[RCL] 2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16; Canticle 3 or Canticle 15 or Psalm 89:1-4, 19-26; Romans 16:25-27; Luke 1:26-38 Our Gospel lesson is wonderful and glorious and brings us to the edge of Christmas. It is the story of the Annunciation. The angel Gabriel is sent by God to the town of Nazareth, to a virgin…

[RCL] 2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16; Psalm 89:1-4, 19-26 or Canticle 3 or Canticle 15; Romans 16: 25-27; Luke 1: 26-38 “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” With these words, the Angel Gabriel announces God’s call to Mary. Mary is unique in all creation with the young woman from Nazareth being offered a pivotal…

Mary was not expecting visitors, and she certainly was not expecting a visit from the Angel Gabriel. But there he was, with the afterglow of divine light fresh on his robes standing before her. “Greetings, favored one. The Lord is with you!” Not your typical greeting. Who says stuff like that? Is he trying to…

We always celebrate some aspect of the Annunciation on this Fourth Sunday of Advent. Each year, we hear a different part of the great story involving the Angel Gabriel, Joseph, Mary and her cousin Elizabeth. And all of this foretells the imminent birth of the Savior. In today’s story, the angel says to Mary, “Greetings,…

“He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the lowly.” Mary sings the Good News of the Incarnation to break into our Advent anticipation with a description of the coming Reign of God. In the angel Gabriel’s visit to lowly Mary, and then in Mary’s beautiful hymn of praise, the…

Of today’s gospel lesson, Frederick Buechner, in his book Peculiar Treaures, wrote: “She struck the angel Gabriel as hardly old enough to have a child at all, let alone this child, but he’d been entrusted with a message to give her and he gave it. He told her what the child was to be named,…

Why Mary for the mother of God? Why Mary? Mary was apparently an ordinary person. She was not rich or well-born. Wasn’t she an unlikely representative of humankind to give birth to the Savior? Mary was so simple, so plain, so ordinary, so much like the rest of us. And that’s the answer, isn’t it?…

The last candle is lit. Ready or not, Christmas is upon us. Ready or not, we will be back here Tuesday night to meet our Lord as he comes to us as a child; and to pray that we may continue to meet him, as he comes to us in so many ways, at so…

It’s a strange scene to be sure. How well thought out does this plan seem? How weird does it strike you that God’s plan of salvation should depend upon the willingness of a young woman living in an obscure village of a remote province to trust a vision that tells her God wants her to…