The Fourth Sunday of Advent 2008

Romans 16: 25—end; Luke 1: 26-38

The picture you have before you was painted by the Italian Renaissance artist Fra Angelico in the early 1430s. His name means ‘the angelic brother’ - a nickname he was given because he painted so beautifully, and because he was gentle and lowly of heart. I want you to look carefully at the picture. What do you see?

Let’s start with the shaft of light. A moment of grace—God’s grace breaking through the normal, ordinary, daily routine, with its time unfolding as it does. We have here a shaft of light which discloses, as St Paul writes, a revelation kept secret through the ages. Fra Angelico captures that moment in time. What is disclosed is momentous for humankind.

A poet once wrote of friendship that for it all nature slows and sings. The shaft of light that came into the world at the annunciation marked a moment when all nature didn’t just slow, but stopped—for a moment, for a momentous moment that captured all eternity. A go-between moment mediated by an angel. In that moment heaven came down and earth embraced God. A moment of innocence, of gift, of grace. Of friendship between God and humanity.
It is the beginning; the beginning of a different relationship between God and creation. God offered love, and Mary said ‘yes’. Her response was not forced, or uncertain, or equivocal; simply ‘Here am I—let it be according to your word’. A free response, once her shock and anxiety had subsided, a free response to a gentle overshadowing. A yes to friendship with God.

How does Fra Angelico capture that moment? See how he creates a sense of space within the courtyard, with the inner room and the bench leading the eye inward, suggesting the inner chamber of the heart. And outside is the opulent fruitfulness of Eden—and there are Adam and Eve banished for their disobedience. Their turning away from God a direct contrast to Mary’s obedient response. God wanted to walk with them, talk with them in sweet friendship, in the garden in the cool of the evening. But they turned away, and now, as the angel watches over them, they are walking out of the frame itself. They are no longer central to the story of God.
Now it is the angel, expressing God’s desire for a new relationship with humanity, with you and me.

The Angel holds Mary’s eyes with a look of intense communication. Mary reflects the love she receives, the glory and wonder of the message: she is dressed in the same colour. Behind her is a brown wall hanging that echoes the angels wings. Both, as they gaze at each other, have arms crossed over their breasts. Mary, you notice, has been reading—the book put aside on her knee. Her blue cloak hinting at the blue of the heavens—the ceiling the same colour; the sky above—a blue captured also in the hint of the angel’s undergarment, covered over by the glorious salmon pink, reminding us that the angel comes from and will return to heaven.

The gentleness of the encounter is the fruit of the Holy Spirit—a gentle meeting of minds and hearts between God and humanity, mediated by the angel. As Mary says yes, the Holy Spirit sows a seed of light and life that will transform the ages. That yes was not easy. For her, the potential of shame and disgrace as her body swelled with child. For us, too, to say yes to God can transform our lives, can mean we change.

Thomas Aquinas—perhaps the greatest Christian philosopher of all time—said that the ultimate aim of our whole lives is friendship with God. At the end of all his erudite reasoning, something as simple and delightful as friendship. We make a mistake if we dismiss friendship—it is not to be taken for granted. Aquinas didn’t think so. He thought it was our ultimate good. Friendship with God.

You can’t force friendship. Friendship grows where there is a gentle exchange, a loving, mutual affection. Think of Jesus and the disciple whom he loved—a relationship marked by gentleness, care, profound encounter.

Our friendships are possible because of the event that we see here, when God offered friendship to Mary and Mary said yes. Mary was the first friend of God. Her yes reversed the darkness of the ages, since Adam and Eve took the gift for granted. But even then, as with all true friendships, God did not give up, did not turn away. Adam and Eve were not ready to walk with God in the cool of the evening. God waited. Mary was ready.

Into our tired and weary world came a ray of grace, the gentle grace of love. Instead of all our human relationships being about gain, self-interest, transaction, now it’s different—qualitatively different. We now can build relationships on gift, not gain, gentleness, not force or manipulation.

In the 12th Century, Aelred of Rievaulx wrote this of the intense pleasure of friendship:
It is no small solace in this life to have someone whom you can unite to yourself with intimate affection and by an embrace of most holy love, in whom your spirit may rest, to whom your soul may pour itself out, to whose pleasant conversation you can flee as to a consoling song amid sorrows, into whose most kind embrace of friendship you can enter, secure among so many scandals of this age; by the great love of whose heart, if you unhesitatingly entrust him with your innermost thoughts, and by whose spiritual kisses, as if by an application of medicine, you can rid yourself of the weariness of tumultuous cares; who weeps with you in troubles, rejoices with you in prosperity, searches with you in times of uncertainty; … the sweetness of the Holy Spirit flowing between you: indeed you so unite and attach yourself to him, and mingle soul with souls, that one is made from many.

Friendship is capable of great things—the ultimate in self-sacrifice. John’s gospel, chapter 15, carried the great commandment, that we love one another—and then the statement that no one has greater love than this—to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. Mary gave her life—she gave her life to magnify the Lord. The fruit of her gentle friendship with God was a man who laid down his life for his friends. And more: he died also that his enemies might become his friends. And so our caritas, our friendship can transcend the narrow loyalties of family and tribe and stretch out over the world, embracing people who are radically different. Just as God embraced the radical difference of human flesh and turned that encounter into communion.

John V Taylor wrote about the Holy Spirit, the Go-Between God. He wrote that the annunciation happens here and now—as we attend to each other with open eyes, my seeing your truth and responding to it in love. Such love is of the Holy Spirit, the Go between God. Fra Angelico’s painting captures the stillness of the first Go-between moment when the world stopped and received the grace of God, freely given, freely received.
Whenever you and I give and receive friendship, nature slows and sings in remembrance of the young woman. Who sang My Soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my saviour.

Some lines from Edwin Muir -

See, they have come together, see,
While the destroying minutes flow,
Each reflects the other’s face
Till heaven in hers and earth in his
Shine steady there
But through the endless afternoon
These neither speak nor movement make,
But stare into their deepening trance
As if their gaze would never break.

God gazes on you, desiring your friendship. How do you respond?