We always celebrate some aspect of the Annunciation on this, the Fourth Sunday of Advent.  Each year, we hear a different part of the great story involving the Angel Gabriel, Joseph, Mary and her cousin, Elizabeth.  All of this foretells the imminent birth of the Saviour. In today’s account, the angel says to this 16-year-old, “Greetings, O favoured one!  The Lord is with you.”

Luke tells us that Mary was much perplexed – greatly troubled by these words, and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. And no wonder: She was a peasant girl, at the dawn of what we now call the first century, in Nazareth. You remember Nazareth: “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” It was perhaps the equivalent of the worst slums of our age – a place from which no one expected much of anything!

 Mary, of course, had just become accustomed to the idea of her engagement to an 18-year-old carpenter. Steady income and honest work – carpentry. And her marriage to Joseph probably represented a great improvement also in her social status.

Then along comes Gabriel, with these astonishing words:  “Greetings, O favoured one! The Lord is with you.”

Not just appearing as a man, with whom she was forbidden to speak in any case.  And not just any low-ranking angel, but the Archangel Gabriel himself – God’s right-hand man, as it were!

And this angel doesn’t demand a drink from the well, or the washing of his feet, or even directions to the nearest inn.  He really came to speak with her. And he greets her not as a slave, or a woman, or even as an equal – but as the favoured one of God!

What must it have been like for her to confront God’s messenger in this way? It makes sense that she must have been quite startled – “much perplexed”, as scripture tells us. We cannot help but leap to the conclusion that these words sound as strange to us now as they did then to Mary!

We may find these words strange.  We may not like them.  We too may ponder in our hearts what sort of greeting this might be. But we hear these words, and perhaps come to rejoice in them.

Greetings, favoured one!  There is good news here for everyone.

Those of a more Catholic persuasion can revel in the veneration of the Blessed Virgin Mary, whilst those who prefer the Protestant end of the spectrum can take comfort in Gabriel’s words of grace. Feminists note that the willing assent of a woman was necessary for God’s whole plan of salvation! Those who are more inclined to patriarchy insist that the angel – who appeared as a male, after all – set the whole thing in motion.  Humanists delight that a human vessel could contain God.  Believers claim authority for the divinity of Christ.  Sceptics repeat the words, “How can this be?”  Optimists find hope in the phrase “Nothing will be impossible with God.” And all of us are invited to accept our call to vocation, proclaiming, “Here am I, the servant of God.”

In this, Christian people everywhere imagine themselves ready to let go and take the plunge, like Mary – responding to God’s messenger with the only words we can utter that help carry out the plan of salvation: “Let it be according to your word.”

This very text reminds us that God loves us – all of us. God has a message for each of us – the favoured ones of God!

And God has a plan for each and every one of us: to help bring down the powerful from their thrones, and lift up the lowly; to fill the hungry with good things, and send the rich away empty.

Those are the words from the Song of Mary, the Magnificat, which we read together a few moments ago.  And that is what follows immediately after today’s story in Luke’s gospel.

It may seem rather odd to you that much of the time we hear the Magnificat in the splendid setting of Evensong, but the message of the angel, and Mary’s glad song in response are seditious, politically charged and highly volatile – even today!

God will bring down the powerful from their thrones and lift up the lowly, fill the hungry with good things, send the rich away empty, and scatter the proud in the imagination of their hearts.

But how can we hear these texts from the gospel we hold so dear and not engage with the political realm?  Quite simply, poverty is a religious as well as a political issue. – oppression, too, and hunger, injustice and untruth, not to mention war!

And God is enlisting us in the cosmic struggle for good over evil, to help make the world a better place for all of his children, because the God we worship is not a far-off, distant judge.  Not someone who punishes bad behaviour from a lofty paradise by sending down hot thunderbolts. And not the sort of deity who must simply imagine what it is like to be human!

No, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.  In Jesus, God has become a fully human being, with flesh and bones – one who hurts and cries, and laughs and sings. No longer are we separated from God, pleading for mercy from an omnipotent judge.

Our God is among us, “with us,” Emmanuel – and God knows exactly just what life is like for us!  What it is like to feel the power of the attraction to light in the darkness. What it is like to be drawn by glittering images.  And what it is like to struggle to resist temptation, or even to recognize the difference between divine light and the alluring glow that grows out of wickedness.

This in reality is the message of the angels: God understands us, God forgives us, and above all, God loves us.  Perhaps our inability to accept the message fully, to believe we really are the favoured ones of God – maybe this accounts for our unwillingness to cooperate sometimes with God’s plan for us.

It is far easier for us to store up treasure for ourselves than it is to ensure that all human beings have their rightful share in the earth’s bounty. It is far easier to command armies to annihilate those whom we believe to be evil, than it is to weed out the roots of injustice. It is far easier to engage in a bit of “retail therapy” than it is to confront the painful possibility that we may well be the rich who God will send away empty!

And so, our God has given us a sign.  A young woman is with child, and shall bear a son, and shall name him Jesus.  He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David. And he shall be Emmanuel – “God with us.” For nothing will be impossible with God!

And this great Good News begins anew this season by putting our faith into mere words. This Christmas, may we hear the message of the angel, and know in our hearts that they are intended for each and every one of us: “Greetings, O favoured one! The Lord is with you.”   Amen