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 Mary responded, “I am the Lord’s servant. May everything you have said about me come true.” – Luke 1:38 NLT

 This Advent season, we have used a resource from SALT project call Starry Nights, which is chock full of interesting, sometimes mind-blowing facts about our solar system, galaxy, the stars we see, and the expanding universe.  The Big Bang was the beginning of what became and continues to emerge as the universe. Everything that is stems from that origin.

     Because creation as we call it stems from that same event, everything that exists shares the same basic stuff.  To say that we are all related is not some hippy, peace loving slogan – it is literally true.  The Bible says we come from dust and to dust we will return.  More accurately, we come from stardust, which led Carl Sagan to declare that we are “made of star stuff.”

     Very recently in human history, we have discovered “dark energy”, which comprises roughly 70% of the expanding universe and appears to be the environment that fosters and energizes the current and developing creation.  I find that interesting. The womb of creation – dark energy – is hospitable to life.  Hmmm.

     Religion’s purpose has always been to help make sense of the world, the cosmos, and very personally, life itself.  Theology was science in antiquity, and our predecessors did the best they could with the information they had.  Brilliantly well, really.  Yet their understanding of what they called “God” or “the gods” seems primitive by modern standards.  One paradigm that is evident throughout the Jewish and Christian Bible is the held belief in many cultures that gods were geographical, holding power only in their respective territory.  The exodus story of Israel’s deliverance from Egypt offers a clear picture – the Jewish God was powerful even though nowhere near “home.”

     Another idea that was held was that God generally spoke to a select few – usually prophets, other religious leaders, and other “important” people. Given that nobody had heard much from God in the centuries leading up to Jesus’ birth around 6 BCE, it was also determined that God could go silent for long periods of time.

     The context into which Jesus was born? God was silent, and not looking very present (let alone powerful) given that Israel was under Roman occupation.  Jesus’s life and teaching changed the paradigm, which are alluded to in the stories offered by the Gospels of Matthew and Luke regarding the birth of the one who would save us from former ways of thinking and being.

     Mary and Joseph are each paid a surprise visit by a messenger of God, informing them that God is no longer silent, distant, or powerless, but rather is up to something unexpected and unprecedented.  The unlikely parents’ lives are part of the story: two extremely poor, powerless, uneducated “nobodies” from “nowhere” become central characters in the birth story of Jesus.  God is no longer silent. When God speaks, God chooses the most ordinary example of humans possible. 

     What was spoken? An invitation to participate in God’s self-disclosure in the person who would become the world-changing Jesus of Nazareth.  What was God’s stated mission in the life of Jesus? That through his ministry people would recognize that God was really with them, reversing the way most people saw the world, and the love and grace of God would be experienced in profound, salvific ways.

     The storyline itself points to another truth about God that seems to always come across as startling and revelatory: God works in cooperation with creation, not coercively.  God does not force even very good things on people but rather invites people to participate in the very good vision and mission God offers.  We are not pawns but serious players in what God is wanting to create.  We are at once in the womb with everyone else, and we are the womb for what will be born from us.

     God is present. With everybody. Inviting all to birth something new and good.

     We don’t know a lot about Joseph, except that he obviously got on board in positive ways.  Luke’s Gospel has Mary giving us much more, beginning with here beautiful, faithful response (Luke 1:38 NLT), “I am the Lord’s servant. May everything you have said about me come true.”  This, of course, was simply one of countless affirmative responses to God’s invitation for her to co-create.  For the next nine months, how many decisions did she make to ensure that the child within would have a healthy beginning?  Once born, how many yeses did she evidence as she did her part raising the child through infancy, childhood, adolescence, and into adulthood? We find her saying yes at the end of Jesus’ life as well.

     God’s love for the world led to Jesus becoming who he was.  Mary’s love for God and for Jesus led her to choose love time and time again. Love beckons us as well.  All the time.  Love’s vision and mission has not changed. It remains to foster love and wellbeing for all, to allow creation to continue to unfold.  Like Mary and Joseph, we have agency to decide how much we want to cooperate with this vision.

     Sometimes are choices feel exhilarating and, even though they carry significant consequences, they are fairly easy to make, like falling in love and making a serious covenant with each other.  Sometimes the choice is hard, especially when our egos flare up like an angry rash and try to dictate our every move.  Pause and perspective help us remember what we are invited to embrace and hopefully love wins more than not.  Sometimes the decision is wrought with pain, like grief when faced with loss of many kinds.  Time heals a lot, yet time and intentional, loving processing of our pain heals faster and better.  Sometimes our choices are completely mundane and ordinary – maybe most of the time, as surely was the case for Mary.  Choices like, should we eat more broccoli or Twinkies, more pure water or water mixed with fermented grapes or barley, more balanced life rhythms or frenetic, high stressed pursuing?  All choices in response to the ever-inviting presence of what we call God.

     Science and theology used to be bedfellows until 500 years ago or so when they split over competing view of reality.  Science was correct about the universe. Theology was not wrong about the loving, creating presence called God.  Perhaps science and theology might fall in love with each other again, as theologians continue to describe something all around us that seems to be loving, kind, generative, and supportive on life’s flourishing, and scientists learn more about dark energy’s influence everywhere, all the time, and similarly benevolent.  Call it what you will, but know this: it exists, and it invites.  How will we choose to respond?