Annunciation of the Lord
March 25, 2025
Read: Isaiah 7:10-14; Psalm 40:5-10; Hebrews 10:4-10; Luke 1:26-38
We don’t seem to design our world the way God would prefer. We pay attention to power; God seems to appreciate weakness. We admire and revere the rich; God seems to like hanging out with the poor. Prestige is our goal; service is God’s. God’s design for the world doesn’t seem to match our own.
Strange that God would choose Mary, don’t you think? Minding her own business, a nobody if there ever was one, God’s messenger, Gabriel, shows up and says, “Mary, God favors you.” God favors her so much that he wants her to assist in nothing less than bringing about the salvation of all. She has no position, no status, no qualification that would merit her for such a task. And yet, God says, “You’re the one, Mary.”
How God chooses to offer us hope is confusing. How God chooses to help us find wholeness is odd. And how God chooses to love often leaves us with the question that Mary asked long ago: “How can this be?” How can it be that the path to hope leads to a cross? How can it be that if we want to be whole we must lose our very selves? How can it be that if we ever expect to receive God’s love, for us, we must love even those who will not love us in return? Like Mary, we wonder, “How can this be?”
The partnership between God and Mary continues a pattern that God began from the very beginning. God’s design for the world involves you and me. God is not going to use power, as the world does, to achieve an end. Instead, God comes to Mary, just as God comes to each one of us, and says, “You’re the one, and together, we can create a beautiful world.”
St. Augustine once said, “Without God, we cannot. Without us, God will not.” You are that favored by God. You are that important to the salvation of the world. You are the one that God is counting on to be Christ’s hands and feet to others. And with God, it’s possible.
Mary asked, “How can this be?” and trusted God to lead her on a life-changing journey. May it be so with us.
Prayer:
God, as we seek to be your people in the world, we have many questions. Help us ask them with sincerity and go on to trust authentically, for the sake of the world. In Christ’s name we pray. Amen.
The Reverend Dr. Jason Borders is Professor of Religion at Huntingdon College and serves as Theologian in Residence at First United Methodist Church of Montgomery, Alabama. Dr. Borders is an ordained elder in the Alabama-West Florida Conference of The United Methodist Church.
Read: Psalm 39; Ezekiel 17:1-10; Romans 2:12-16
Psalm 39:4-5 “Show me, Lord, my life’s end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting my life is. You have made my days a mere handbreadth; the span of years is as nothing before you. Everyone is but a breath, even those who seem secure.”
That is a Lenten text if I’ve ever heard one. In a season focusing on our mortality, accepting limitations, and recognizing our finitude, Psalm 39 is a pretty spot-on selection. It elicits the spirit of the season and helps us fully appreciate the miracle of Easter. I mean, it doesn’t get much more sobering than the reminder, “Everyone is but a breath, even those who seem secure.”
This scripture reminds me of a Mumford and Sons song called “Below My Feet” — it has a real Ash Wednesday/Lent vibe. It’s about a guy who has just lost someone close to him, and the death caused the subject to wrestle with his understanding of faith and life. Encountering death will do that to a person, won’t it? The song begins, “You were cold as the blood through your bones. And the light which led us from our chosen homes. Well, I was lost.”
I think of that song at some point every Lent because, in addition to mourning loss, the subject comes face to face with his own mortality. This experience of encountering loss, wrestling with faith, and internalizing the inescapable reality that we too will die is an essential part of the Christian journey. Yet it is one we often deny because of its unpleasantness. It is no secret that we all would rather avoid the heavy things in life.
However, there is no Easter Sunday if there was not first Good Friday, and when joy comes in the morning, it is always after the sorrow that lasts for the night. On this side of eternity, heaviness and hardships, loss and grief, they are all part of reality. But the Good News is that they will not have the last word. And we can only truly appreciate our eternal life in Christ if we first recognize that our days are numbered without Him. The gift of God’s mercy becomes even more important when we lose someone we love, for it assures us of their place in the great cloud of witnesses. We need Lent not so we can wallow in our feels and mope around, but because recognizing our mortality makes Easter matter even more.
Our participation in Lent reminds us that while we are here on Earth, we pray that God will “Put us to what thou wilt, rank us with whom thou wilt. Put us to doing, put us to suffering.” In our prayers, we recognize that we will “go through many dangers, toil and snares.” However, we also know that on the other side of the shadow valley, there is a promised land flowing with milk and honey. And that though our mortal bodies will fail us one day, we will still get to spend eternity celebrating God’s grace. And even after we’ve been doing it for ten thousand years, “we will have no less days to sing God’s praise than when we first begun
Prayer:
Gracious God, we give you thanks for a season of honest reflection. We pray you help us recognize our need for You in the acceptance of our limits. May our weakness reveal Your strength. And though we know hardships will inevitably befall us, we ask you help us look toward a future where all is made well in You. Amen.
The Reverend Dr. Woods Lisenby ’11 is Senior Pastor at Spanish Fort United Methodist Church in Spanish Fort, Alabama.
