Advent 4

Some years ago I was on a silent retreat and in the process of discerning an significant decision. I went out for a walk and stopped on a bridge to take a breath. A woman came along and spoke to me – two sentences, completely out of the blue – and then disappeared. I couldn’t see her at all when I turned round to look. Her two sentences were exactly what I needed to hear at that point and from that moment on the decision was made. I went back to the retreat centre and told my spiritual guide that I had encountered an angel.

This morning’s Gospel story describes the second appearance of Gabriel. He’d already appeared to Zechariah in the temple, and now we read about his appearance to Mary. So I want to think a bit about angels and what this part of the story is telling us.

In art and poetry the power imbalance between Gabriel and Mary tends to be emphasised. Mary is often seated and turned in on herself. Gabriel may be standing or kneeling, but his gaze is usually turned outward towards her. Each is paying attention to the other – we are left in no doubt that this is a significant moment.
We are also left in no doubt that the communication is coming in the first instance from Gabriel and that Mary is the respondent. I’m wondering how you imagine the encounter.

Do you imagine a Dr Who kind of scene where one minute Mary is in her room quietly going about her business and the next minute she looks up and this other worldly being is there? Do you perhaps imagine Mary nipping out of the room to collect something and coming back in to find her unusual visitor? Are there other people coming and going and suddenly there are just the two of them left in the room? We could imagine a number of scenarios. And really, why does it matter?

I guess it matters if the veracity of the story matters. But that, of course, leads us to question ‘what is truth’? Is the story true because it happened the way it has been written in this Gospel, or is it true because it points us towards something that is an absolute truth whilst not being an actual truth?

What if the visitation Mary had from an angel was more similar to the encounter I had when I was on retreat? What if she opened the door to a random person who came in and spoke significant words of absolute truth and then went away again? That doesn’t make for such an artistic story. It doesn’t provide the material for artistic expression or characters in nativity plays – but would it be less real?

The logistics of the encounter are obviously much less relevant that the content of the encounter. This chapter in the nativity story is telling us something about the ways that God communicates with us. God could have communicated directly with Mary. There are lots of Biblical examples where God engages with someone and makes the direction of travel clear. But this story has an intermediary.

For me, the gift of this particular story is in the intensity of the encounter between Mary and the angel. That is described beautifully by Edwin Muir in his poem, Annunciation.


The angel and the girl are met.
Earth was the only meeting place.
For the embodied never yet
Travelled beyond the shore of space.
The eternal spirits in freedom go.

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. He’s come to her
From far beyond the farthest star,
Feathered through time. Immediacy
Of strangest strangeness is the bliss
That from their limbs all movement takes.
Yet the increasing rapture brings
So great a wonder that it makes
Each feather tremble on his wings.

Outside the window footsteps fall
Into the ordinary day
And with the sun along the wall
Pursue their unreturning way.
Sound’s perpetual roundabout
Rolls its numbered octaves out
And hoarsely grinds its battered tune.

But through the endless afternoon
These neither speak nor movement make,
But stare into their deepening trance
As if their gaze would never break.

The poem talks about a moment when heaven and earth are met, a moment when time appears to stand still. The earth continues to go about its business. People pass by outside, journeying onward. But in this space, in this encounter, time is irrelevant. All that matters is the engagement between these two. The connection that will carry Mary through this story, through the stories of Jesus’ ministry, through the agonies of Holy Week and onto the gift of the Resurrection.
And that is the gift that angels have the potential to bring into our lives. Angels are the beings that may facilitate an experience when time stands still; an experience of the world continuing to turn whist our own internal world is on pause. An experience of real encounter that is life changing.

This morning’s story would have been very different if Mary had taken fright and sent the angel packing. But she went with it. She engaged in the moment – and so the course of history was changed.

Listen again to a couple of lines:

Each reflects the other’s face
Till heaven in hers and earth in his
Shine steady there.

I spoke a moment ago about the way that a power imbalance between Gabriel and Mary is often depicted in representations of this story. Muir’s poem cuts across that power imbalance and holds the moment in a perfect kind of tension.

I think it’s that tension, between being grounded on earth and having an awareness of the heavenly realm to which we are called. It’s a calling to be open to the presence of the angels – to recognise the voice of God in their voice; to trust that we may not be able to travel between heaven and earth, but what Muir called the eternal spirits can and do.

The way our calendar has worked this year, in only a few hours we will be celebrating the coming of the Christ child. Meantime, we’re still in that place where the thing to do is to wait. To wait with open hearts and minds and to trust that God will use those eternal spirits to tell us whatever God needs us to know.

The angel and the girl are met.
Earth was the only meeting place.
For the embodied never yet
Travelled beyond the shore of space.
The eternal spirits in freedom go.

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. He’s come to her
From far beyond the farthest star,
Feathered through time. Immediacy
Of strangest strangeness is the bliss
That from their limbs all movement takes.
Yet the increasing rapture brings
So great a wonder that it makes
Each feather tremble on his wings.

Outside the window footsteps fall
Into the ordinary day
And with the sun along the wall
Pursue their unreturning way.
Sound’s perpetual roundabout
Rolls its numbered octaves out
And hoarsely grinds its battered tune.

But through the endless afternoon
These neither speak nor movement make,
But stare into their deepening trance
As if their gaze would never break.