Are You There Mary? It’s Me, Gabriel

There’s this funny thing that Angels say whenever they first appear to someone in the scriptures; “Be not afraid.” Which leads me to think that Angels are probably apocalyptically scary. The cherubim and seraphim - angels closest to God - have four heads, six wings, come to earth on whirling wheels made of eyes, and carry burning coals around to give to unwitting prophets. They often appear in impossible places like deserts, caves, muddy riverbanks, and even once in a teenage girl’s bedroom.

Mary, future mother of Jesus, must have been scared half to death to receive her visitor, and more than a little bewildered at his news. In fact, the scriptures say so: “But she was greatly troubled at the saying [Be Not Afraid], and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be.”

Or in modern terms, she probably said something like, “I’m sorry, what?!”

But Mary, as we know, was no ordinary girl who could be bowled over by a little fright from an Angel. In fact, most teenage girls I know are tough as shit, funny as hell, and people I really really want to be friends with and Mary was no different. And the truth is, Advent season really is all about Mary, the most unflappable teenager there ever was.

I read recently about all the damage Instagram is doing to teenage girls. I felt literally zero surprise at this news but it made me think of the way teenage girls are so frequently ridiculed yet so often asked to bear the burden of society’s ills. Now, this is a subject that would require a whole library to do it justice, and I just might write it msyelf. But suffice it to say, it felt prescient to read this (totally obvious) news about modern teenage girls and then go right into Advent, aka. teenage Mary Season.

Here we have a girl whose supposed virginity has been obssessed by old men over for centuries yet who bravely bore the greatest news ever to come from an Angel. Not only did she receive this news with some grit, but she questioned an Angel, then went ahead and said “Yes, bring it on Angel, I’m the one you’ve been waiting for.”

She could have said no, and I think God would have respected that. But she went for it, knowing what most teenage girls know about themselves; that they are way more powerful, resourceful, creative, strong, and capable than any of us give them credit for. That maybe, they’re the ones who are bringing forth a new world right at this time when the old one seems increasingly crumbly. The future is female, as has been foretold by t-shirts across the world.

So this Mary Season, I want to invite you to reach out to the teenage girls in your life. Ask them what they think about the world. Find out what’s making them feel brave and strong. See who’s visited them recently and what kind of conversations they’ve had. And if any one of them is feeling shame or insecurity or despair about any kind of social media, remind them of who they really are; beings who talk with Angels, who say yes to apocalyptic missions, and who are perhaps the only ones who can even see the new world about to be born when the rest of us are still waiting in the dark.

Gabriel’s Annunciation - By Rev. Jan Richardson

For a moment
I hesitated
on the threshold.
For the space
of a breath
I paused,
unwilling to disturb
her last ordinary moment,
knowing that the next step
would cleave her life:
that this day
would slice her story
in two,
dividing all the days before
from all the ones
to come.

The artists would later
depict the scene:
Mary dazzled
by the archangel,
her head bowed
in humble assent,
awed by the messenger
who condescended
to leave paradise
to bestow such an honor
upon a woman, and mortal.

Yet I tell you
it was I who was dazzled,
I who found myself agape
when I came upon her—
reading, at the loom, in the kitchen,
I cannot now recall;
only that the woman before me—
blessed and full of grace
long before I called her so—
shimmered with how completely
she inhabited herself,
inhabited the space around her,
inhabited the moment
that hung between us.

I wanted to save her
from what I had been sent
to say.

Yet when the time came,
when I had stammered
the invitation
(history would not record
the sweat on my brow,
the pounding of my heart;
would not note
that I said
Do not be afraid
to myself as much as
to her)
it was she
who saved me—
her first deliverance—
her Let it be
not just declaration
to the Divine
but a word of solace,
of soothing,
of benediction

for the angel
in the doorway
who would hesitate
one last time—
just for the space
of a breath
torn from his chest—
before wrenching himself away
from her radiant consent,
her beautiful and
awful yes.

Jan Richardson is an artist, author, United Methodist minister, and director of The Wellspring Studio, LLC.  Widely known for her distinctive intertwining of word and image, Jan blogs at The Painted Prayerbook.