You let Your servant depart in peace
Candelmas, Sunday 3rd January, 2002
The Rev'd Dr Colin Holden
Assistant Priest and Archivist, St Peter's, Eastern Hill
Lord, You let Your servant depart in peace, according to Your word.
The messenger whispers 'Rejoice, we have conquered', and as the dust subsides
in clouds on the plain behind him, he falls dead at the feet of a circle of
people who have waited in a mixture of hope and fear.
Sent first from Athens to Sparta, the courier Phidippides traverses almost
150 miles in 2 days; his mission, to enlist the aid of the Lacedaemonians in
casting out the invading Persians. But jealous of their neighbours, the
Spartans claim they must wait until the moon is full so that they can complete
their religious observances. So to return, and with an unwelcome message that
the Athenians and the people of Platea must face the Persians on their own.
Thence to the plain of Marathon, and when the day is won – a victory that
means continuing freedom for the Greek city states – Phidippides is
requested to bear the news back to Athens before the arrival of the army; a
lone figure on the horizon, a dead man running.
If the Spartans were unprepared and unwilling, and Phidippides willed to
be the bearer of news to those ready to hear it, something similar must be
said of those who feature in this feast day's gospel.
St Luke gives us not only Mary and Joseph and Jesus, but other important
participants, the aged Simeon and Anna. These are not just two remarkable
individuals who have waited in the expectation that eventually God would in
some way act and be present. They also embody the hope of many generations
of a whole people, a people prepared. They also come together around the
observance of a sacrificial act. It is the sacrificial act allowed for those
we might now say belonged in the lower income brackets, but it was a
sacrificial act all the same. The action, too, embodied the understanding and
expectation, not just of these individuals, but of a spiritual tradition
encompassing almost two millenia and many generations behind them – a
tradition that proclaimed that in response to God's many ways of giving and
offering to us, we are called in response to offer back.
A prepared people as a community, but certainly also prepared individuals.
All in this morning's episode are in some way prepared. It is made very clear
that this is true of the two senior figures. They have spent literally a
lifetime waiting. But this is also the case with the others, and Catholic
tradition understands this especially to be the case with Mary. Many visual
representations of the Annunciation show her reading a book, or with a book
close by; many commentators on St Luke's annunciation narrative suggested that
at this particular moment, she was reading the Old Testament prophecies
relating to the birth of the messiah. The worst Anglican poet of the 17th
century to write about her, Joseph Beaumot, in his turgid epic Psyche,
imagined her doing precisely this.
But beyond the conscious, whatever things may have stirred her into
thinking that in some way she must expect God to enter and take over her
life, there is another level on which she was prepared, and it is a reflection
of its preparedness that the physical events and actions of her life could
take the course they did. I am referring to her will. The unreserved positive
response to the message of the Annunciation implies willingness – indeed,
it had to be willingness, since it could not be understanding. How could a
mature adult, let alone a teenage girl, possibly understand the Incarnation
and what it would mean to assent to being a part of this act of God's?
But the events could take the shape they did without ultimately creating
rebellion, rejection, frustration in her – because in some way, before
the message was delivered, she had surrendered, or at least acknowledged the
possibility of surrendering, herself to God. St Augustine understood this
when he stated that she bore Him in her body because she had firstly given
birth to faith and obedience within:
More blessed is Mary through perceiving the faith of Christ, than through
conceiving His flesh . . . and the maternal relationship would have been of
no profit to Mary, if she had not more happily borne Christ in her heart than
in her womb . . . for Him whom Mary had brought forth by believing, she also
conceived by delivering . . .
The preparation of the Jewish people and the prophets seems remote; and
since we are not called to bear Christ in our flesh in the manner in which
she did, how does her preparedness speak to us?
She speaks to us about the core of all actions and their fruitfulness,
as well as their integrity (or otherwise), in the sight of God. Those acts
which are carried through, in the face (perhaps) of unthought of obstacles,
are those actions in which the will has said yes, for even with those actions
which are within our bodily capacity, if the will be not disposed and
assenting, co-operating, or causing the body to co-operate with it, become
great struggles.
An illustration which might seem far from the scenario of this morning's
gospel occurs in Tolkien's Hobbit. Bilbo Baggins, the small furry hobbit,
after a long journey, has arrived outside the cave where the treasure-seeking
dragon Smaug is asleep. Eventually, he acts and brings his mission to
fulfilment. But he can only act, because of a prior choice.
The great centre in which many battles are won, from which a messenger
carries a signal both to some other level of ourselves, and into the
consciousness of others, is in the end not out in the physical world which
so often seems very ordinary, repetitive and routine, but within. And it is
in the will's assent to God, to truth, to rejecting self, and many other
things – it is in the will's fighting of such battles that major decisions
are made, and the ground for right action prepared, after which the doing
comes relatively easily.
Mary's acceptance at many different points in her life of what we now see
to be 'God's will', was only possible because of other, previous decisions
and acceptances she had made. It was because of these that she was prepared
to be, not only one of those to whom a message would come, but one from whom
a message would come.
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