, I could get in big trouble with the village. Me, pregnant with the son of the Most High! They will stone me for sure. What can I do? This is truly scary.”
Isn’t that the way we all are? When something about us breaks us out of our comfort zone, we become afraid and wonder what will happen to us. Perhaps you won the lottery. Maybe you fell in love with your soul mate. Your first child was born. Or maybe, you got a nudge about really changing your life, kicking an addiction, starting a program to help the needy, or going back to school. I talk to lots of people who question whether God actively works in our lives. I tell them that all you have to do is pay attention to the extra-ordinary events of your life. God is there, changing you, forming you, helping you, saving you, and at the end, helping you walk through that turnstile into the next life.
If you are completely clueless, you may not notice God at work in your life. If you are a completely self absorbed egotistical narcissist you will not notice God at work in your life. But if you have managed to escape these two sand traps of life, you should be able to notice that God is there – nudging, pointing, saving, healing, and yes, even making you embarrassed and uncomfortable.
God was certainly at work in Mary’s life. We have no idea how many other young girls Gabriel visited before one of them said yes to this outrageous proposition. In the same way we never know when we feel nudged, pushed, or transformed. How many other people were given the same opportunity before we said yes?
The angel Gabriel visited Mary and began this remarkable announcement with “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” We continue to say this to one another, sometimes in greetings, and formally we say it in the Eucharist. There is an old joke about how do you know a bunch of Episcopalians are watching an old Star Wars movie? Because every time Obie Wan Kenobi says, “The force be with you”, the audience says, “And also with you.” You too are favored.
But there is more to “Greetings favored one! The Lord is with you.” That more is our response. We have baptized four children today. As a congregation we have affirmed that we will support these young people in their life of faith. The Lord is with you, and also with the newly baptized.
Part of our job as a community of faithful people, as parents, sponsors, and grandparents is raise up these children in the knowledge and love of God so that they truly know deep down that the Lord is with them and the Lord favors them. When we are able to live into this knowledge of the Lord’s favor, we will know that we are truly blessed – not necessarily with material goods, but with the spiritual power necessary to deal with everything that life and death can do to us.
When God calls our name – whether that call is to get married, become a parent, become a doctor, serve as a priest, or to come to the end of our days – we will know that God favors us and God is with us. And we will respond just like Mary did so long ago, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”