Let It Be

'Let it be unto me, according to your word.'  Luke 1.38

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Good morning!

In a happy coincidence, at the start of this Holy Week, it’s also the Feast of the Annunciation - March 25, nine months before the birth of Jesus. 

The timing is poignant and potent. We are reminded, today, of Immanuel, planted like a seed of hope. A seed which, like any other, contains the whole within it - but in this case, very much the whole of that which could not be planted any other way. 

Here, in this moment, is contained the uncontainable; the inconceivable, conceived: the life, the death, the resurrection of Jesus Christ. 

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I do love this painting of ‘The Annunciation’ by Henry Ossawa Tanner, which I shared one Advent, and which I’m drawn back to in this pregnant Holy Monday moment now. It fleshes out what the poet Elizabeth Rooney describes, when:

‘One single
Simple
Open soul
Received
The potency
Of the creative whole.’

See how Gabriel, a gash of in-breaking, dazzling dawning light, is reflected in Mary’s countenance. What a mixture of a moment, when it dawns on you that life will never be the same.

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"Let it be unto me," she answers, to a call in which we all can share: to let go of our plans and be planted, seed-like, in a different story full of life, death and rising. Even if we’re planted in a strange new place, which feels like wilderness.

She could have said no, but God knows Mary well, as God knows each of us. As the theologian Jane Williams says of this painting, if we give our friends a choice, we may well know what they’ll choose - not because we’re steering them, but ‘because we know it will be so characteristic of them …

‘When we throw in our lot with God’s plan, we can be certain that we will play the part that is perfect for us,’ she says. ‘When we struggle to assert ourselves in opposition to God, we are struggling against what sets us free to be ourselves.’

 

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It doesn’t come without a price, for love, as we've said before, always carries a cost. There's a cross to be traced in the background of the painting, on the right-hand wall straight behind Mary, who will - from this very moment - love her son with all her heart; like God.

It’s not ‘religious’ but a Mother’s love, a friend’s, a follower’s. Their interwoven paths will lead them both to Holy Week and all that it will hold. But I love to think that, before it got too serious, Mary, young enough to be child-like herself, would give the Son of God the time and space to be a child in all a child’s glory.

To run and jump and skip like a spring lamb. 

To abandon himself to the sheer childhood thrill of the senses - the first fragrances you bank in your memory which will always take you back there (as well as help to carry you forward) - like fresh-cut grass on a barefoot spring morning; like fresh-baked bread, broken at supper with family. 

 

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May the seed be sown.
Go well!

Brian