Lonely Exile: A Daily Advent Devotional
Part Three: God Needs Our Help
“Hope is passion for what is possible.”
- Soren Kierkegaard
Text: Luke 1:26-38
One of the most important lessons I’ve learned in the past two decades is that truth is not bound to factuality. Something can be deeply, profoundly, world-changingly true, regardless of whether or not it literally happened. I offer this as a disclaimer, because for so many of us the Christmas stories have felt distant and unfamiliar. We were taught that if Mary wasn’t literally a virgin and if an angel didn’t literally visit her to announce her pregnancy, then all this Christmas stuff is, to use a technical theological term, baloney.
That couldn’t be further from the truth.
In fact, the largest, most transformative truths are usually too big for the literal. When we are attempting to name what is true—the thing behind the thing behind the thing—we instinctively turn to the language of metaphor. All of that to say, whatever you believe about angel visitations and virginal conceptions, the truth of the Christmas story is not tied to these stories being literal.
Case in point: In Luke the angel Gabriel visits a young, betrothed woman named Mary and shares some impossible news. She, though a virgin, will conceive a child who will just so happen to be longed for Messiah. He will take up the mantle of David, but he will look and act dramatically different from his ancestor.
Her first question is understandable. “Um, how?”1
To which the angel responds, “[N]othing will be impossible with God.”
Unfortunately, we have too often understood this to mean that God does all the heavy lifting. We just need to wait for God’s intervention, and everything will be made right with a snap of God’s divine fingers.
That is not the reality of the situation. God honors human consent. Mary isn’t being coerced or demanded of, but invited into participation. She has the agency to say, “No way.” Yet, she doesn’t. She signs up to play her role in the liberation of her people.
“Here am I,” she said, “the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Luke 1:38a
Mary opts in to this journey, and by doing so joins God in the work of bringing a new world into existence. This has always been true. It has never been God alone, but always “God with us,” or to put it another way, “God and us.” The entirety of Scripture and Tradition remind us that God has and always will be looking for partners—collaborators who will sign up to play their role in the birthing of a new world of justice and peace.
Advent is a reminder, a fresh invitation to commit ourselves again to that holy work. In words that are often attributed to Saint Augustine:
“Without God, we cannot. Without us, God will not.”
I might take it a step farther: Without God, we can’t. Without us, God can’t either. God needs our help. Because God has opted in to human freedom, and the Love that God is will not, cannot coerce us into this work. Instead, like Mary, we are invited, called, beckoned to do our part in birthing a new world.
May we, like Mary, choose to say “yes” to this invitation.
Question for Reflection:
How are you being invited to play your part in this unfolding story of creating a world of justice and peace?
That is the Josh Scott paraphrase of Luke 1:34.