Work That is Ours

Wednesday, March 24

Readings: Is 7:10-14; 8:10; Heb 10:4-10; Lk 1:26-38

Today celebrates the Annunciation when the angel Gabriel “announced” to Mary that she was being asked to be the mother of God in the form of Jesus.

The reading from Isaiah is the “foretelling” passage that gets quoted by Christians that “the virgin shall be with child, and bear a son, and shall name him Emmanuel, which means “God is with us!”

Then in Luke we hear the familiar story of Mary’s decision to say yes to God’s plan.

In so many ways, Mary’s story is our story.  We are constantly being invited to say, “Yes,” to God’s plans for us.  And we, too, like Mary might say to God (and I am paraphrasing), “Uh, God, I think you might have the wrong person for this job.”  But God does not have the wrong person for the job, and each of us has a significant part to play in God’s unfolding dream for the world.  Thank God that Mary said yes to her part.  The question is, “Do we say yes to ours?”

For many of us, however, we don’t get an angelic visit or explicit instructions and we are not called to do what Mary did.  We are called in the contexts of our own lives.  Most of us get inklings – like having a flashlight in the forest – where we can only see a part of things – and have to take a lot on faith.

And in these times, we’re having to take a lot on faith.

I was reminded lately of the story of some local Sisters of St. Joseph.  They were working in Selma, Alabama in the 1960’s at Good Samaritan hospital – serving some of the poorest people in our country.  On Sunday March 7, 1965, they really wanted to be part of a significant civil rights march that was going on but were told by their superiors that they could not do so. The nuns remained at the hospital for their regular shifts.  Thankfully they did, however, because the marchers were met on the Edmund Pettus Bridge by state and local lawmen who attacked them with billy clubs and tear gas (in what became known as “Bloody Sunday”).  People from the march – including a young John Lewis who would go on to become a very influential U.S. Senator – were taken to that hospital for care.  If the nuns were not there that day many more people would have died (including Lewis).

There is a greatness in doing what is ours to do.  Often it starts as a pull to volunteer, extend hospitality, reach out to someone, get involved in something, start something, take a risk, let something go, etc.  We often can’t quite explain it, but it calls us somehow.  It can seem foolish or irrational.  But it tugs at us.  And it often does not seem that grand, important or world-altering.  Mary might have felt the same way.  Yet she followed the lead of the Spirit.

Some of you may be feeling a pull or inkling these days – something that is rising in you to do. The great Persian poet, Rumi, says: These spiritual window-shoppers, who idly ask, ‘How much is that?’ Oh, I’m just looking. They handle a hundred items and put them down, shadows with no capital…Even if you don’t know what you want, buy something, to be part of the exchanging flow.  Start a huge, foolish project, like Noah.

Today we’re invited to trust our inklings and invitations and to not be window-shoppers in the spiritual marketplace.  Trust in what is being revealed even if you don’t have the full picture.