Come On In

Years ago, I woke to a nice Saturday and was heading out to do an errand that was three months or more overdue. I needed duplicate-keys for everything. I lost a whole ring of keys all those weeks prior. They fell out of my pocket while swimming at Hamilton Pool, in the Texas Hill Country. So they sat, irretrievable, at the bottom of this 25-foot deep natural pool—I thought. Heading out the door, I reached for the mail and there was a small box. Inside were my keys with a note. Some diver, named Bubba Fuller found them and saw the tag from my insurance company on the ring that allowed the keys to finding their way back to me with a little help from a friendly Texan.

What a day it was when I lost them! A group of seminary families drove out in separate cars. When I lost the keys, one of my friends had to drive me the 25 miles back to Austin to get my only spare keys. When I got home, I had to find a way into the house. I tried both doors and started on the windows. Nothing was open, but my landlord, Magnus, lived next door. I had to ask if he had a spare and could let his reckless tenant into the abode. Success! So, we made it back to the site of natural beauty. My carelessness had cost us a huge chunk out of what was to be a carefree day of recreation.

It’s a long tale with many lessons, but I want to accentuate the part about the need to get in that house. I needed to solve a problem of my own making, and thank goodness there was a way in. One of the ways of looking at the gift of God the Incarnate One is to note God’s full and physical presence was needed in the heart of humanity. In the fullness of time, God, the eternally begotten Son, found entrance through the courageous and humble permission given by Mary, a young maiden of Nazareth. God did not need to check every door and window into this big abode of all the daughters and sons of Adam and Eve. God sent Gabriel to check with Mary. Through her the eternal Son, fully God, was born a human baby. Born a child and yet a king, God the Transcendent became God the Immanent—God with us, one of us. God the ultimate outsider, at last, was in.

Luke does not provide a lot of description of the Annunciation, this interfacing of heaven and earth through Gabriel the Archangel and Mary. To be sure, however, painters and poets ever since have grippingly offered interpretation. I might never have thought much of that moment of connection, but in his book, The Go-Between-God, John V. Taylor introduces two poems I just cannot forget. The first, that of mid-twentieth century Scottish poet Edwin Muir:

See, they have come together, see,
While the destroying minutes flow.
Each reflects the other’s face
Till heaven in hers and earth in his
Shine steady there. . .
but through the endless afternoon
These neither speak nor movement make,
But stare into their deepening trance
As if their gaze would never break.

The second poem is an English translation of a piece by the German poet, Rainer Maria Rilke. To me it is hauntingly poignant:

The angel’s entrance (you must realize)
was not what made her frightened. . .
No, not to see him enter, but to find
the youthful angel’s countenance
inclined so near to her; that when he looked, and she
looked up at him, their looks so merged in one
the world outside grew vacant, suddenly,
and all things being seen, endured and done
were crowded into them: just she and he
eye and its pasture, visions and its view,
here at the point and at this point alone:— 
see, this arouses fear. Such fear both knew.

               (From Rilke’s The Life of Mary, TRS. N. K. Cruikshank, Edinburgh)

God needed a way in, and with the angel’s prospectus presented, the way was found. God’s first home when at last the Creator was as one with the creation was the womb of Mary. Not an entrance from the sky, with the flash of lightning and the rumble of thunder, God came from interior darkness, with the almost inaudible sound of a tiny rapid heartbeat. The Creator of all, the heavenly Provider, was all curled up, alive with food and oxygen pulsing in from the heart of this young mother. This blessed season of Advent is a season of waiting. The expectant mother waits with great discomfort for the blessed event. In Advent we wait, expecting the in-breaking of Fulfillment.

I’ll leave you with a sonnet on some Advent feelings:

These candles four will mark the weeks we wait
Please, come to us, we need you, O Most High
In ways we knew to make the highway straight
we’ve cleared the path, please hurry. Hear our cry

Come sweet Savior, bring your healing balm.
the sting of life has sapped us of our strength
Our anxious souls now yearn to know your calm
We pray you’ll come near, joining us at length

Each day we listen—watch for your approach;
the nights are long, we rest as best we can;
the clouds of fear our worried hearts encroach
We pray our hopes will match your holy plan

With all we can we hang on—seek your face
your eyes, your presence, and your tight embrace.

—David Price, December 2020