Every year as the Advent countdown comes to an end on the Sunday before Christmas, the gospel reading in church directs our attention to Mary. It makes sense, in a really obvious way. If there is going to be a birth, there has to be a pregnant mum. And if we are going to talk about preparing like we do all through Advent - no one has ever known what it means to prepare for the coming of Jesus quite like Mary did.

In fact, that’s what gave me pause for thought as I was preparing this sermon. And I’d like to invite you to stop and think about it too. We’ve been talking for several weeks now about preparing for the coming of Jesus, and what that means. We’ve talked about preparing for his coming again as our judge, working to change the world so that we and our world can be ready when he appears. We’ve talked about making room in our own lives and our own hearts for Jesus, in the many ways he comes to us day by day. And we haven’t really needed to talk about getting ready for the great celebration of Jesus’ first coming at Christmas.  

But thinking about Mary kind of stops us in our tracks. All of our talk about preparing for Christ takes on an air of unreality or abstraction, when we see it in the light of a young, scared woman expecting her first child. Preparing for the judgment of God seems like something “out there”, something we can maintain a sense of objectivity or detachment about. Not at all like what it means for Mary to invite God in, in the most literal and intimate way imaginable - to invite God into her body, to invite God to take over her living and loving.  

Even the idea of making room in our lives and hearts doesn’t quite live up to the reality of what Mary was dealing with. We say we are “making room in our hearts” for God, but that suggests we are finding a space amongst everything else - fitting God in, even we might acknowledge as our first priority, but still somehow pretending that will basically leave the rest of our life unchanged. I can tell you, even as an innocent bystander, that’s not how having a baby works! People used to ask me when Elizabeth was newborn, “It changes your life, doesn’t it?” I could only answer, “I suppose it must have, ’coz I can’t really remember what life was like before.” And for mums like Mary, that change happens even sooner. Welcoming a stranger to share your body, and eventually your home, is not about making room - that new person takes over pretty quick.  

In some odd ways it may be our experience of celebrating Christmas that gives us the best feel for Mary’s experience of preparing for Christ. Joy and stress are combined in similar ways, opportunities for togetherness along with feelings of loneliness and isolation. You can’t check out from the Christmas season any more than you can check out of pregnancy - the calendar stares you in the face and there are no shortcuts, even though some days pass frighteningly quick and others painfully slow.  

Of course there would appear to be one obvious difference between the lead-up to Christmas and the lead-up to childbirth. Once Christmas is over, it’s over: the presents get absorbed into our usual patterns of living, the decorations get taken down, and by some time in January everything is back to normal. But when you’re expecting - once the baby arrives, you’re just getting started. That seems obvious, doesn’t it?  

I just wonder if that’s good enough. If everything we’ve built up to in our church celebration of Advent, and our family and social celebrations of Christmas - if all of that has actually led us to the point where our lives are bursting with the challenge and hope of God-with-us, Emmanuel - then why would we imagine that we can put it all back in the box? Why would we want to? That’s the question I can hear echoing across the millennia from a brave and frightened Mary.

It seems like our story diverges from hers. It seems like we have a choice where she doesn’t - but is that really true? At the very beginning of her story she makes a choice - the choice to embrace what God wants to do with her. Her words, “let it be with me according to your word” are much more than a formal consent. A better translation might go “Would that it be as you have said!” or perhaps in modern English, “Yes please!!” Now I have no idea if she knew what she was letting herself in for. Probably not - even the best-informed parent will get blindsided by something as their journey unfolds. But that doesn’t matter - once you’ve taken the job, you know it’s yours and you would never want it to be any other way.  

That’s how it is with us, too, if we would only see it. Somehow, sometime, in a moment of clarity or in a long process of discovery, each of us says our “Yes please!!” to God. And there is no going back. We invite God into our lives - like they say about puppies - for life, not just for Christmas. And the process is very much like what Mary went through - though the calendar and the details are different for each of us, God wants us to bring to birth his presence and love in the world in just the same way.  

You are a Christ-bearer. What you have done to prepare for Christ’s coming is your own “yes”. What you are doing even now to celebrate Jesus’ birth, with its moments of joy and its times that are just pure hard work - that’s a sign of welcoming God into your life, inviting him to take over. The times and the ways in which God will be born anew in your life and witness - those will be surprises, just like every birth. But being a bearer of Christ never stops, not today, not on the first day of Christmas or the twelfth day or any day after that. So when the parties are over, go ahead and put the decorations back in the box, but hold on to your joy at what God is doing in you, and let your soul tell out the greatness of the Lord.  

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