Parish of St Helen Witton Northwich Cheshire

25th March 2009 - Annunciation: will you say "Yes" as well?

19:00 Holy Communion - Preacher: Malcolm Cowan (Vicar)

Luke 1:26-38

What if she'd said no! What if she had been too busy or too conventional or too afraid? There were a hundred ways of getting out of it: “It's market day”, “I'm fine as I am”, or even “If I ignore it, someone else will volunteer”. For a fleeting moment, the consequences of saying "Yes" must have entered her mind. The stranger must have seen the fear and panic in her eyes and hastened to reassure her. “Don't be afraid, you have found favour with God”.

Well! God's favour was one thing, an important thing I'm sure and thank you very much but she had to go on living in this community with these particular neighbours and this particular traditional, hard-working peasant village. I'm not sure that saying yes will find favour with them. And the shape that God's favour would take? To be the mother of God's son. The joy of every Jewish woman's heart, to be responsible for the continuation and nurturing of the covenant people of God. But what a sour joy - to be an unmarried mother in a Jewish village; more degraded and ostracised than being a leper.

What if she'd said no? No-one would have blamed her. In her position we would have done the same, and often we do, we all say no, when it suits us. All heaven held its breath as God's almighty plan for the redemption of the world hung upon the 'yes' or the 'no' of a simple peasant girl from Nazareth. That perhaps is the most remarkable thing about the whole episode: that all the divine eggs were put into one highly vulnerable basket. I suppose there might have been a contingency plan, some sort of plan B. Not so much the story of God's constant initiative of love and judgement in human affairs: but God reacting, trying to find another way around human intransigence; coping with our God-given capacity to say no. There might have been a contingency plan if, yet again, this maid, true to her humankind had opted for convention, for safety, for obscurity.

But nothing in any contingency plan could change the fact that God had tethered himself and his good purposes once and for all to the 'yes' or the 'no' of the beautiful but wilful creatures he had made in his own image and likeness. Their co-operation, their participation, their freely given 'yes' to him, was a crucial and indispensable ingredient in whatever redemptive plans God might have.

There were no shortcuts; there are no shortcuts. God has put himself entirely in the hands of a Jewish girl because only from this acceptance, this God-given capacity to say 'yes', could God's original creative purpose come to fruition.

What if she'd said no? Perhaps she had no choice; but we know that at one level she had all the choice in the world, she could have said "No" or "Wait" or "Perhaps". She saw the consequences - or some of the social consequences at least, of saying yes. But when the angel and the girl meet, when the moment comes, there is no possibility of saying 'no' for either of them.

We can move from sacred story to ordinary day, to the places where we inhabit:

where we buy our lottery tickets;
where we worry about money, especially in the midst of a financial downturn;
where we grieve and feel guilty over the relative who has had to go into a home;
where we over-indulge;
where we do our shameful things as well as the things that surprise us by their generosity

We gather tonight, but what of tomorrow morning, with this story a half-forgotten memory. As we hurry about our business, the YES of Mary's love will be the last thing on our mind. We have far too many important matters to attend to, without having to give thought to some event which happened 2000 years ago, even if that event did change everything. We may run about like demented chickens. But if so, I fear that what we celebrate today and what we shall be remembering and celebrating through Holy week and Easter, will be little more than a fairy story.

The story of the Annunciation is not simply a two thousand year old fable, which it pleases us to embellish and gaze at like some Old Master we can wonder at and turn away from. The Annunciation is one of the most relevant New Testament story for us today. Just the other side of the window where our footsteps fall, just the other side of the ordinary day, just at the end of this road, an angel waits: God waits. The question is not “What if she had said no?” (an idle speculation: we know she didn't). The question is: “What if we say no?”.

Or more importantly, “What if we say yes?” For the Annunciation, like the sacrifice of Calvary, is something that happened once for all and can never be repeated. And yet, annunciations like crucifixions, take place every day as God encounters us, addresses us, discloses his love to us and longs for us to answer “Yes”, be it unto me according to your word.

The consequences of saying yes may cause concerns... YES to what? The understandable excuses - will form upon our lips. But if we can get past that, we may find in the busyness of this week that God, having put a wafer in our hands as a token of his presence today, is staring into our eyes tomorrow, yearning for us to say yes to him and embrace a new way life with all its demands and transforming joys.

Amen.