PostScript: The extraordinary ordinary
God seeks our cooperation in making the seemingly impossible, possible. How will we respond? (Luke 1.38)
Context
The church is one of only a few intergenerational spaces in society, so how might we take this kind of debate forward in our communities?
Reflection
It’s beginning to look a lot like…oh, wait a minute…
Many people have had their lives turned upside down this year. We are living with insecurity and many forms of distress brought about by a year of absence, pain and loss. Some have lost their jobs, children have missed school, others mourn the loss of loved ones and all of us have lost something of a more carefree experience of daily life. Battered, pulled and pummelled – often by forces that we cannot control – we find ourselves in need of restoration. But Christmas celebrations are somewhat muted this year. The reading from Samuel speaks of the tenderness of God as he restores his people ‘so that they may live in their own place and be disturbed no more’ (2 Samuel 7.10). It is God’s intention to give rest, security and space in which to flourish, but many live without the basics they need to survive and all of us have had a taste of this in the deprivations of the year.
What has the Gospel story got to say to us?
In the situation in which Gabriel announces an extraordinary message to Mary, everyday ordinary life for most people was a hard and sometimes bitter slog. Mary would have been familiar with a world where the arbitrary choices of the powerful often inflicted poverty and hunger on the people of the land. Mary herself would have had few economic rights and would been relatively insignificant in the society at that time. And yet, God’s extraordinary breaks into her ordinary and utterly transforms it. Many paintings of the annunciation try to capture this extraordinary-ordinary moment in the middle of the activities of everyday life, where now becomes the future. You might like to look at the Annunciation Triptych attributed to Robert Campin to see an annunciation in the middle of an ordinary (in his case, 15th Century) room with the pot boiling in background. Or a more modern image such as John Collier’s Annunciation which emphasises Mary’s youth.
Being so very familiar with the story of the annunciation and Mary’s song of praise which follows it, we may miss its radical nature and the seemingly ‘un-Christmassy’ elements of the story. Becoming pregnant before marriage would have been seen as a scandal and a disgrace carrying the possible punishment of stoning or beIng sold into slavery. The fact that God chooses a young and ordinary woman, that the story begins with risk, continues into hazard and heads into danger tells us that God’s intervention in the world will disturb the ‘business as usual’ nature of religious practice and the priorities that most of us hold. Madeleine L’Engle refers to it as ‘this strange choosing’ in her poem O Simplicitas.
Mary recognises and accepts the radical choice that God has made. The cost of it will be huge. She will be under threat; she will have to deal with possible rejection; she will give birth far from home in difficult circumstances; there will be visitors, whispers of angels and strange gifts and later Jesus will become an asylum seeker before the age of two. God in Jesus makes a home in human flesh and with us and chooses what the world ignores or despises with all the risk and pain that this involves. God so loved the world….and that love is risky, radical, disturbing. It has pain as well as joy in it; it is also challenging, prophetic and ultimately transformational. It asks us to turn our eyes to world where the poor and raised up and the rich go away with nothing and what we are going to do to bring that into our everyday reality.
Covid19 has shone a spotlight into the everyday struggles of people on less than the minimum wage; people with no job security or no job at all, people with no hope of owning their own home, on hungry children, on the vast numbers of families in poverty, on abusive home situations, on the gap between north and south and yes between the generations. What is the call to us in the real story of Christmas and its roots in the radical choice of Mary? These stories challenge us so deeply because they can transform us - they can change what we value, what we think is important and what it means to say yes to a world where the hungry are fed; yes to a world where wealth is more fairly shared, to say yes to the radical and transforming love of God and to demonstrate our response to this love in the reordered choices and priorities that shape our everyday lives and the lives of those around us. God asks for our co-operation. What will we say?
Prayer
‘O’ Antiphon for 20 December
O Key of David, O royal power of Israel, controlling at your will the gate of heaven: come, break down the prison walls of death for those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death; and lead your captive people into freedom.’
Pray for those you know, and for those whose stories are in this week’s news (as above), who dwell in darkness and in the shadow of death.
You could use the following prayer alone or as part of the intercessions.
Where the tasks of daily life are carried out;
where people struggle and children go hungry;
where life is tough and choices conflicted;
lift up our eyes;
open our hearts;
show us what we should do.
Where people are separated from those they love;
where people live in the shadow of death;
where the future is frightening
and the present is uncertain;
lift up our eyes; open our hearts;
show us what we should do.
In our schools and homes;
with our friends and families;
in the absences that stretch between us;
lift up our eyes;
open our hearts;
show us what we should do.
O God, you love us
with a love that is uncontainable;
a love that calls us;
a love that is with us always.
May our lives be shaped by your call to us
and may we work with you
to make the ordinary extraordinary.
Lift up our eyes;
open our hearts;
show us what we should do.
Amen.
Questions
- Which part of the Gospel story do you find the most interesting?
- Which part of the Gospel story do you find the most challenging?
- How might we work better at telling the story from generation to generation?
All-age activity
Talk about the ways that you have experienced vocation or a sense of God calling you. How did you feel about it? Which people have helped you to understand what it means to follow God?
Young people
Find some images of Mary and the annunciation. Read this week’s Gospel and Mary’s response to the angel’s words (i.e. the Magnificat). What do you think this whole story shows us about the radical edge to the Christmas story? What is the best way for us to tell this story?
Who is called by God? Share examples of seemingly insignificant people who have been chosen by God. What does this tell us about God’s priorities and our own? How can we encourage one another to hear what God might be asking us to do?
Diane Craven is a freelance education and spirituality consultant and a Reader in the Church of England.
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