St. Paul's Episcopal Church

St. Paul's Episcopal Church
425 Cleveland Ave SW
Canton, Ohio 44702
Phone: 330-455-0286
Fax: 330-455-9818
E-mail: office@stpaulscanton.org

The Annunciation of our Lord
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Canton OH
Wisdom 9:1-12 and John 1:9-14

March 25, 2009
The Rev. Barbara Bond

Bigger than the picture

As we celebrate the annunciation of our Lord this evening, perhaps you come with particular images in mind.

After all, we are celebrating the appearance of the Archangel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary, announcing that she would bear the Son of God. Countless beautiful works of art show this scene, the angel with graceful feathered wings, Mary looking startled, the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove hovering over her. I played with this classical form myself at our Advent Quiet Day, when I set out to make a collage depicting the event. But what I found was that the concept overflowed the edges of the work. Mary and Gabriel were there, all right, but Mary’s blue robe flowed right off the edge. The dove was reduced to a couple of feathers, but a huge green cloud wafted in, scattering time in its wake. Mary sat pondering the angel’s visit, in a cosmic sweep.

What can I say? In the creative process, sometimes the work takes over and shows me things I hadn’t considered.

It is a bit like our readings for tonight. You haven’t heard a thing about Gabriel and Mary. Instead, the readings expand our understanding of this incredible moment in time, when our Lord came to be among us in the Incarnation. The first reading is from Wisdom, the second from John, with no angel and no Mary. The readings tell us that the story is much bigger than those two figures, and that it overflows the boundaries of our imagination.

In the first reading, Solomon addresses God, asking for wisdom. He says, “With you is wisdom, she who knows your works and was present when you made the world… Send her forth from the holy heavens, and from the throne of your glory send her.” This urgent request, that God send wisdom to Solomon, is not about the Holy Spirit. It is about Wisdom, with a capital W, ancient Wisdom, referred to as She. In Hebrew and in Greek, Wisdom is a female noun. But don’t let that confuse us. That’s just grammar.

Holy Wisdom is present in God, and was indeed sent to the earth in the living person of Jesus of Nazareth. That is Holy Wisdom, made flesh, incarnated. The Gospel of John begins with a beautiful hymn to the incarnation, calling Wisdom by another word that begins with a capital W, the Word. The Word was in the beginning with God, and the Word came into the world. This brought the dawning of true light, the presence of God’s anointed Christ among us. John tells us, “The Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.”

Tonight you will receive both versions of this cosmic story in musical form. The choir’s anthem is a beautiful folksong called “A White Dove Flew From Heaven,” giving us Mary, the angel, and the dove. These are comfortable images, contained in a picture frame. But when we come to the end of our service, hold on to your hats. We will sing a hymn that bursts the frame and throws us into the cosmic landscape, with shouts of “Alleluia!”

That is what happened at the incarnation of our Lord. God entered history, in the flesh. The Wisdom of God, the Word of God, became flesh and dwelt among us; and we have not been the same since. All our understandings of life and death have been blown apart – life without love is a living death; death is just the gateway to another phase of life; life will have many deaths, bringing opportunities for rebirth. Our neat picture has been blown apart by the coming of the Lord.

AMEN