Whenever I hear the story of the Annunciation, that moment near the beginning of Luke's Gospel when the angel comes to Mary, I always get a knot in my stomach.
As Gabriel greets Mary he tells her not to be afraid, unwraps before her the great gift of God's plan, and asks her cooperation. She says simply, yes.
Presumably God could have done this a different way, could have made some more human stuff with God's infinite creativity and shaken it all together in a Divine test tube, baked it in a heavenly oven and delivered the Messiah all ready to go - not a little, vulnerable baby woven and knit together in a human being with all the frailty and danger of those moments.
Presumably God could have blended divine and human with an infinite variety and reliable effect - but God chose the ultimate act of cooperation. Mary is an icon of human cooperation with divine will and this is why she is so important.
Even from the beginning it was obvious that cooperation with God was not some divine talisman against all wrong, all ill will. She had to weather the storms of Joseph's disappointment and society's judgment. She traveled Bethlehem, far from home, and gave birth in, effectively, a garage in a stranger's house. She was told right at the beginning that this would be a painful journey - a sword would pierce her heart. And it did.
This is a profound relief to me - that if even the woman who says yes at the heart of God's new beginning for us. If even the woman who breathes a human assent into the moment of Incarnation, if even she walked a human, vulnerable and painful path in my higgldy piggle of sometimes and maybes what different would I expect.
As Mary laughs and weeps and turns herself over to God she forms for us a pattern of one committed to Divine will. She detaches herself, not from the emotion and interaction of the everyday, but from the fear of it. "Do not be afraid," say Gabriel, "but I have something to ask of you......"
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