"LET IT BE"
Luke 1:26-38
Posted December 23, 2000
The angel told Mary an outrageously hard story for her to believe. She, an unknown, unmarried, young woman, was going to play a significant part in the history of God’s people. She was going to bear a son who would deliver his people, who would inherit the throne of David, and whose reign would never end. Her understated response to the angel was “How can this be?”
How can this be? Each of us has had experiences, which made us ask this question. And we start to tick off a litany of reasons how this cannot be or in some cases why it shouldn’t be. Luke tells us only one of Mary’s reasons, “I’m a virgin. I’ve never been with a man.” It doesn’t take much imagination for us to make the list longer for her: I’m so young, my family is unknown, I live in Nazareth, no one will believe me.
God’s messenger explained in some detail just how it could be. A good salesman, in Dale Carnegie fashion, he answered her objection. It is God’s doing. Nothing is impossible with God.
We get this story in the quickest of exchanges. We can imagine a long discussion, but Luke raps us the conversation with Mary surrendering to the will of God as pronounced by this messenger. “I am the servant of God. Let it be done to me as you say.”
That long conversation we imagine is indicative of the way we live. Think of all the energy we spend trying to change things, the make them what we want. Think of all the energy we spend kicking against the way things are, trying to impose our own will on the universe, on God. While thinking about Mary’s surrender, I read a line from Ajahn Sumano Bhikkhu that jumped off the page: “Things are as they are. If they shouldn’t be they wouldn’t be.”
I don’t think this was the only time Mary had to pray, “Let it be to me as you have planned.” We get only brief glances of Mary in the Gospels, but we can hear this prayer in many of the scenes. Mary and Joseph brought Jesus to the temple at the time of purification. Simeon and Anna both affirmed that the baby was God’s gift with a special destiny. Mary couldn’t have known what that was going to mean for her. Once again in amazement she had to surrender, “Let it be.”
When Jesus was twelve years old, the holy family made a trip to Jerusalem. As they were returning home, Mary and Joseph realized Jesus was not with the caravan. They returned to Jerusalem to find Jesus in the temple asking and answering questions with the temple leaders. They were amazed. Jesus told Mary that he had to be about the business of God. Luke simply tells us Mary didn’t understand these things. She pondered them in her heart. In the midst of her questions, she had to surrender once again. “Let it be.”
Life throws at us, too, its challenges, mysteries, paradoxes. We can struggle against them, rebel, and want them to change. Or we can hear this story of Mary through the words of those famous “biblical theologians” of the sixties, the Beetles, as they sing, “When in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me speaking words of wisdom, ‘Let it be.’”
As soon as I say this I can imagine someone hearing this as fatalism. You mean if I live in a destructive situation, I should simply endure? Of course not, but if you stand under a waterfall, don’t blame the water that you are getting wet. Don’t try to turn off the water. It is wasted effort. Let it be. Simply get out from under the waterfall.
Some things, like where we are going to stand, we have control over. Some things we do not, like the nature of water to wet what it touches. We find ourselves praying the serenity prayer, “God grant me the courage to change the things I can, the patience to accept the things I can’t, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
Mary was one of the women who witnessed the crucifixion of her son. Did she realize when she told the angel, “Let it be to me as you have said,” that her heart would break as she watched her son die as a criminal? How does that square with the promise that he will sit on the throne of David—forever? Once again, Mary had to surrender to a will much bigger than hers. Let it be.
From the few glimpses we get of Mary in the Gospels, it is not hard for me to imagine that she lived her live in surrender to God. Knowing the influence of a mother’s teaching, it is not hard for me to imagine that she taught surrender to her son, the same one who said, “if you want to gain your life, you will lose your life,” who asked his friends to give up everything to follow him, who told a rich man to sell all that he had. Jesus learned well the lesson of surrender. At the moment of his greatest agony, he prayed, “Not what I want, but what you want.” Let it be.
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