Homily

What is the Annunciation? What do we think about when we think of this feast day? On a basic kind of superficial level, we can answer that this is when the angel Gabriel announced to the Virgin Mary that she would conceive by the power of the Holy Spirit and give birth to a boy whom she would call Jesus, but He would also be the Son of God. All of that is true. But if we press on and think of it a little more deeply, there was a time when Jesus, just like us, was developing from the tiniest number of cells in Mary's womb. And He grew within that womb for nine months as any human baby would, for He was truly human and yet at the same time He was truly God. We heard those two elements being proclaimed yesterday at the Akathist service, when, for example the Fathers explain that Mary is more boundless, more spacious than the heavens, because while the whole universe could not contain its Creator, the womb of the Virgin did contain Him. It's a glorious paradox.

It is not an easy thing to sit and contemplate the mystery of God who becomes human, the mystery of the incarnation. How is it possible that He Who is the Maker of All things, beyond the powers of the human mind to comprehend, how is it possible that He can limit Himself to be just a part of creation, just a single man, developing within the body of His mother, being born and growing up into maturity? It can genuinely trouble the mind, and it has troubled the minds of many great thinkers in the Church over the centuries as they try to apply human wisdom to this astounding truth. And because it is so very hard to grasp and fully explain, it is no wonder that most of the early heresies in the Church were centered on incorrect understandings of the incarnation. How can Jesus be both God and man? So one wrong teaching that the Church condemned was that Jesus was not truly God, equal to the Father. He was only a super-duper, holiest of holy man—greater than all other human beings, but not equal to God. And then on the other side of the spectrum we had people who wrongly taught that Jesus was certainly God, and certainly equal to the Father, but He was not really a human being, He just kind of pretended to be human, so that people could see Him and interact with Him. And there were other heresies as well that in one way or another denied either the genuine humanity or else the genuine divinity of Christ our Lord.

They were all attempts to make sense of what happened on the day of the Annunciation. They all sounded reasonable, they could explain the way in which God could appear as a man, or a man could appear to be God. And yet each time the Church said, "No! We cannot explain the mystery in full, but we reject every teaching or thought that tried to limit the true divinity or denies the genuine humanity of our Savior."

So people can genuinely struggle with this mystery of the Incarnation because it is such a huge mystery, and in the end we will never be able to completely grasp it. We will either accept it as the truth of God, or we will reject it as false, or, and this I think is the most common reaction today, simply ignore it as having little importance in our lives. People will stand in line for hours to get a new iPhone or iPad, but it's hard to find anyone waiting in line to get into a church to sing "I believe." Perhaps what we have today, sometimes, are people who want to imitate the heresies in their own lives, by their attempts to become rich, famous, important, powerful, and so become like little gods, while others look for continual satisfaction in material goods and pleasures, trapped within the physical world only, with no room for the spirit. And because Jesus is largely ignored, our humanity is diminished, individually and collectively. Look around and see the direction of voices out there shouting, "We can fix it! We can fix it! We can fix your families, your marriages, we can smooth your broken hearts, cure all your diseases, we can make you feel wonderful and rich and give you power so that you can be in charge, and don't even think about death because it's better to pretend it will never happen. Just step over here and come and get it!"

It's hard to believe Jesus as man loves us, because we often feel it's hard to believe anyone could really love us. It's hard to believe Jesus as God can love us, because we seem to be so insignificant, weak and unfaithful, undeserving of God's love. But this incarnation, this taking on of humanity is all and only and totally done out of love for us. Perhaps it's not the philosophical-theological elements we cannot understand as it is that we cannot understand how the Lord can love us that much, especially since we ourselves are often willing to settle for so much less, and think ourselves happy to get it.

So I pray today for the intercession of the one who loved him best that we may desire to love Him more so that in the coming holy days we may open our hearts more completely to God Who became man for our sakes.