Sisters & brothers, grace to you and peace from the One who was, and who is, and who is to come, Father, Son, & Holy Spirit. Amen.

Have you noticed that the closer we get to Christmas, the more annoying the interruptions of life become? As our time becomes more and more crunched, with “to-do” lists guiding our daily schedules, with holiday activities and obligations piling up on our calendars, and with pending tasks that must be completed driving our days, anything “unexpected” has a way of just ticking-you-off times-ten! That car that pulls out in front of you in a classic L.A. “me first!” move becomes a gross personal violation, the knock on the door or the phone call which comes right in the middle of your very important task becomes a major offense, and even the rain and cold of the past week become great personal sources of vexation and affliction.

As a beloved seminary professor used to gently advise us who were preparing for parish ministry on these matters, “Don’t view such events as interruptions, view them as ‘ministry opportunities’ ” — which sounded really great in the classroom, but really gets under your skin in real time and real life.

In this morning’s Gospel text, Mary too has a major interruption, but instead it was the kind of a life interruption that turns one’s world upside down from that point going forward, perhaps not unlike a death, an accident, a diagnosis, or more unlikely, like winning the lottery. But St. Luke doesn’t reveal to us what Mary was doing when the angel Gabriel was sent to her with the message of her unplanned pregnancy.

This story of the annunciation, the angelic announcement to Mary that she would be the mother of our Lord, has captivated the imagination of artists and theologians alike over the centuries. Like the contemporary depiction of the annunciation on the cover of the bulletin this morning, some medieval writers piously imagined that when the angel Gabriel appeared to her, Mary just happened to be reading the passage from the prophet Isaiah, chapter 7, which speaks of the Lord giving a sign in the form of a young woman with child who bears a son and names him Immanuel. Many visual artists have portrayed Mary, not being interrupted from reading from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah but rather being interrupted from spinning at her spinning wheel. Legend and folklore tell the tale of Mary spinning Jesus’ burial shroud as though somehow she knew in her heart of hearts to prepare for Jesus’ death before even knowing of his conception within her own womb. Perhaps pondering Isaiah’s words: “On that day every place where there used to be a thousand vines, worth a thousand shekels of silver, will become briers and thorns. With bow and arrows one will go there, for all the land will be briers and thorns; and as for all the hills that used to be hoed with a hoe, you will not go there for fear of briers and thorns…”

Whatever Mary was up to there in forgettable Nazareth at that moment of Gabriel’s announcement, what this passage from St Luke seems to suggest is that the faith journey is all about letting God interrupt us. The life of faith, as Mary shows us, is about being open. Open to the unexpected and mysterious. Open to life-changing news. Open to God’s surprising ways with us with a welcome willingness to be interrupted — to think in a new way, to live in a new way, to be a new person — as a result of God’s grace interrupting our regularly-scheduled lives.

Mary’s response to the interruption is a simple statement, which has become repeated in the church over the centuries as a prayer known by its Latin name, the Fiat mihi. “Let it be to me.” “Let it be to me according to your will.” Later on in his life, at the very end of it, the child of Mary prayed a prayer very similar to it in Gethsemane’s garden when he prayed, “Not my will, but yours be done.”

Fiat mihi. Let it be to me.

Martin Luther, in one of his many sermons on the Annunciation, said that there are three great miracles in this passage: first, that a virgin would become a mother; second, that God and humanity would be joined in this child. But Luther said that the most amazing of all was that Mary believed the announcement that she, rather than any other young woman, had been chosen to be the mother of God. Mary was actually the first to believe what God was going to do in the world through Jesus, and in so doing she is the beginning of the church. For just as the Spirit came upon Mary, so the church is promised that the Holy Spirit will come and dwell among us. Even as the word of God comes to Mary and she wrestles with what it could mean for her, so the church continues to hear God’s Word and struggles with its meaning for us today, in the here and now of our lives. Even as Mary carried Jesus into the world, so the church too is the very body of Christ in the world, bearing God’s creativing and redeeming word to every creature.

And meanwhile, there are the interruptions. For Mary, it was an unplanned pregnancy and a lot of explaining to do. For us, we too are pregnant with hopes and fears, with disappointments and dreams, with griefs and with grace sufficient. Yet, as we sang last week as our service began, “To us, to all in sorrow and fear, Emmanuel comes a-singing, his humble song is quiet and near, yet fills the earth with its ringing; music to heal the broken soul and hymns of lovingkindness, the thunder of his anthems roll to shatter all hatred and blindness.”

Today God comes and interrupts our lives yet again, and as with Mary, meets us in our confusion, declares an end to our fears and the beginning of ventures of which we cannot see the ending, and summons us to welcome life being turned upside down by God’s grace.

As Barbara Brown Taylor, professor of preaching and author of Mothers of God, writes,

If you decide to say No, you simply drop your eyes and refuse to look up until you know the angel has left the room and you are alone again. Then you smooth your hair and go back to your spinning or your reading or whatever it is that is most familiar to you and pretend that nothing has happened… Or… you can set your book down and listen to a strange creature’s idea. You can decide to take part in a plan you did not choose, doing things you do not know how to do for reasons you do not entirely understand. You can take part in a thrilling and dangerous scheme with no script and no guarantees. You can agree to smuggle God into the world inside your own body.

Today, with Mary, let us with welcome willingness be interrupted by God’s grace, and proclaim with her, Fiat mihi. Let it be to me, according to your will.

Amen.